Letter: Richland waterfront ideas would obliterate useless and unprofitable natural beauty
Oh, wow! The opportunity to build, a la San Antonio, a “waterfrontscape” with condos and a theme park on the banks of the Columbia River in Richland!
What could be more wonderful than thinking one day I could be sipping a soy latte where Phlox diffusa, grasslands, and Sand Dock used to grow. A skyline, er, waterline, which might resemble Atlantic City’s boardwalk or, closer to home, something on the order of Spokane’s NorthTown Mall stretched out for miles toward Yakima?
Imagine a commercial string of structures from Sacajawea Park for, say, 20 miles upriver with hundreds of condo balconies outreaching toward the Reach, a theme park inserted somewhere dedicated to the obliteration of useless and unprofitable natural beauty, a Ferris wheel whose apex would allow us to see IBP or Desert Aire on a clear day, and all kinds of retail outlets underwritten by California bucks fresh from Panamanian shelters.
With such an entrepreneurial dream, perhaps The Donald or the Clintons could come cut the ribbon to “progress.” What a glorious occasion!
So sorry Columbia Center, soon to resemble Walla Walla’s “Blue Mountain Mall” apocalyptic site, you will be dwarfed now by this new development.
Bink Owen, Walla Walla
This story was originally published April 23, 2016 at 8:48 PM with the headline "Letter: Richland waterfront ideas would obliterate useless and unprofitable natural beauty."