Sam and Trista Glackler had other options. They looked at space in Ridgefield. They looked at space up in Castle Rock. Neither one worked out, and Sam later put it plainly: it just didn't feel right because it's not Exit 16.
That's the name on the door now. Exit 16 Sips and Scoops opened this month in a converted former bank building on La Center's 4th Street, closing out a stretch of work that started, by Sam's own count, back in September 2020 with a production brewery and a vague plan to eventually add a brick-and-mortar bar. Six years is a long runway for a waffle shop. But the wait is also the reason this particular opening matters more than a new storefront usually would. It didn't just add a place to eat. It gave the town's existing pieces something to connect to.
The Bank Building's Second Life
The building sitting empty on 4th Street became available in June 2025, and the Glacklers spent the months since turning it into what Trista describes as a community gathering spot, one built around a menu that mixes craft beer with house-made ice cream and savory waffles. The current seasonal flavor is pumpkin horchata. Craft cocktails are reportedly next. The patio is dog-friendly, which matters in a town where Nextdoor threads about pets and walking routes outnumber almost everything else.
At the ribbon cutting, Mayor Tom Strobehn pointed to the Glacklers' history of community involvement and their work creating opportunities for younger residents, framing the opening as a homecoming rather than a launch. That framing tracks. This is a couple who turned down two other towns to stay in the one whose freeway exit gave their brand its name.
What the opening actually solves for La Center is less about the food and more about geography. For years, downtown's pieces sat within a few blocks of each other without anything tying them into a single loop worth walking end to end.
Two Saturdays a Month, Not Every Saturday
Take the La Center Historical Museum. It sits at 410 W 5th Street, next door to the Grange and around the corner from Sadie and Josie's Bakery, and it's free to visit. But it's only open the first and third Saturday of each month, from noon to 4pm. Show up on the wrong weekend and the door is locked no matter how good your timing felt walking over from breakfast.
The museum posted this month that its long-running story pole project is finally finished, a detail worth knowing if you've been meaning to stop in and see it. The two-Saturday rhythm isn't a flaw. It's just the kind of scheduling detail that only shows up if you're already paying attention to this specific four blocks of town, which is exactly the point.
The Loop the City Has Been Buying Piece by Piece
The other half of this story is underground, or at least underfoot. La Center's parks department has spent the past two years budgeting to physically connect three separate green spaces that used to function as isolated stops rather than a system.
A 2024 city capital projects report laid out the math. A trail connecting Sternwheeler Park to the John Pollock Water Trail Park and on to Holley Park was budgeted at roughly $819,000, tied to grant funding and penciled in for 2025. A second connector, linking the La Center Bottoms trail (a 1.5-mile stretch bordering the East Fork Lewis River) to Holley Park, was budgeted at just under $200,000 and penciled in for this year. Add those two figures together and the city set out to spend close to a million dollars stitching together a walk that residents could previously only complete by cutting through sidewalks and side streets.
Sternwheeler Park itself carries some of the town's oldest identity: an amphitheater built into the hillside, wood carvings referencing the town's steamboat and logging history, and river access down to the East Fork Lewis. From there, the Bottoms trail continues the theme in a different register. It's one of only three state-designated watchable wildlife sites in Clark County and stop number 28 on the Audubon Washington birding trail's southwest loop, a 0.66-mile barrier-free path with wildlife blinds built specifically so visitors can watch herons and waterfowl without disturbing them.
None of that was ever hard to find on its own. What was missing was a reason to walk from one end of it to the other on the same morning.
What a Full Circuit Looks Like Now
Here's what that circuit can look like today, assuming the museum happens to be open:
- Start at Stonehill Coffee House on 4th Street, open at 7am on weekdays and 8am on Saturdays, for coffee before the rest of downtown wakes up.
- Walk two blocks to Podunk Pizza Co., which built its name on wood-fired dinners Wednesday through Sunday and has since added a breakfast menu, including an avocado toast that's earned its own repeat customers.
- If it's the first or third Saturday, swing by the Historical Museum for the finished story pole and whatever else is on display that month.
- Close the loop at Exit 16 Sips and Scoops, patio open to dogs, for a waffle or a scoop before heading down toward Sternwheeler Park.
- From the park, pick up the connector trail toward the Bottoms for the birding loop, or turn back toward Holley Park if the morning's better spent watching a Little League game than looking for herons.
That's not a route anyone invented for a blog post. It's what the last year of permitting, grand openings, and museum scheduling happened to build without anyone announcing it as a plan.
Beyond 4th Street
The bigger venues in town are still doing their own thing on a separate calendar. Ilani brought Lynyrd Skynyrd through this week and has Brit Floyd booked for October 18, the kind of national touring acts that pull people in from well outside La Center's city limits. That's a different audience and a different kind of night out, and it's worth knowing about if concerts are part of your fall calendar. But it runs parallel to the 4th Street loop rather than through it, which is part of what makes the downtown circuit feel like something built for the people who are already here rather than for visitors passing through on their way to a show.
The six years between Sam Glackler's first brewery idea and this month's ribbon cutting turned out to matter for more than one business. It's the same span of time the city spent budgeting trail connectors, the museum spent finishing its story pole, and Podunk spent building a breakfast crowd one avocado toast at a time. None of that was coordinated. It just landed in the same year, on the same four blocks, and downtown La Center finally has a morning that starts at one end of 4th Street and ends somewhere along the river instead of stopping short.
If you're already walking that loop most weekends, Parker Home Group would love to hear which stop is yours. We're always glad to talk La Center with the people who already call it home.
