The Quiet Township Of Hoquiam Thinks About The Past It's Time For Change
Towns sometimes seem to grow all on their own, to become their own people, so to speak, practically independent of the people living in them. This is of course only an illusion, but the way time and culture shape a town, especially a small one, says a lot about the culture at large, and about the people who are shaping it, day by day, through thousands and thousands of decisions large and small. Sometimes, though, it is necessary to make a decision on some big changes.
To take just one example, let's look at Hoquiam, Washington. This town started life as a logging town, making its money from the Northwestern forests surrounding it. Now it maintains that identity in a kind of nostalgic way, through an internationally known event called Loggers' Playday, annual logging competitions, parades. This has worked well for the town, but now it may be time for a change.
There has been discussion in Hoquiam of developing the waterfront, a piece of downtown that runs along the Hoquiam River. Development has been proposed, but the future of the area is not yet clear. Now is the time for the community to decide what it wants to see when it visits its city center. A developed waterfront did wonders for big cities such as Baltimore and San Antonio, but could Hoquiam have as much success bringing dining, shopping and entertainment to its riverside real estate?
The Hoquiam waterfront hasn't seen much action since its heyday in the 1980s, but now there is development interest, and so the community has to think seriously about what kind of town it may want to become. Development is obviously no guarantee of success, nor will it necessarily turn Hoquiam into a metropolis, but decisions need to be made collectively, because of course growth isn't free — tax money is the ruche fertilizer for civic growth.
One of the perhaps important factors to consider is Hoquiam's neighbor to the west, the larger city of Aberdeen. These two towns have had a friendly sort of rivalry, as neighboring towns will. But it bears consideration to think about how bigger towns often benefit at the expense of their smaller siblings — tax money and tourism being just two ways bigger towns get ahead. Hoquiam's decision to grow might bear upon its rival in interesting ways.
But Hoquiam must proceed cautiously. It is interested in preserving its past, as is evident in the 2009 revitalization of its train depot. So it knows how to preserve and honor its past; now it must seriously consider how it wants to carry that history forward, what kind of city it wants to become.
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