BLYN — Sensing a growing economic connection between the city and the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe’s headquarters six miles east, Sequim City Council members invited tribal leaders to examine and comment on Sequim’s downtown and comprehensive plans under way.
“It’s obvious we both have a mutual interest,” said Tribal Chairman Ron Allen, who led the special joint meeting with Mayor Ken Hays.
Big on the agenda was discussion of the needs for future water supplies, reclaiming and reusing wastewater and affordable housing as growth continues to increase demand.
Allen and others on the tribal council saw a need for future employee housing in Sequim and other parts of the Olympic Peninsula as the tribe’s enterprises — such as a 300-room, seven story twin-tower resort hotel and convention center planned adjacent to 7 Cedars Casino.
Allen said construction of a $7.5 million, 5,000-square-foot addition to
7 Cedars Casino in Blyn should start this summer, but the resort towers are about five years away.
“We’re talking about hundreds of employees, and where are we going to put our employees?” Allen said.
The futures of the tribe and city of Sequim are linked, Hays said,
“So the tribe needs to be involved in it,” he said.
Hays said the city needs a great range of housing for future growth, and the tribe is “a big stakeholder in that.”
Allen said tribal leaders would “love the opportunity” of being involved in planning Sequim’s future.
The tribal chairman said the Jamestown S’Klallam have turned down offers to be involved in a Wayne family resort project, and the port offering the tribe to assume John Wayne Marina.
“There was quite a bit of irony — you know the tribe taking over John Wayne Marina,” Allen quipped, drawing laughs to a reference to the late actor John Wayne, who starred in many Wild West cowboy movies.
Allen suggested that Sequim not only do what it takes to build a downtown movie theater, but also the city using its treated wastewater to irrigate the U.S. Highway 101 bypass south of central Sequim that the state Department of Transportation opened in 1999 without any landscaping or irrigation system.
“The highway just doesn’t compliment what Sequim is about,” Allen said.
Allen also urged that city planners be flexible in encouraging commercial and housing growth inside the city limit.
City Manager Steve Burkett agreed.
Council member Don Hall said relaxing the city’s development impact fees, a proposal now before the council, could spur future commercial development.
Allen told council members that as the tribe’s enterprises grow, “you’ll see the presence of us moving toward Sequim.”
He said the tribe’s fireworks stand will be moving west from the existing casino location to the tribe’s “log cabin” office building at U.S. Highway 101 and West Sequim Bay Road.
The tribe has bought additional commercial property in Carlsborg, he said, adding to its portfolio.
“We are expanding our land base . . . and that land base is expanding toward Sequim,” Allen said.
Tribal properties are more than 20 acres along the head of Sequim Bay along U.S. Highway 101.
Allen, tribal chairman since 1977 and Jamestown S’Klallam executive director since 1982, said the tribe today has about 600 members.
Besides its construction company, the tribe has built the Jamestown Family Health Clinic off North Fifth Avenue in Sequim.
The clinic provides general health care services and a 24-hour emergency care. It accepts Medicare and Medicaid, and serves the community at large.
The tribe also has bought the former Dungeness Golf Course, renaming it Cedars at Dungeness.
Hays lauded Allen and the tribe for getting involved in developing the former Rayonier mill site in eastern Port Angeles.
As proposed, the tribe’s “Salish Village” concept for the 75 acres owned by Rayonier Properties LLC is Allen’s brainchild and a community design collaborative of architects, environmentalists, planners, residents and civic leaders.
The site of the long-gone pulp mill could be transformed into a “living community” of commercial, light industrial, residential, cultural, lodging, retail, convention and park uses nestled between a restored waterfront pier and upland wildlife habitat and urban farmland, Allen and architects with Gentry Architecture Collaborative in Port Angeles contend.
Sequim city Public Works Director Paul Haines told the Tribal Council on Monday night that the city was looking for ways to reuse the city’s reclaimed and treated wastewater, even if it was just to inject it back into the aquifer for future use.
Treating the water to make it safe to drink is possible but an expensive proposition, Haines said, in answer to a question by Tribal Council member Theresa R. Lehman.
Haines said part of the issue was persuading the public that treated water is safe for consumption. Now the water is treated for irrigation and other industrial uses but not for drinking.
Expanding the reuse water pond and creating water percolation areas at the reclamation park next to Sequim’s Carrie Blake Park is another possibility under consideration, Haines said.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.