Velkommen til Little Silverdale

Published 10:00 am Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Well, it appears that, after numerous years of trips and sprained ankles, Poulsbo’s steps into the world of big-name corporate America are coming quickly. For some, it’s not soon enough. For others, it’s high time the city embraced the idea of adding a much larger commercial shopping area than is currently available.

College Marketplace will undoubtedly and irrevocably change Poulsbo for all time, shifting a good deal of local reliance from current retail corridors in Poulsbo and Kingston to one spot at Olhava.

While many feel this will also drastically reduce shopping trips to Silverdale (it will), we’re unfortunately anticipating that numerous long standing businesses will be fighting for their existence as Goliaths like Wal-Mart and The Home Depot come rumbling into the community. Some will have the stone in sling to beat the giants back, others will fall to their corporate swords.

That might sound harsh but it will most certainly be reality once the retail ball at Olhava really gets rolling.

Poulsbo is in transition and, as a result, the entire North End is in transition, too. Hopefully, small businesses in Kingston and surrounding areas are taking notice to this fact. They won’t be immune to the impacts of the new retail center, either.

North Kitsap is growing and while extensive planning has guided this expansion, we’d be fools to believe that some things won’t drastically be changing — for better and for worse — depending one’s perspective. The next few years will be very telling ones for North Kitsap and will definitely define what we, as a community, found important at this moment in time. Unfortunately, for some small businesses, it apparently isn’t them.