SEQUIM — A rest stop the state plans to build next year is Sequim’s version of the Port Angeles graving dock debacle, Sequim City Councilman Ken Hays said on Monday.
Kevin Dayton, a state Department of Transportation official at a City Council study session on the proposed rest stop, called that analogy “a bit of a stretch.”
Hays compared planning for the $4.1 million rest stop to the state’s pouring of some $87 million into construction of a graving yard on the Port Angeles waterfront — a project halted in 2004 after excavators unearthed hundreds of artifacts from Tse-whit-zen, an ancient Native American village.
Hays said that both wasted money through inadequate planning.
He said that the state may call it a “safety rest area,” but it will endanger quality of life.
In an aerial photograph of the rest-stop site on the city’s east side, the city of Sequim looks completely separate, and the site seems to be out in the country.
The image is far from reality, Hays said.
“I live next door to it.”
The rest stop is to be built by the end of 2009 in Sequim’s northeastern corner, where subdivisions are mushrooming.
The state considered 26 potential sites, and settled on Sequim because of its access to water and sewer service.
But the area will be anything but restful, Hays said.
“That’s in the middle of the whole area that is going be next big boom area for medium- to high-density residential,” he added.
