Looking to retire in Marina California

[TimC2462]

Originally Posted by roadwarrior101

During the housing boom from 2002-2007, I had high hopes for that entire area. As housing costs skyrocketed in the San Jose area, more and more people were willing to make that commute, which was propping up cities in the Monterey Bay Area. Since then, the housing market has completely tanked and I just don't see it recovering all that much. Yes, it is a lot cheaper than Monterey or Santa Cruz, but there is no industry to support this (agriculture is not exactly expanding rapidly). I don't have a lot of confidence that Marina will recover over the next decade.

The city of Marina has been plagued with a lot of problems that cut off any potential for growth in the latter parts of the 90's.

As a kid growing up in the 80's, I remember a lot of residential development in the outer areas of the city, mostly on the west side of Del Monte Blvd street. Then they built a small shopping center off of Reservation Rd that now has Albertson's and I forget what other chain stores are left there now. Then we saw a new K-Mart store open next to the Locke Paddon Park (or that huge duck pond), but that store closed after the city of Marina failed to follow through with more commercial development around to sustain K-mart (and this was long before K-mart started closing stores due to financial problems in the 2000's). Come to think of it, I think the housing boom really occurred 15 years earlier than 2002.

Before we moved away in 2001, Marina was stuck on development plans for the areas left to them by the closure of the Ft. Ord military base. Now 10 years later, very little progress has been made to truly transform Marina from a bedroom community to a viable city. Now all I see is urban decay. My neighborhood, which was once predominately middle class, is completely different from the one I remember.

I would have expected to see that Marina would be like Monterey, Carmel, and even Seaside to be remain unchanged for the most part after all these years but it looks like Marina threw into the towel and gave up in trying to catch up with them.

[Glenview94602]

When I think of Marina, I think of all the hotels. Ever year prior to my family's camping trip, we always stay in one of the many hotels out there. If you ever have friends visiting and don't have space, they can stay there. Marina beach is pretty, lots of peaceful sand dunes. There is a Target and big outdoor mall just down the road.

[georgste]

Any Walmarts in Marina?

[MtnSurfer]

Originally Posted by georgste

Any Walmarts in Marina?

Yes