Notes
I have no plans to try to keep this site updated on an ongoing basis, but I have reason to believe this is MUCH better information than is available from any other source. So if you are looking to this site for information about Aberdeen in spite of it only being an out-of-date SAMPLE SITE, here are some observations to help you navigate the information here in a useful fashion:
The official historic downtown area is outlined in green on the edited outtake of the zoning map listed as "Border of Main Street program." The western border of that area is the street before you get to the strip mall containing Little Caesar's, so the building for the Safeway is officially in the historic downtown (as defined by the state level Main Street program that certifies local Main Street organizations) but its parking lot is not.
I think it is useful to think of the downtown area as extending a little beyond that to the west. If you include that area in your definition of downtown, there are additional establishments open 24 hours not listed on this site, such as the AM-PM and Harbor Car Wash.
The Walmart is no longer open 24 hours. Post-pandemic, there are NO Walmart locations open 24 hours. This is NOT unique to Aberdeen. It is a new company-wide policy.
There is also no longer a McDonald's inside of the Walmart. It shut down sometime during the pandemic, which probably left the other McDonald's location -- in the SAME shopping center -- in a much better position, financially.
The Shoppes at Riverside in South Aberdeen are "temporarily closed" due to damage from a bad winter storm that occured about a year ago. Some of the shops that were located there moved to the historic downtown area after it was "temporarily" closed.
I don't personally expect it to re-open. It was built on land that was not stable to begin with and my understanding is that whatever work was done to stabilize the land to build that mall is part of why the storm did so much damage.
Furthermore, I have heard from knowledgeable locals that the mall was overbuilt to begin with and never did thrive. They did traffic studies and those studies included a lot of traffic going back and forth to Grays Harbor College and these essentially inflated numbers were used to argue for getting the project approved.
People driving to college in the morning and home for lunch and back to college in the afternoon create a lot of traffic but they don't spend a lot of money at the mall. College students tend to not have much money and that would be part of why they would drive home for lunch: Because eating at home is cheaper than eating at a cafeteria on campus or a fast food place.
Maps on the site are slightly out of date because a few months ago they completed a traffic circle in the downtown area on Market Street. That would not show on any of the maps on this site.
While I was doing volunteer work, I heard that some guy died who owned a bunch of local properties and wasn't really developing them. Recently, a company apparently headquartered in California called Emmert International has been buying up properties, possibly the same properties this guy owned and was not developing.
They seem to be following the same "buy and hold" policy he followed as there are multiple buildings in the downtown area that say "For rent or lease by Emmert International" that are not being developed. If you know anything about real estate, this is NOT how values go up. You have to IMPROVE real estate to see it go up in value OR your neighbors have to improve their properties for your property to go up in value. If you own enough local properties and are just waiting for everyone else to develop their property, you are actively suppressing the value of the area in question.
In contrast, LOCALLY owned buildings ARE being improved and developed. The downtown area is slowly seeing some gradual improvement, with buildings being newly repainted, previously empty storefronts getting filled, etc.
I don't know how to remedy this situation with Emmert International. I am beginning to wonder if legislation will be required to prevent people from doing this sort of thing to small towns, the way some towns are passing legislation to limit AirBnB and vacation homes so that locals can find and afford homes to purchase.
People in big cities with lots of money see small towns as "bargains" but if they don't develop the properties, they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Let me state for the record that this does NOT mean the town is "dead" or "dying." There is an extremely high commercial service level in Aberdeen for a town of this size and the number of 24-hour establishments is also crazy high. Lots of small (and sometimes not-so-small) towns basically shut down at 9 or 10 pm.
Aberdeen is a very vital small town and a very important key town for the region. Like any and every town everywhere on the planet, it has some problems.
No, it's not remotely dead or dying, though some of the buildings downtown probably need to be declared dead and bulldozed. In short, the town has good bones but is somewhat neglected. It wouldn't take that much to revitalize downtown.
The above photo appears on the landing page of this site. It was taken in the summer of 2020 and is extremely out of date. All three buildings in the foreground look different than they did when this photo was taken. See r/aberdeenwa for more info and updated photos in the future, as time permits.
Had I gotten the local economic development job I applied for which was the reason I began developing this site, I had a lot of half-baked plans that I would have fleshed out over time, like more picnic tables in Zelasko Park (at least five total, with umbrellas). But that didn't happen.
