Infill

    The area I live in, Olympia, is an unincorporated section of Richland County that happens to be contiguous with Columbia. Columbia is fairly well-known for annexing any land it can get, but somehow has never gotten around to Olympia. This was a mill village back when there were textile mills in this town, but that was all done with many decades ago. Olympia has a bunch of vacant lots (including on two sides of the building I live on and a lot of lots with one or more mobile homes on them. As we are very, very near the river, I sort of thought that nobody was building on these lots because they weren't allowed to. But no!
    In the time I've lived here, two houses used as apartments suffered major damage, but were rebuilt, or at least rehabbed. The laundromat burned down and was demolished; the adjoining Chinese grocery/restaurant was demolished shortly after. Whether this was due to fire or smoke or water damage or just battle fatigue, I don't know. Nothing was built in its/their place(s). So it was a surprise recently to find one of the vacant lots in the neighborhood growing a newly built house. A pleasant one; it's nice to see that with all the subtractions we still get additions from time to time. And it's always nice to see a new house going in close in to town rather than ten or twenty miles away. Urban planners, when there was such a thing, called this "infill."
    So I guess the reason why there's so little new building in Olympia has nothing to do with flood plain issues and everything to do with why I want to leave: frequent freight trains blocking us in or out, and football fans taking over 6 Saturdays every fall. And the two quarries shaking the ground periodically. Ah well; nice to see that somebody's willing to build anyway.