Steve Bloom/The Olympian
Albert Jarrell stands in the lunch line at Skipper's Seafood 'n Chowder House, waiting to order a take-out meal.

More than French fries

Midday rush draws people together

Orginally published August 15, 2001

Maybe because new coupons came out, maybe because a new Target store opened nearby, but whatever the reason, Skipper's Seafood 'n Chowder House is having a busy Tuesday lunch rush.

At least half the people in line at the fast-food restaurant, a longtime fixture at South Sound Center, hold small blue coupons in their hands.

Some of them are in a big hurry.

Tom Winslow and Frank Tomanelli, electricians with Olympia Electric, are dashing to grab food before heading back to work in Olympia.

They've come to Lacey because it has the only Skipper's in the area, and because "there's everything here, all kinds of places," says Tomanelli, who commutes to Olympia from his Puyallup home.

The men eat fast food for lunch most of the time.

"You don't have a lot of time," says Winslow, who lives in Olympia. "You have to get in and out."

Like most cities, Lacey has fast-food restaurants. Unlike many cities, Lacey has struggled with something of a fast-food reputation, being a city that grew to life in the 1950s and '60s, a time of cars and roads and stretching out to new horizons.

Comparisons to the traditional horse-and-buggy Olympia downtown were inevitable, and Lacey ended up with a "French Fry Lane" image while it was still new and developing itself -- the city incorporated in 1966.

"It used to have that image," agrees Winslow, a longtime Olympia resident. "But not so much now. It's changing. Lacey is growing."

Lacey is growing -- the city and its growth-area population are larger than Olympia and its growth-area population.

The city has 58 restaurants of both the sit-down and fast-food variety, and it got more than $412,000 in sales tax from them in the last 12 months. That was the result of $48.5 million in sales at those restaurants.

New restaurants are on the way, such as Ruby Tuesday, which will be built next to the new stadium-seating movie theater set to be built in the Hawks Prairie area.

Lunch is a bustling proposition throughout downtown this Tuesday, with busy workers and teens hitting the fast-food restaurants, and people with more time sitting down at Applebee's Neighborhood Grill and Bar, among other restaurants.

Barb Kelly is taking a break from her job in the state insurance commissioner's office to take her daughter, Kelley Cargil, and 8-month-old grandson, Jeffrey, to lunch at Skipper's.

Albert Jarrell was drawn by coupons. Retired from the Olympia Brewing Company, where Jarrell worked as a brewer for 32 years, Jarrell is an Olympia resident who comes to Lacey often to eat.

Today he is fetching lunch for himself and his wife, Dorothy, who has a leg injury and can't get around easily.

Remijno and Lupe Rodriguez, 26-year residents of Lacey, have come downtown to visit the new Target and have stopped at Skipper's for lunch.

The retired couple eat in Lacey frequently, and their only wish would be for Lacey to attract a JJ North's buffet like the one on Olympia's west side.

Aaron Wayne, 16, is downtown at noon to work at Skipper's, to eat dinner later at Double Joy Teriyaki and Sushi which he recently discovered near Fred Meyer, and volunteer at a children's event at Huntamer Park in the evening.

A North Thurston High School student and Lacey resident, Wayne is happy the city has a new Target, which will save him and his family trips to Olympia's west side to shop.

About a block away, 17-year-old Logan Schaetzel-Hill is dashing into Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers, hungry after tennis practice at Bally's Total Fitness and drawn by the restaurant's 99-cent menu.

"I don't eat fast food a ton," says the North Thurston High School senior, who is spending his summer conditioning for the school's tennis team and working in his father's medical office.

Across a driveway from Wendy's, two women are emerging from McDonalds with four children in tow.

"We go to McDonalds all the time. It gives the kids a chance to play someplace that's safe and clean. On a rainy day, we're always here," says Ann Morgan, who recently moved to Olympia from New Hampshire with her husband, a soldier at Fort Lewis.

She is caring for her two sons, 3-year-old Samuel and 1-year-old Noah, and is babysitting two more boys, 3-year-old Adrian and 1-year-old Jordan. With her is her sister Amber Wojnar, who also is a soldier at Fort Lewis.

Morgan says she comes to Lacey rather than going to downtown Olympia.

"I don't go downtown," she says of Olympia. "Too much traffic, too many one-way streets."

The Olympian Copyright 2001

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