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It’s a scene that some city leaders say is all too common in downtown Olympia, particularly on Fourth Avenue, two blocks west of the new City Hall.
After years of effort to address these concerns, which some say has failed, the city is in the midst of what it is calling the Downtown Project, a nine-month effort that started in July to improve downtown.
“Whatever we have done, or all of us has done, has not worked,” said Ruthie Snyder, the city’s downtown liaison. “And that’s not OK.”
Under consideration:
• Creating an Alcohol Impact Area, a state-designated zone in which cheap, high-alcohol drinks would be banned.
• Developing best practices for bars to curb the overserving of patrons.
• Changing the city’s Pedestrian Interference Ordinance, a controversial 2006 measure that bans sitting and lying on portions of sidewalks during certain hours.
• Examining the physical layout of downtown and finding ways to make it attractive for everybody. The city plans to bring the Project for Public Spaces, a New York-based nonprofit, to generate ideas to design new spaces in downtown where homeless, and anyone else, can go.
The city estimates the initiatives will cost $12,000, in addition to staff time.
“Any one of these things isn’t going to solve the issues or isn’t going to have us reach the goals we’re looking for,” City Councilman Steve Langer said. “But all of them together just might.”
THE SCENE
A quick walk down the 300 block of Fourth Avenue, in front of the boarded-up location of the Northern, a former all-ages venue, reveals the situation the city wants to address.
About a dozen young people, some in their teens, some in their twenties or older, are gathered, meeting friends and asking passers-by for change. They’re careful to stand six feet away from the building’s edge; to do otherwise would violate the Pedestrian Interference Ordinance, a 2006 measure that bans blocking the sidewalk, sitting or lying within 6 feet of a building’s edge. There’s a blanket sitting right next to the curb, with two leashed dogs and a cardboard sign asking for change.
Snyder said business owners told her people don’t want to shop downtown “because they can’t walk down the street without being occasionally – not all the time – but occasionally, harassed.”
But the people on the street say they’re there because they have nowhere else to go. Bob VanHaelst, 20, is skeptical of the city’s efforts.
“Honestly, I believe that it’s ... just a joke,” said VanHaelst, who has been homeless for the last two years. “Everybody has a right to the land that is given us.”
Olympia Municipal Court statistics help tell the story: 1,353 people charged with drinking in public from 2008 to 2010; 525 charged with criminal trespass; 204 cited for urinating in public, and 135 charged with pedestrian interference.
Downtown is “two different worlds, depending on the time of day you’re there,” Olympia Police Chief Ronnie Roberts said. During the day, chronically drunk people are there; at night, groups of intoxicated people spill out of bars.
Roberts said police spend so much time responding to problems downtown that it keeps them from their duties in the rest of the city. Meanwhile, the number of officers has been reduced as a result of budget cuts, with a downtown walking patrol dear to businesses one casualty.
The city has gotten piles of email complaining about downtown, Snyder said.
“People sleeping on sidewalks is clearly a thing that makes people feel uncomfortable,” City Manager Steve Hall said.
Keith Stahley, director of Community Planning and Development, said people come downtown to beg for change, for cheap alcohol and because there’s a sense of safety, “that Olympia’s not a threatening environment.”
Charles Shelan, executive director of Community Youth Services, said he doesn’t see the street scene as being different from any other year.He applauds the city’s new approach, though. “Creating rules, creating expectations. … I think are welcome,” he said.
Langer said “it’s not about who’s downtown, but how they behave when they’re downtown.”
COORDINATED APPROACH
The idea of a downtown project started with the City Council’s 2011 goal to make downtown safer and more welcoming.
Snyder, previously a downtown code enforcement officer, proposed a slow, coordinated approach. The city’s land-use committee, led by Langer, honed the idea with input from police and citizens. City departments, such as code enforcement, police and public works are collaborating. The full council green-lighted the approach in August.
The city is inviting everybody at the outset to help find solutions – elected officials, the homeless, social service advocates, downtown business owners and patrons. It’s trying to avoid the showdowns of the past, such as that over the Pedestrian Interference Ordinance, which pitted business owners against social service advocates and homeless people. Dozens of people came to City Hall to voice their disapproval, and Camp Quixote, a tent city for the homeless, was started on city property to protest it.
The process has left wounds.
“There’s been tremendous polarization in the community, and people accusing each other of different kinds of motives,” Snyder said.
So while the city plans to address the Pedestrian Interference Ordinance as part of the process, it is taking its time to gather data and involve the public first.
For starters, the city conducted a survey downtown from mid-July to mid-August to get a snapshot of who’s downtown. Survey takers asked people why they were downtown, what social services they receive, where they live or if they’re homeless.
“We want this to be data driven,” Hall said.
The City Council is set to vote on an agreement this month with the state Department of Commerce to analyze the data. Stahley said it will probably be done by the end of September.
The city also plans small group discussions with a facilitator on downtown issues.
“Part of what I think we’re doing differently is … working hard to bring everybody together and on board about this so that we can all move forward together,” Langer said.
Phil Owen, a live-in host at Bread and Roses, a shelter for women, said he wants street people to be part of the conversation.
“The same conversation has been happening about every three years for 20 years,” he said. “It’s happened in the same context, in the same way. … 20 years of spinning wheels.
“It’s time to try something entirely different.”
ADDRESSING ALCOHOL
One new approach the city is considering is banning sales of “high gravity” fortified beer and malt liquor, often with 5.5 percent alcohol. The state Liquor Control Board allows such a ban in what’s called an Alcohol Impact Area. They have been created in Tacoma, Seattle and Spokane.
Getting the designation can take about a year, according to the state. And the city must try to get stores to voluntarily ban the sale for at least six months before seeking a mandatory ban.
