Let Sequim be Port Angeles’ Guinea Pig
Or canary in the coal mine; whatever cliché you want to use.
For people who think mindless growth — Big Box stores and one strip mall after another — will be lucrative: just take a look at Sequim. They can be the anti-role model, like a reformed drug addict who travels around the country telling high school students “don’t do what I did. Don’t end up like me.”
If strip malls and franchises enhanced a city’s tax base, Sequim could have streets paved with gold. Some California cities have made this mistake. Take Rohnert Park (please!).
This city of about 40,000 has every Big Box and chain store you’ve ever heard of, and yet their city government keeps running out of money, just like every other city government.
Let’s hope Sequim can change its growth policies before it gets totally ruined. Port Angeles doesn’t have Sequim’s growth pressures yet, but it’s just a matter of time. Hopefully Port Angeles can learn from Sequim what not to do.
For people who think mindless growth — Big Box stores and one strip mall after another — will be lucrative: just take a look at Sequim. They can be the anti-role model, like a reformed drug addict who travels around the country telling high school students “don’t do what I did. Don’t end up like me.”
If strip malls and franchises enhanced a city’s tax base, Sequim could have streets paved with gold. Some California cities have made this mistake. Take Rohnert Park (please!).
This city of about 40,000 has every Big Box and chain store you’ve ever heard of, and yet their city government keeps running out of money, just like every other city government.
Let’s hope Sequim can change its growth policies before it gets totally ruined. Port Angeles doesn’t have Sequim’s growth pressures yet, but it’s just a matter of time. Hopefully Port Angeles can learn from Sequim what not to do.
Labels: Port Angeles, Rohnert Park, Sequim, Sequim growth tax base
posted by Tom Harper at 12:04 AM
6 Comments:
Why does this blog feel the need to constantly dump all over Sequim?
It's not like Port Angeles is any better or has much to offer. Sequim doesn't have seedy bars, numerous tattoo parlors or meth heads roaming the streets at all hours of the day. Port Angeles is ugly Tweekerville!
Sequim has a thriving Farmers Market, the Lavender and Irrigation festivals.
Our city council is actually working to better Sequim and preserve our rural heritage while allowing for sensible growth. Last time I checked, the PA city council was the laughing stock of the Peninsula.
And you guys have what now? Oh yeah: meth heads, tattoo parlors, seedy bars, a well-hidden Farmers Market, a dying downtown and a lot of ugly "art" on the street.
Sequim may have its issues, but we're a town moving forward. You PA "sophisticates" shouldn't throw stones in your glass house!
"Dump all over Sequim?" I like Sequim; all of the towns on the Peninsula have their good and bad points.
I think Sequim's growth has been out of control. Not because people are moving there; just the type of growth. There's a reason the Sequim City Council had its long-time members voted out and the newcomers are trying to tackle these issues.
And I hope the Port Angeles planners can learn from Sequim's mistakes when the same growth pressures arrive here.
Port Angeles certainly has all the faults you mentioned, and they've been the subject of numerous posts and comments here.
Sequim went from cute sleepy town to suburbs and chaotic (strange) growth, "strip malls" with outlandish rentals --- higher than a small local business start up could afford -- complete with triple-net and sweet deals for "anchor tenants" (read: another tired, cookie-cutter corporate merchandise outlet). This is progress?!!!
The small farms are all cut up. The charm is gone. There are now dueling large chain drug stores across the street from each other. There are two over-priced grocery giants. There is a "home improvement" store that has a horrid reputation of gutting the competition and then raising prices. There is a giant Walmart that is a corporate giant that is known to lower wages, available product, and also drive out the local businesses (a terrible, terrible record...it's whole corporation is greed and bad business practices). There are some large "board and care" facilities that charge for inferior service and have numerous complaints (granny won't complain if she has bed sores the size of your fist. Who cares if she eating all cheap foods laced with salt and fat, she'll die from their improper care soon enough!)
Who needs tattoo parlors and seedy bars when Sequim has all this!
Sequim is the poster child of no concept of lack of city design...combined with greased palms, and greedy builders who have no taste. Bring in a buttload of out-of-state 'retirees' with disposable cash and let them make all the decisions and run up the price of land. Let them subdivide and squander the native resources, chase away the elk, and make the town look like every other vomited up out-skirt town in the country. Big box, fast food, faux trendy and boring McMansions.
Why NOT pick on Sequim!
Better to have a still solid, but fading middle-class working town that still has some grounding in reality. Not much, but SOME. Let's kick in the nuts the numbskulls who think that Sequim growth is positive or something to aspire to.
*pokes third poster* I hate to tell you this, dude, but PA has one of those horrible local-economy-sucking big box stores, too: Wal-Mart.
(Oh, and not to forget two versions of the Dollar Store, several disfunctional Rite Aides and a new Big Box Walgreens.)
I feel sorry for Sequim.
Isn't there one rusty art thingy of Mr. Stokes that we can send them? I'm sure no one in PA would notice if one of those statue things down town disappeared.
Folks, don't feel sorry for Sequim. My goodness Sequim is beating the pants off Port Angeles every which way but loose. Look, I have an office in Port Angeles, and I created a blog to help Port Angeles business owners at www.PortAngelesVision.com
and I created an online classifieds with a niche here at www.PortAngelesForSale.com
If anyone has ideas or expertise for Port Angeles, by all means post it on the PortAngelesVision site. So I'm doing what I can to help, but I also live in Sequim and raised my family in Sequim, and from a business perspective, Sequim is where everyone wants to be. Why? It's a wonderful place in a thousand ways, and retirees do like to be able to shop. Our Big Box Stores are crowded. What's that say? The vast majority love it, and it's a fairly small majority that hate it. Hey, that's understandable. This is America. We are a mix of divergent people and opinions. But the honest to God truth is that Sequim is a wonderful place to live, to raise a family, to work, and to shop. Our big boxes have brought more employment to Sequim than anything else. I write about big box stores and other Sequim issues on my blog, too. Check it out, and you're welcome to leave divergent opinions. www.SequimRealEstateNews.com
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