SEQUIM – More neighborhood – call it small-box – shopping, more apartments, more Christian worship space: The City Council will consider such additions during its meeting Tuesday, and could approve them all by the end of the year.
One of the proposed zoning changes the city Planning Department will deliver to the council meeting at 6 p.m. Tuesday is to create what Joe Irvin, the city’s assistant planner, calls “neighborhood commercial nodes” among Sequim’s newer east-side subdivisions.
“This would give people shopping close by; there would be no need for them to drive to the main shopping centers,” Irvin said.
Hardy’s Market and Henery’s Garden Center, both near the Sequim Avenue-Old Olympic Highway roundabout, constitute an example of a neighborhood commercial node, he added.
Such rezoning will mean construction on some of Sequim’s open spaces.
But Irvin emphasized that the city is in the process of also rezoning residential land to create parks on two parcels: the 45 acres it is acquiring southeast of U.S. Highway 101 and Simdars Road, and the 7-acre property donated this year by the Gerhardt family.
The city is pushing for parks and neighborhood shopping, Irvin said, because they “lend a lot to quality of life.”
