It is no mystery why Sunnyside Downtown looks the way it does, hidebound policies kept established retailers from adapting to changing realities while new business ventures sprouting from the devastation are kept in perpetual economic infancy by ill-conceived actions of this city government and bureaucracy. Commercial property owners in Yakima and the Tri-Cities are well aware of the ensuing frustrations and periodically visit Sunnyside shops to cherry pick promising businesses. Thus, Sunnyside Downtown has become an unintentional incubator for strip malls and retail office space located in other cities.
Until that problem is resolved, Sunnyside Downtown can expect extremely high vacancy rates with continued churn of businesses. This creates further problems for stores that persist as the resulting pockets of vacancies inhibits foot traffic and pedestrian exploration with no visual clues that economic activity exists beyond the vacancies. Standing on the corner of Edison and 6th street and looking north towards Fashion Corner, one will see nothing but overgrown maples masking those few storefronts with active businesses.
The same revolving cast of council members has presided over decades of decline in Sunnyside's retail sector.
It is not a lack of ideas that prevents our downtown core from moving forward, but without a receptive city council to foster and implement those ideas, they end up dissapating into the ether. Sunnyside’s Latino culture plus small town comity gives rise to a population of entrepreneurs with rich real world social networks, but this competive advantage gets quickly quashed as the city continues to starve viable businesses to feed their favorite aspirational industries whose only qualification is they serve a market niche that council members belong. This further incentivizes local residents to make the 40 minute drive to shopping centers in Yakima and Tri-Cities that still benefit from the cost advantages conferred by retail clusters.
The same revolving cast of council members has presided over decades of decline in Sunnyside’s retail sector. We cannot start fixing Sunnyside’s problems before we begin cleaning Sunnyside’s politics. This requires someone who has the ability to speak with our community and the willingness to listen to our businesses. We need someone who can do more than merely rage against the dying light.
