Rockaway Beach chamber inaugurates wheelchair house and pavers

A group of Rockaway Beach citizens gathered at the city’s wayside on May 9, to celebrate the completion of a project that added a new wheelchair house and more than 4,000 square feet of pavers around the Chamber of Commerce’s Red Caboose.

The ceremony took place during the first farmer’s market of the year and celebrated the additional accessibility the project will afford those with limitations.

At the ceremony, City Councilors Penny Cheek and Kristine Hayes spoke before Cheek cut the ribbon on the new facilities.

Cheek shared the project’s history, which started when the chamber of commerce applied for a Travel Oregon grant in 2023 and were selected to receive $94,000 towards the work. Hayes, who is also the president of the chamber of commerce, estimated that the total cost of the project was just under $110,000, with the rest of the funding coming from private donations.

Those donations came from the Marrick Family Trust, Builder’s First Source, Bob Kern, SAI Design & Build, Shane Hayes from Intrepid Construction, and Matt, Jim and Sue Vachter who donated $2,500 for the purchase of a new beach buggy wheelchair.

Work began in early April on the installation of the new pavers, with 4,400 square feet installed, stretching from a terminus on North Miller Street up to the railroad tracks and continuing next to them to First Avenue and encircling the chamber caboose.

The new wheelchair house is located at the north end of the caboose and will house the chamber’s fleet of beach wheelchairs. It is called Barb’s Beach Mobile House in honor of a longtime volunteer who helped to maintain the chamber’s first beach buggy for more than three decades.