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The Oregonian: A Pier Without Peer
A Pier Without Peer
Astoria's Cannery Pier Hotel is all about the Columbia -- and stunning river views
Sunday, October 16, 2005
RICHARD FENCSAK
 We first notice the huge ungainly car carrier while driving through Astoria's downtown. From inside our car, the 600-foot-long ship, capable of hauling more than 5,000 vehicles, looks formidable. We catch glimpses of its towering superstructure when the space between buildings allows an unobstructed view of its passage downriver toward the Columbia River bar and the Pacific Ocean.
A couple of miles later, my friend and I lose sight of the vessel. But when we turn off Marine Drive toward the Columbia River and the Cannery Pier Hotel, that boxy car carrier looms a whole lot larger as it seems to bear down on me. When we park the car and get out, the ship is so close we can see splotches of chipped paint on its massive gray hull.
Astoria's newest lodging, the Cannery Pier Hotel, sits on a concrete pier 600 feet out in the river, so near the shipping channel that scenes such as this are commonplace -- though always jaw-dropping.
Everything about the five-story hotel is oriented toward the Columbia. The lobby is angled 45 degrees from the main building so that it sights toward Cape Disappointment Lighthouse and the Columbia River bar. Elevators open to reveal watery vistas. Even the bathtubs enjoy river views. To get any closer to the Columbia in Astoria, you'd have to jump in.
Cannery connections
In Uniontown, a once rough-and-tumble section of Astoria where bars and bordellos used to crowd the Columbia River waterfront, the hotel rests on century-old pilings that formerly supported the Union Fishermen's Cooperative Packing Co., a cannery that processed thousands of cases of salmon a year.
Robert "Jake" Jacob, an Astoria native and majority owner of the hotel, says he designed the hotel with exposed steel beams and wooden trusses, hanging cannery-style lights and sending faux smokestacks poking out of the roof so it would resemble a cannery. "The placement of windows, the roofline, the detailing, even the signage is like the old Union Fish cannery," says Jacob, 56.
Painted a deep brick red, the hotel offers 38 rooms, seven suites with Jacuzzi tubs and one fifth-floor Pilot House, a two-bedroom fully equipped penthouse, which Jacob says started off as his attic office. "Now I can't afford to stay there," he says jokingly.
On the hotel's east end, guests can work out on the weight machines, treadmills, elliptical trainers and such while gazing at the river, then relax in a hot tub or Finnish-style sauna or schedule a massage at the day spa. Second-story alcoves and reading areas afford breathtaking river scenes. "For every guest to see the river almost every moment they're here. That was my obsession," Jacob says.
An exquisite room
After dinner at nearby Cafe Uniontown, an easy walk from the hotel, we savor the sunset from our sizable third-floor room, outfitted with a gas fireplace, a clawfoot tub, a wet bar and a gorgeous Columbia River panorama.
An Army Corp of Engineers dredging vessel, identifiable because of the morass of pipes on deck, steams past en route to an upriver berth at Tongue Point. Off to the east, an occasional car cruises across the four-mile-long interstate bridge, its imposing span of steel girders and roadway arching more than 100 feet above the river.
When an oceangoing freighter passes later that evening, the ship's wake surges against the hotel's underpinnings with a mesmerizing sloshing sound. Cormorants squawk, gulls screech, a ship's foghorn sounds in the distance. Together, it's a soothing nighttime din that lulls guests into peaceful slumber.
Come morning, we gaze out our room's windows at a river undisturbed by even a breath of wind. Standing on the pint-size balcony, we welcome the morning and joke that somebody aboard that sailboat or that green-and-white tugboat, is sure to see us in our bathrobes.
To the west, sunlight dapples off a mishmash of pilings; farther out, a freighter from some far-off land approaches. Wisps of clouds cling to the forested Washington shoreline, four miles distant. A solitary blue heron stands motionless in the shallows between the piers.
A history walk
On our way downstairs to the lobby sitting area for a casual continental breakfast of Danish, doughnuts, Finnish bread and beverages, we peruse the wall art -- paintings and photos that showcase l2 decades of Astoria's history.
Down another floor, the corridors offer a History Walk: Displays feature photo collages and accompanying texts with varying themes. Two men stand tall in their sailing gill-net boat in one picture; another is a framed label that once adorned a 48-tin case of Golden Anchor Salmon. Our favorite photograph shows an older gent sitting in a high-backed chair, fishing for salmon with a hand line through a hole in the boardwalk.
Jacob says designer Sarah Goodnough worked for 18 months to pick out the hotel's wall colors, fabrics and furniture, and to sift through more than a thousand photos. "Everything had to reflect Astoria's Scandinavian heritage. I didn't want anything here that was generic."
As befits the site of a former cannery, images of salmon hang everywhere. On the landing above the main staircase, there's a photo of a fisherman holding a fish almost as big as he is, an 82.5-pound chinook said to be the largest salmon ever landed in Astoria. In the lobby, a mid-20th-century image depicts white-coated women preparing fish for canning. Down the hallway, a retouched color print shows the Union Fish Cannery in its heyday.
Jacob makes the rounds after breakfast, answering questions and hobnobbing with visitors. He offers to fetch us more coffee, asks if our stay was pleasant and tells us that the front desk has a daily schedule of ships entering and leaving the river. When we inquire concerning the hotel's construction, he recounts captivating anecdotes that draw nearby guests into the conversation.
Brilliant sunshine streams through the lobby's huge glass windows. The morning is waning; we gather our luggage and head outside.
River traffic is as busy as when we checked in, although last evening's car carrier is now well on its way to the far side of the Pacific Rim. This morning, our eyes are trained on a 900-foot-long tanker from Alaska's North Slope, en route to Portland to discharge a load of crude. The entire pier seems to rhythmically sway as the red-and-black vessel passes.
Richard Fencsak is a freelance writer from Astoria and frequent contributor to Destinations. Reach him via travel@news.oregonian.com.
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