Brian’s Blog: “Yakimisms”, Or Things That Make Us Uniquely Yakimanians

Today, we look at our penchant for announcing huge projects here in Yakima that never become reality.

It occurs to me that every community has little patterns of behavior that are peculiar to that community. I think I've come across some that while maybe not exclusive to Yakima, it sure seems that way. I call them "Yakimisms".

Today's "Yakimism" is our propensity for announcing huge projects or developments with great fanfare and press conferences, but many of those projects never seem to get off the ground.

For example within the last 5 to 10 years, we've heard big announcements from companies like Winco Foods, Fred Meyer and others that were going to build new grocery stores in the Yakima area, but they never happened. The building of the West Valley Walmart was the excuse for those projects not going forward.

Or, how about the Yakima Town Square retail project, or Riverpointe Landing? Neither got past the news conference and the "coming soon" sign in the vacant property where those projects were supposed to be built. We have seen a lot of those "coming soon" signs standing in those fields, hanging by one nail.

I seem to remember about 20 years ago, a local man held a huge news conference to announce the establishment of a daily newspaper devoted to coverage of the West Valley area exclusively. All of the local media covered this announcement. The new periodical was going to go head-to-head with the Yakima Herald Republic.

That was last anybody ever heard about it.

I try not to be negative or cynical, but we here in Yakima have seen this a lot through the years.

I think this qualifies as another "Yakimism"!

If you can think of other "Yakimisms", email me at brianteegarden@townsquaremedia.com, and we'll use them in future web posts.

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