ALLYN – Allyn is the little town that thinks it can.
The hamlet on Case Inlet in south Puget Sound, platted in 1889, has long had a unique personality. But it’s ready for a classier image – with brand-new housing and a village-style commercial district to serve tourists and a growing number of residents. There could even be a waterfront hotel, a light industrial area and an elementary school.
The dream depends on two things: First, managed development through Mason County zoning, and second, additional sources of water. More accurately, it’s water first, development second.
New business construction has been held up by the lack of available water hookups, even as residential construction has boomed.
For Bonnie Knight, executive director of the Port of Allyn, there is irony in the fact that blue and beautiful North Bay beckons just below while weak water pressure in the port building barely flushes toilets. Resident and business owner Fred Barrett likens it to building a house without a bathroom. You couldn’t live there, he points out.
Negotiations are ongoing to push out the boundaries of the Allyn urban growth area to ease the pressures of residential growth and keep it from becoming just a bedroom community. Estimates put the area’s population at more than 1,500; that is expected to double by 2025.
Mason County has only two other urban growth areas: Shelton, the county seat, and Belfair. Allyn leaders say Belfair has more room than its growth warrants. In Allyn, about 150 new deliveries (including post office boxes) were started in the last year alone, Postmaster Debi Carey estimates.
Carey’s husband, Jeff, jokingly says Allyn is trying to hold its own against Belfair, its neighbor to the north.
“I’ve heard the five miles in between called the DMZ,” he said.
Other than the main street – Highway 3 – and new roads in the planned development of LakeLand Village, the town is served by a hodgepodge of old easements.
“Allyn has a thousand linear feet or less of county streets (excluding LakeLand), and five miles of streets that have never been public,” said Jeanette Moore of nearby Victor, who is involved in local planning efforts.
Managing storm water on those roads is a major issue, along with easements and property rights. The area was connected to a county-operated sewer system more than four years ago, but that doesn’t take care of the runoff.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
