“While commercial growth blossoms in the South Sound, so does gridlock. Will congestion spell stalls for small business?

Doing business on Puyallup’s South Hill can be a Catch-22.

At least that’s what Thomas Anderson, owner of Plaza II Music Center on South Hill, has discovered.

It’s where you want to be, as far as growth goes, and it’s where you don’t want to be, as far as congestion goes,” he said. “You want to be where the customers are, right?”

Thousands of prospective customers stream past his South Hill location, but almost all of them are caught in the gridlock traffic that can turn a cross-town commute into a whole-afternoon affair. Giving customers a good enough reason to exit off Meridian can be a challenge for small business owners…
While commercial growth blossoms in the South Sound, so does gridlock. Will congestion spell stalls for small business?

Many people speculate on how South Hill became what it is today. Some blame it on poor planning; others blame the traffic on developers putting rapid commercial growth in motion. Many business owners fear there isn’t much that can be done to resolve the grisley bottleneck that South Meridian has become. Bumper stickers even boast: “Pray for me, I drive Meridian.”

Regardless of how it got that way, South Hill has become the universal example in the South Sound of what not to do when planning a community.

Gig Harbor ultimately has become an example of good planning, he said, while South Hill is the poster child of the need for growth management.

While there doesn’t seem to be another community to match South Hill as far as congestion paired with rapid development, potential for the same nightmarish result seems to be present to a lesser degree in communities such as Federal Way, Covington, Black Diamond, Hawks Prairie and Bonney Lake [Ed. Note: And Yelm!],” quoting the Business Examiner.

Is Yelm doomed become another South Hill?

What do you think?