CARLSBORG — It’s rough, scratching out a living on the fringe. Buses and water can be scarce, and you might start to wonder if anyone cares.
That’s the feeling for some business people in Carlsborg, the unincorporated village between the Dungeness River and Kitchen-Dick Road.
Seems like downtown Sequim gets all the promotion — though if you ask longtime Carlsborg barber Joyce Horner, this place is often sunnier than the middle of Washington Street.
So the Sequim-Dungeness Chamber of Commerce, in an effort to reach out to the west, invited Carlsborg business people to breakfast Tuesday at their neighborhood cafe, the Old Mill on Carlsborg Road.
About 17 came to the 7:30 a.m. meeting to discuss their challenges — and search the horizon for a vision.
Return to roots
Horner, for her part, said she hopes her town will return to its roots.
“Carlsborg has a very rich history,” she said.
“I’ve been fighting very hard to keep it from becoming part of Sequim and all of this plastic, glitzy stuff.”
From the 1920s through the ’40s, “it was a thriving town, with dance halls, theaters, churches . . . it was a great community of people helping one another over the rough spots.”
The chamber can facilitate a new kind of community, said president Bertha Cooper.
By convening meetings such as the one held Tuesday morning, it can serve as a catalyst for business owners who want to pool their own resources.
Carlsborg encompasses an array of retailers, offices and restaurants, from the new Avant Garde florist on U.S. Highway 101 to Marcia Perlstein, a marriage and family therapist who just moved from Berkeley, Calif., to the Coastal View Building off Hooker Road.
Then there are the people hidden in the Carlsborg Industrial Park.
But that “industrial” word is such a turnoff, said Jane Childers, owner of the 8-year-old Bibity Bobity Child Care center.
“I don’t really know who’s back in there,” she said.
And, most likely, neither do many would-be customers from the surrounding area.
