SEQUIM — Longtime Sequim resident Ed Sumpter is used to being the villain.
First he was a Realtor. Then he became a developer amid what he calls “an anti-growth feeling” in his hometown.
“You’re almost afraid to tell somebody you’re a real estate agent,” in the Sequim of this decade, he said.
And now Sumpter, who hopes to construct a new shopping center at the city’s west end, is contending with another anti-growth force: the deepening recession.
The co-owner of Blue Sky Realty — a name he chose because he wanted to introduce some optimism to the region’s economic gloom — Sumpter plans the 70,775-square-foot Priest Road Center: a 45,000-square-foot retail complex, a two-story, 15,000-square-foot office-retail building and two retail/restaurant spaces totaling 10,775 square feet.
If his hopes are realized, this “village” will spring up on the 6 acres around the new Schuck’s Auto Parts at West Washington Street and Priest Road, and bring a mix of locally owned businesses plus a national anchor or two.
“We’re interested in talking to anybody,” Sumpter said. Already he’s had conversations with a hamburger chain and a Port Angeles cafe owner. Neither took concrete steps toward Sequim.
“The tenants I’ve talked to have backed out,” he said. “The economy has folded right before my eyes. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Sumpter owns his development company, Sequim Y3K LLC, with his wife Kathrin and partner Rick Garner.
They’re local residents who want Sequim to prosper — with businesses that employ people and keep shoppers close to home, Sumpter said.
He believes there’s a widely held misconception that developers swoop in from off the Olympic Peninsula, build unsightly structures, then take their money and leave.
Sumpter emphasizes that he and his family have lived in Sequim many years, and that he strives to support local companies. When he built the 7,000-square-foot Schuck’s Auto Parts — which he said should open by June — he hired Port Angeles architecture firm Lindberg & Smith and M & C Construction, a Sequim contractor. For the Schuck’s project, valued at $550,602, he paid the city of Sequim a $50,000 building permit fee.
Sumpter is proud of the Schuck’s building, a buff-colored structure near the Welcome to Sequim sign on Washington Street. He vows to add attractive buildings around it, provided he can find tenants.
“We plan on building a nice center. It won’t be just a big rectangle back here; there will be variations in the design,” he said.
“I live here in Sequim, too.”
The center, a separate development alongside Schuck’s, will cost Sumpter a bundle in fees. The city charges developers “proportionate shares” of infrastructure costs, such as installing nearby traffic lights and improving roads.
Sumpter and his partners will owe Sequim $46,287 for their share of the signal at River Road and U.S. Highway 101; $24,481 for the traffic lights at Hendrickson Road and Fifth Avenue; and for improvements to Washington Street, Brackett and River roads and the Washington Street-Sequim Avenue intersection, another $80,772.
Though they’re called proportionate shares in the city Planning Department report, Sumpter calls these charges impact fees — and he’s not entirely sure he’ll ever recoup them by finding restaurants and retailers to fill the Priest Road Center.
Developers and real estate agents don’t get to go out shopping and selecting tenants, Sumpter said.
“It’s the people who get here and have the money,” to open a place. “I have a wish list,” Sumpter admitted. “I’ve called Trader Joe’s. I mailed them a site plan, and I never heard back. That was a year and a half ago.”
Sumpter doesn’t want to start construction until he has lease agreements — so he can avoid the empty-storefront syndrome seen elsewhere in Sequim.
The shopping strip behind Arby’s at 540 W. Washington St., for example, is still dotted with “for lease” placards. And Rock Plaza at Old Olympic Highway and Sequim-Dungeness Way only recently put up signs promising the arrival of Tiny Bubbles, a pet supply and organic pet food store; Westside Pizza and Past Tyme Present Tyme, a gift shop. Those tenants will move into the plaza along with Reef Tanning and Anytime Fitness, which opened recently.
The Sauer Kraut, a German bakery, deli and cafe that’s a kind of anchor for Rock Plaza, will be swing its doors wide by late April, co-owner Tom Heintz said on Monday. The 4,100-square-foot eatery will be open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and feature cooking classes on Monday and Wednesday nights, he added.
Sumpter, meantime, is working on the binding site plan for the Priest Road Center. The project was to be the subject of a Sequim Planning Commission meeting on March 17, but it was taken off the table after Sumpter received a letter from Clallam County inquiring about the center’s stormwater management system.
Sumpter and his partners will meet with BCRA, the Tacoma firm that wrote the binding site plan, to revise it to meet county requirements.
They hope to resubmit the plan to the Planning Commission in about two weeks, and then present it to the Sequim City Council soon after.
There’s no big rush, Sumpter said, since tenants aren’t standing in line to move in to his center.
As for the recession, “we’ll see if we can weather it out,” he said.
Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
