Oddly enough, I'm spending a week with my parents in Wasilla, AK, where Sarah Palin was mayor for before becoming governor just two years ago.
As y'all are learning, Palin's political career outside of Wasilla has been just two years as Governor, so her experience in Wasilla is sure to be discussed heavily over the next few months. Let's examine what life is like in Wasilla and what kind of changes happened while she was on the City Council and Mayor, shall we?
[updated: added pics of City Hall, her office when Mayor, and the exurban sprawl that is Wasilla]
[scroll down if you're looking for pics!]
Wasilla is a sleepy town, population about 9,000, and it's the largest city in the borough (the Alaskan equivalent of counties). It's a bedroom community for Anchorage, with 30% of the workforce commuting to Anchorage, and without a real industry of its own.
The biggest employers in town are a number of big-box retailers: Walmart, Fred Meyers, Target, Sears, Carrs (Safeway), Lowe's, Home Depot, etc., etc.. These retailers have a regional draw, as it's the biggest town south of Fairbanks (315 miles to the north), so there's probably more like 20-40k people that drive to these stores for their shopping needs.
The largest employer in the region is Mat-su Regional Hospital, employing about 700 people (including my dad), but it's located outside the city limits.
There's one main drag, the Parks highway (which goes from Anchorage to Fairbanks), which is just loaded with these big box and other chain retailers & restaurants. It's not quite Anytown, USA: there are a number of Alaska-specific businesses that address the needs of the hunting, fishing, and building of cabins in the middle of Nowhere, AK.
In the summer, both out-of-town tourists and Alaskan often stock up on their way through. The Parks Highway seems like just a long line of motorhomes, campers, boats trailers and four wheelers.
One other industry has been home construction. The population has about doubled over the past 10 years, thanks mostly to the construction of a large number of cookie-cutter subdivisions. This involves a developer buying a large chunk of land, clear-cutting it, and building any of the four different models they have chosen for potential owners. It's similar to development practices in the lower 48, except instead of bulldozing farmland, it's mostly swampy forests that are being bulldozed.
During Mrs. Palin's time on the City Council and as Mayor, most of the chain retailers went into the area. When I was living in Anchorage in the 80's and early 90's, we'd drive through Wasilla all the time, and there were no big-box stores then besides the Fred Meyers and Carrs (which, at that point, hadn't been bought by Safeway yet). One angle worth pursuing is that her only legacy here, and the most visible change, is the construction of all of these stores and the loss of identity that has caused.
The biggest topics of conversation are the weather and which chain retailer is going in next. Next year, a Walmart pharmacy and a Walgreens will be going in. Whee!
Overheard in town: "Did you hear the news today?" "Yeah... but she's not ready". That echoes my sentiment. A political career that is two years outside of Wasilla is just paper-thin.
Any requests while I'm here in Wasilla? I'm here another two days before flying back home to my much less-sleepy home in San Francisco.
[Update]
Seems like folks want pics, so I'm headed off to get some of town, the Mayor's office, and City Hall, and will post them to this diary in an hour or two.
[Update 2: pics of her office ]
Here are some pics of City Hall (prior to the anticipated journalist explosion), as well as her former office.
Here's a pic of her former Mayoral office, which has now been converted into a conference room:
The phone was ringing constantly, and there are just two people in the office of the Mayor besides the actual Mayor (who has been on the phone being interviewed almost all day, in the room opposite Palin's former office). An Alaska Public Radio journalist arrived just after I did, probably the first of the mob to come.
Here's the council chamber, where she met while serving on the City Council and as Mayor:
That's all the rows of chairs, and the Occupancy Limit in back is listed at 88!
Here's are some printouts available in the City Council office. I'm sure dealing with issues like this has helped prepare her for fixing our healthcare system or dealing with foreign dignitaries like Mr. Putin:
A pic of the front of city hall, probably the last clear shot before there are cameras everywhere:
The office Palin used is the double window on the 2nd floor, and her former office (now conference room) looks out over a vacant gravel lot:
A view from a little further back:
The other corner of City Hall has a linked parking lot with a Schuck's. Note the American and Alaskan flags on the right side over city hall:
Here's one of the at least 20 strip malls in Wasilla:
And a typical picture of Wasilla: gas station, another strip mall in the background, lots of spruce trees, and gravel:
Exurban sprawl: Arby's, Target, Fred Meyers, Carl's Jr. To the immediate right of Carl Jr. is a Quiznos, to the left, KFC, and a Taco Bell and Burger King are across the street.
This is taken in the Burger King parking lot, across the street from Fred Meyers pictured above, gravel, and ticky-tack houses:
Here's a pic for loyalson: the infamous Wasilla Walmart, where Palin took part in the ribbon cutting ceremony:
Looking to the right from the above pic, we see... more strip mall!
Here's more strip mall:
And even even more strip mall! Note this is all along the Park's Highway in the middle of Wasilla:
Getting the idea?
Finally, here's a planning map I found in the City Council room. The road in the middle is the Parks highway, the developer-designed subdivisions are clearly visible, and the big-box retailers pictured above are all just to the right of center:
Update: Ooh, here is the original PDF of the above picture.
Hope that helps you all understand what Wasilla looks like, and how utterly distant it is from the rest of the world.