SEQUIM — Andy Nilles’ persistence — and a donation from Walmart for $20,000 — has paid off.
Soon, seniors walking from Nilles’ Brackett Road senior apartment complex, Vintage at Sequim, will have a safer route to the discount store on Priest Road to buy food and pharmaceuticals.
Since March, the 91-year-old Nilles has pushed the city for a walkway on the south side of Brackett Road and safety improvements of the Brackett-Priest intersection near Walmart.
He submitted to the city a petition with signatures from more than 100 Vintage at Sequim residents asking for the Brackett Road safety improvements and intersection safety improvements where it intersects with Priest Road.
Nilles showed up Monday morning when Walmart market manager Tom Etchells, who is based in Poulsbo and oversees the Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Orchard and Poulsbo stores, passed the $20,000 charitable donation to Sequim Mayor Ken Hays while store manager Lee Ruiz and Walmart employees watched.
Nilles thanked Etchells and Walmart for the donation and Hays and city officials for making the project possible.
“I think it’s for a good cause,” Nilles said.
“I’ve been working on [city officials], pestering them a few times.”
The pathway is expected to be completed by Christmas.
During the check-presentation ceremony Monday in Walmart’s entryway, Etchells said the company made the donation to “make the community a safer place to be.”
Etchells said he and store manager Ruiz, who has worked at the Sequim store for 10 years, walked along Brackett Road and agreed a donation for the pathway would improve pedestrian safety.
They also saw how residents were having trouble walking across Priest Road, he said, and anticipate more traffic when the store in February completes a 35,577-square-foot grocery store addition to the west side of the existing 113,000-square-foot Walmart store, which was also remodeled.
Etchells told city officials that the store expects business to grow by as much as 30 percent with a Walmart grocery store addition.
Nilles asked David Garlington, city engineer, and Public Works Director Paul Haines to allow him to build a park bench about halfway along the tenth-of-a-mile pathway, and they said they thought it was a good idea.
“It will give people a place to sit and rest,” Nilles said.
Haines said the asphalt pathway will be 6 feet wide and extend on the south side of Brackett from the apartment complex sidewalk to Priest Road.
The city Public Works Department announced Wednesday it is seeking bids for construction of a pedestrian pathway on Brackett Road.
The pathway will be about 6-feet-wide by 1,150-feet-long.
The project will require clearing, grading, placing crushed rock, and paving with hot-mix asphalt.
The plans and specifications can be seen at www.sequimwa.gov or at the Public Works building located at 615 N. Fifth Ave., Sequim.
All entities bidding for the construction project must be on the City of Sequim’s small works roster.
For more information, phone Garlington at 360-683-4908.
“The idea is to have it completed by Christmas,” Garlington said, pending weather problems.
The city will next add a crosswalk across Priest Road from Brackett to the Walmart parking lot and install a streetlight to illuminate the intersection and make it safer for pedestrians crossing busy Priest Road.
Other safety options would be explored for the intersection, which the city has been studying since Nilles told the Sequim City Council in March that residents at his apartment complex were having trouble safely crossing Priest Road.
While Nilles wanted a four-way stop at the intersection, Haines and Garlington said the intersection did not qualify because of heavy traffic on Priest Road entering the Walmart parking lot.
Nilles agreed with the safety improvements, joking, “Someday, I might need that walkway to ride a wheelchair on.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
