SEQUIM — When Arlene Engell got here, she saw 25 heavenly acres.
Dominion Terrace, Sequim’s pioneering retirement community, was so named because it looked out over the town to the Strait of Juan de Fuca — this hillside swatch was the residents’ “domain,” Engell said.
She was there at the groundbreaking.
“This place was laid out so every single home had a view,” she added.
Dominion Terrace was completed in 1970, “when my hair was still red,” Engell said.
Ever since, retirees have been coming here for the country setting and the view.
Susan Strand arrived here five years ago, ready for rural living.
“I spent my life in cities,” she said, adding that one thing that made her fall in love with Sequim was the sight of Roosevelt elk grazing in a meadow.
Then she heard about Olympic Meadows.
Views might be blocked
The project, to be reviewed by the Sequim Planning Commission and later the City Council this spring, is a 180-unit “continuing care retirement center,” that would be built northwest of Dominion Terrace.
The landowner, Avamere Health Services of Wilsonville, Ore., would build it as an expansion of its Olympic Care and Rehabilitation Center at 1000 S. Fifth Ave.
The new Olympic Meadows would block the Strait views of about 70 Dominion Terrace homes, said Terrace general manager Joe Shearer, who has seen preliminary drawings of the project. A portion of the structure would be four stories high.
This feels like a betrayal for some Terrace residents, said Gene Smola, who moved here six years ago.
Smola, 72, said his neighbors chose Dominion Terrace for its views; their homes will lose value without the sightline to the Strait.
Empathy hard to find
Smola hasn’t found much empathy outside the Terrace.
Some have expressed an attitude, he said, that goes something like this: “You’re not going to be around much longer anyway, and the people who move in later won’t know any different.”
New residents will be used to high density and high-rises.
To Strand, 65, the Meadows is another chapter in the tale of Sequim’s transformation from low-key community to urban center.
The Sequim City Council, she said, is letting that happen despite the protests of “little people,” such as herself.
“I have attended meetings where several people from the audience got up to protest large developments and the council still voted to approve them,” she noted in an e-mail.
“It seems (the council) is representing the developers and those in real estate, etc., who will profit from these developments.”
During the November general election, however, three of Sequim incumbent City Council members ran unopposed for re-election.
So Strand joined the Citizens Ad Hoc Subcommittee, a 15-member group that meets Wednesdays to discuss the city’s Comprehensive Plan for future growth.
The meetings are public, and Strand hopes many more Sequim residents will attend before the subcommittee gives its recommendations to the Planning Commission in March.
The next meeting is set for 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. today at the Transit Center, 190 W. Cedar St.
