Driest city is in growth mode, with mixed review

By JUDD SLIVKA
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Surrounded by some of Mother Nature's best, a trip to Sequim should be a drive in the country.

Think again.

It's summer, and the travel trailers, RVs and SUVs form a long chain on Washington 101. Suddenly, Sequim's Olympic Lanes bowling alley beckons: "Coffee-pop-beer-fun and a break from traffic."

Not a bad idea.

And not an uncommon theme in Sequim these days, where the best of small-town living has been caught up in the hurry-up world of growth, development and gridlock.

Sequim is growing, and the reviews are mixed. Even as highway workers prepare to open the new 101 bypass -- a project years in the making -- downtown merchants brace for ... more change.

The city has grown nearly 25 percent in the last decade; unincorporated Clallam County has grown about the same, and the one-time farmland around the city is being fenced and subdivided.

Built in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, near the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Sequim is the driest place in Western Washington, a haven for West Coast retirees and escapees from Seattle sprawl.

But the increasing numbers have brought conflict: agricultural money vs. developers' money, property rights vs. protective zoning, city residents against traffic on its way to Port Angeles and points north.

Even the bypass itself has been a point of controversy. In order to draw people into downtown, the city is only allowing specific businesses -- gas stations and convenience stores -- to build near the bypass. Still, downtown merchants are holding their breath.

What happens next is the great unknown, as are many things in Sequim's future.

But the battles about the city's future, for the most part, stay civil. "Sequim is too laid back to be neighbor against neighbor," says T.C. Kirby, owner of Kirby's Northwest Haircuts on the city's main drag. "It's a cluster of Californians up here. There are some people who have deep roots here, but I think you have to be here 50 years or so before they call you a local."

Sequim is a small town of standard issue. It has a central business district about five blocks long, populated with kitschy shops and restaurants, banks, a few motels. Off the main street are modest homes, mostly well-kept. Pick your favorite novel that had a backdrop of a small sunny town: Sequim could be the backdrop, but with mountains and bothersome traffic.

Sequim's downtown is slated to be made more pedestrian-friendly once the highway is routed around town. Civic leaders talk about making the downtown a tourism destination, like Port Townsend. They talk about expanding the new Lavender Festival, about more heavily promoting the Irrigation Festival which celebrates the day the Dungeness' water first flowed into farm ditches.

Downtown -- the five blocks of East Washington that feasibly could be called downtown -- is due to be gussied up in the hopes that more people will notice Sequim's small-town charm, a little center for provisions in a world of country living.