Orcas Island Food Fight -- Residents Battling Proposal For New Grocery Store

ORCAS ISLAND - To hear some islanders tell it, the very future of their peaceful lifestyle is at stake.

And what's the big threat? A gravel pit? A prison? A nuclear plant?

No, a grocery store.

"This has unified this island more than anything I've seen in the 20 years I've been here," said Mike Krieger, head of ORCAS, Orcas Residents Combined Against the Supermarket, which meets for a strategy session tomorrow.

On this island of 4,000 year-round residents, which doubles in population during the summer, more than 1,000 signatures were gathered in 10 days to oppose the store that Issaquah-based Crown Grocery wants to build just uphill from the ferry landing.

In most communities, a new grocery store wouldn't cause such a fuss. The promise of new jobs, better selection and lower prices might even be cause for a little celebration.

But in the remote, hilly and scenic San Juan Islands, residents worry that every ferry seems to bring someone else who wants to settle here - and change the place.

"We're under siege, but it's not bullets, it's money," said another ORCAS leader, Patty Pirnack.

County officials haven't decided to approve or reject the project, but many residents say the plan arrived with three strikes against it:

-- Strike 1: It would force out an existing, much smaller "mom & pop" store operating since 1949.

-- Strike 2: It would be part of a chain, adding to what some decry as the "mainlandization" of the San Juans.

-- Strike 3: It would bring additional traffic to the most congested area of the 57-square-mile island.

Even the plan's proponents have been surprised by the strident tone of the detractors.

"I expected some opposition, but I was kind of taken back by the vehemence," said real-estate broker Wally Gudgell, who is promoting the deal.

The issue has turned personal. At one public meeting, Krieger warned Gudgell he was "digging a hole for yourself for the rest of your life in this community," the weekly Journal of the San Juan Islands reported.

Keeping a little distance from the fray are Gordy and Lori Petersen, owners of the pint-sized Orcas Store next to the ferry dock.

"We couldn't compete with it," said Petersen, who's up before 4 a.m. six days a week to make coffee, package meat and make deli sandwiches at the store he and his wife have run since 1984.

In Petersen's store, staples such as produce, milk and bread crowd the aisles along with items associated with a vacation destination: guide books, postcards, crab traps and fishing lures.

At 2,500 square feet, the Orcas Store would be dwarfed by the new grocery store, which was originally proposed at 25,000 square feet but recently scaled back to about half that because of the public outcry.

Even at its larger size, the new store would be modest by Seattle-area standards. Larry's Market on Aurora, for example, is 47,000 square feet.

Another Orcas community, Eastsound, already has a grocery store of about 20,000 square feet.

But Orcas Village, as the area around the ferry dock is called, is a collection of a half-dozen small shops selling gifts, ice cream, pastries, wine and espresso, with a bike-rental business and a turn-of-the-century hotel.

Bob Querry, associate planner for San Juan County, said he's not sure the new store would fit the character of the community. "If you put in a big building in the middle of a sea of asphalt, it's a fair question to ask whether that's appropriate," he said.

Equally significant, Querry said, would be the traffic the store puts on the main county highway, a two-lane road already crowded at peak times with cars headed to and from the ferry.

If Orcas insists it doesn't want the store, it won't be built, says Crown Grocery's owner, Robin Rosauer.

"We're not some monster from the mainland that's trying to push a development down their throats," he said, adding that he could drop the option he purchased on the 4.5-acre site.

The Rosauer name is well known in Eastern Washington; a Spokane-based chain started by his father and since sold to employees once owned 24 stores around the Inland Empire.

Robin Rosauer's company, Crown Grocery, has five other stores in Montana and Eastern Washington.

Caught off-guard by the bitter reception in Orcas, he plans to submit the details of a smaller store proposal later this month and follow that with "fireside chats" on the island to explain his project.

"I'm very well aware of the ambiance there and the preservation of that culture," he said. "But we're simply talking about a grocery store, providing the basic necessities of life. We're not building a discotheque."

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