SEQUIM — Neither the architect nor the developer wants to talk much about Rock Plaza.
But Dennis Lefevre, Sequim’s planning director, has to talk about it.
At a recent city Planning Commission meeting, commissioner Michael East called the 28,105-square-foot building at Old Olympic Highway and Sequim-Dungeness Way a building the town doesn’t need.
Its blank metal walls make it an eyesore, East said, adding that the city needs stricter design requirements to prevent such projects from happening again.
He also said that Sequim City Councilman and architect Ken Hays designed Rock Plaza.
“That was a jab at me,” Hays said Tuesday. “I’m not the architect of record. I bowed out of being involved with the project,” late last year.
“I don’t do pre-engineered steel buildings.”
Hays declined to elaborate on the building, though he too said that the city of Sequim’s building design standards aren’t stringent enough.
Joe McLaughlin Jr. of Choice Development, Rock Plaza’s owner, said Hays was its original architect.
“He designed a beautiful project,” said McLaughlin, who’s now looking for restaurants and shops to fill the building. So far Jace Real Estate has leased 3,500 square feet of space, he said.
McLaughlin added that he’s talking with local business people about leasing the 12 to 15 spaces that are available at Rock Plaza.
He hopes to open the shopping center in midsummer.
As for East’s complaint about the look of the place, McLaughlin said he didn’t want to engage in “a battle with him.”
“We’re not a big corporate monster,” he said. “We’re a family-owned business,” that owns and runs the nearby Java Joe’s.
Lefevre, who marked his sixth anniversary as planning director on Tuesday — April Fool’s Day, he pointed out — has heard the “eyesore” complaint before from people in and around Sequim.