What did happen is I learned that I knew more than I thought I did about comunity development and it led to me developing a variety of resources, including Eclogiselle, Butterfly Economy, Project: SRO and assorted reddits including r/HousingWorks.
Published February 1, 2023
The official historic downtown area is outlined in green on the edited outtake of the zoning map listed as "Border of Main Street program." The western border of that area is the street before you get to the strip mall containing Little Caesar's, so the building for the Safeway is officially in the historic downtown (as defined by the state level Main Street program that certifies local Main Street organizations) but its parking lot is not.
I think it is useful to think of the downtown area as extending a little beyond that to the west. If you include that area in your definition of downtown, there are additional establishments open 24 hours not listed on this site, such as the AM-PM and Harbor Car Wash.
The Walmart is no longer open 24 hours. Post-pandemic, there are NO Walmart locations open 24 hours. This is NOT unique to Aberdeen. It is a new company-wide policy.
There is also no longer a McDonald's inside of the Walmart. It shut down sometime during the pandemic, which probably left the other McDonald's location -- in the SAME shopping center -- in a much better position, financially.
The Shoppes at Riverside in South Aberdeen are "temporarily closed" due to damage from a bad winter storm that occured about a year ago. Some of the shops that were located there moved to the historic downtown area after it was "temporarily" closed.
I don't personally expect it to re-open. It was built on land that was not stable to begin with and my understanding is that whatever work was done to stabilize the land to build that mall is part of why the storm did so much damage.
Furthermore, I have heard from knowledgeable locals that the mall was overbuilt to begin with and never did thrive. They did traffic studies and those studies included a lot of traffic going back and forth to Grays Harbor College and these essentially inflated numbers were used to argue for getting the project approved.
People driving to college in the morning and home for lunch and back to college in the afternoon create a lot of traffic but they don't spend a lot of money at the mall. College students tend to not have much money and that would be part of why they would drive home for lunch: Because eating at home is cheaper than eating at a cafeteria on campus or a fast food place.
Maps on the site are slightly out of date because a few months ago they completed a traffic circle in the downtown area on Market Street. That would not show on any of the maps on this site.
While I was doing volunteer work, I heard that some guy died who owned a bunch of local properties and wasn't really developing them. Recently, a company apparently headquartered in California called Emmert International has been buying up properties, possibly the same properties this guy owned and was not developing.
They seem to be following the same "buy and hold" policy he followed as there are multiple buildings in the downtown area that say "For rent or lease by Emmert International" that are not being developed. If you know anything about real estate, this is NOT how values go up. You have to IMPROVE real estate to see it go up in value OR your neighbors have to improve their properties for your property to go up in value. If you own enough local properties and are just waiting for everyone else to develop their property, you are actively suppressing the value of the area in question.
In contrast, LOCALLY owned buildings ARE being improved and developed. The downtown area is slowly seeing some gradual improvement, with buildings being newly repainted, previously empty storefronts getting filled, etc.
I don't know how to remedy this situation with Emmert International. I am beginning to wonder if legislation will be required to prevent people from doing this sort of thing to small towns, the way some towns are passing legislation to limit AirBnB and vacation homes so that locals can find and afford homes to purchase.
People in big cities with lots of money see small towns as "bargains" but if they don't develop the properties, they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Let me state for the record that this does NOT mean the town is "dead" or "dying." There is an extremely high commercial service level in Aberdeen for a town of this size and the number of 24-hour establishments is also crazy high. Lots of small (and sometimes not-so-small) towns basically shut down at 9 or 10 pm.
Aberdeen is a very vital small town and a very important key town for the region. Like any and every town everywhere on the planet, it has some problems.
No, it's not remotely dead or dying, though some of the buildings downtown probably need to be declared dead and bulldozed. In short, the town has good bones but is somewhat neglected. It wouldn't take that much to revitalize downtown.
Had I gotten the local economic development job I applied for which was the reason I began developing this site, I had a lot of half-baked plans that I would have fleshed out over time, like more picnic tables in Zelasko Park (at least five total, with umbrellas). But that didn't happen.
What did happen is I learned that I knew more than I thought I did about comunity development and it led to me developing a variety of resources, including Eclogiselle, Butterfly Economy, Project: SRO and assorted reddits including r/HousingWorks.
Published February 1, 2023
