Pick a small town, any small town, and take a good look at it. What’s interesting about it is that it probably started out one way and, over time, became something else. Unless it’s one of those quaint Colonial villages that sell licorice in the shops and where everyone wears leather pants — that kind of thing is unnatural, though. But real-live towns have to make decisions in order to survive. Sometimes they’re little decisions, made daily, and sometimes they’re big decisions that determine the future direction of a town’s growth.
If you found yourself in, say, the Pacific Northwest, the town of Hoquiam, Washington might seem applicable to this conversation. The town, on Grays Harbor, started life as a logging town, and maintains its fidelity to this heritage by hosting logging competitions and parades and, every year, a Loggers’ Playday. And that’s charming enough — but there are perhaps other opportunities too.
The town has the advantage of sitting on a river. The Hoquiam River, to be exact, which flows through downtown and on into Grays Harbor. There is discussion of developing this area now, putting in shopping and dining and entertainment, right there on the water. It’s a development strategy that has worked well for San Antonio and Baltimore, but its success is dependent on how it’s handled.
The waterfront in the town had a heyday in the 1980s, so the potential may just be there. This is where the discussion is now, in determining how best to use those resources, and asking who best to implement these changes, and how. And asking finally: what kind of city will the place become?
A potentially interesting factor in the development is its relationship (call it a friendly rivalry) with Aberdeen, the larger town to the east. The two cities are separated by an avenue, so they’re closely connected. Changes in one will undoubtedly affect the other. The responsibilities, then, in making development decisions are bigger than just the city’s own limits. A developing city becomes a regional evolution.
For the town, these decisions are all worthy of consideration. The town will want to maintain its connection to its history while moving ahead, maintaining its relevance and its ties to its own past. This is a constant negotiation, not surprisingly. And so therefore the decisions are ones that should be made communally, because the big ones aren’t the little everyday ones; they’re the ones that make their own history.wns equal to Hoquiam need be unafraid of conversion — the most fantastic cities straddle centuries, after all.
Get extra about Entezar Development Group.
categories: hotels,housing,development,real estate,property
|
|