The city has already taken preliminary steps – identifying which brands of high-alcohol drink cans litter the downtown. The state typically bans high-gravity drinks by brand, not alcohol content.
Tacoma is cited as a success story, with alcohol-related incidents dropping on the district on the city’s East Side from 295 in 2008 to 185 in 2009.
“I do believe that the access to cheap, fortified alcoholic drinks really do contribute to the general overall impact of behavior of people downtown at all times,” said Tim Langan, chaplain at the Olympia Union Gospel Mission, who manages a day center for homeless people. “We have people here who constantly are bringing in fortified drinks in their backpacks.”
Also in October, the city will begin reaching out to bars about creating best practices in dealing with drunk people.
The problem, Hall said, is “some of our bars are not very well managed and they create public safety issues for us. From the city’s standpoint, we’re wasting way too many public safety resources dealing with bars who push drunks out onto the street who fight and do other stupid things.”
VanHaelst, the homeless man, said people simply get their limit of drinks at one bar, and go to the next.
“We don’t have places where we can take (alcohol) where we won’t be cited for drinking in public,” he said.
Snyder said bars could text message each other to give a heads-up about drunk patrons.
“A lot of bars are reticent about calling OPD (the Olympia Police Department) because they don’t want to be on the list… of calls to service,” she said. “We don’t want that to get in the way when they need help.”
PEDESTRIAN INTERFERENCE
And then there’s the matter of what to do with the Pedestrian Interference Ordinance. Adopted in 2006, it restricts people from sitting or lying on a sidewalk, except within 6 feet of the edge of a building. It’s in effect except from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m.
A further measure adopted this year, banning panhandling within 25 feet of an ATM and parking pay stations, has also been controversial.
People have been charged under the law in Olympia Municipal Court 135 times from 2008 to 2010.
Snyder said the 2006 ordinance didn’t work. People simply sleep next to the curb, she said.
After 10 p.m., people will take over the sidewalk, Langer said, “where you have to step over them to walk down the sidewalk.”
Homeless people interviewed last week said police have stepped up enforcement recently, but apply it inconsistently. Zach Stephens, 19, said he has been charged with pedestrian interference six times in three months. But he can’t afford to pay the fines.
Olympia police suggested stronger enforcement during an April meeting of the city’s land-use committee, chaired by Langer. Officer Kory Pearce told the committee to consider extending the hours of the Pedestrian Interference Ordinance later or 24 hours a day, according to meeting minutes. He recommended that sitting or lying not be allowed at all.
Roberts said there’s some merit to that. “It’s not just that they’re sleeping there,” he said. “The amount of debris and garbage associated with all this behavior is significant.”
Sgt. Aaron Jelcik said at the April meeting that police are dealing with the same people every day. They need to give tickets, not warnings, he said.
But Owen said the sit/lie ban isn’t working and should be repealed. “I don’t think it has any positive effect,” he said. He said police have often asked for more tools to do their job.
“They’ve added those tools, and it hasn’t gotten anything for them,” he said.
Shelan, however, said he favored the Pedestrian Interference Ordinance.
“I think it’s OK,” he said. “I think, to live in our society, I think there’s expectations.”
Stahley said a stricter ordinance is not predetermined. “We haven’t arrived at the solution is more Pedestrian Interference Ordinance,” he said. “What we’ve arrived at is we need to do something differently in how we manage behavior downtown.”
Roberts cautioned against spending too many resources dealing with a problem in one block of downtown.
Another new approach the city is working on is creating a place for people to go downtown where they’ll blend in with the general population.
In October, the city plans to invite the Project for Public Spaces, the New York-based nonprofit, to come in and talk to city leaders, then hold a public meeting about how to create new public spaces. It would cost $5,000 to bring the group in and train city leaders.
The nonprofit’s goal is to create places that everybody wants to come to not just certain groups such as street people, Snyder said.
“There are areas of the downtown that are dominated by single users,” Snyder said, such as the 300 block of Fourth Avenue and the Artesian Well. “How comfortable is it you know, 5 o’clock at night when there’s 30 people crowding the sidewalks for people to walk back and forth to restaurants? It’s not.”
Langer offers an example: the city plans to spruce up the Artesian Well to make it more attractive to everyone, rather than “a place where people hang out, get drunk and do drug deals.”
Owen suggested the city set up places where people can play chess, similar to Washington Square Park in New York. Basketball courts are another idea.
“Give them a place to go where they’re out of your hair, where they’re not blocking the pedestrians,” said Ray Martin, 37, who was among a group of street people on Fourth. He said the police constantly chase people away, from the Artesian Well at Fourth and Jefferson, to Fourth Avenue, to the free wall alley by the Capitol Theater to Sylvester Park. “They kind of corral you like cattle,” he said.
Some homeless people said they have been banned from some spots like the free wall and Sylvester Park, leaving their legal domain to the streets.
“They’ve got to figure out where they want people to be and then they have to make it work for them,” Owen said. “They can push them into Sylvester Park, and then the state patrol will push them out.”
VanHaelst said people need a covered area, “almost a gazebo” that could be used, and monitored for minors who drink.
“We would do everything somewhere else,” rather than on the Fourth Avenue curb, “if we could do everything we wanted to do somewhere else,” he said.
Langan likes the idea of chess boards and said such spaces would allow street people to blend in.
“If there were more benches and some tables … it would draw people,” he said.
Snyder also suggested the city work more closely with faith-based organizations, educational institutions and social service providers to find more opportunities during the day.
Langan said he’s enjoyed working with the city on homeless issues and takes a positive view.
“These approaches I think are really going to help,” he said. “I am optimistic.”
Matt Batcheldor: 360-704-6869
mbatcheldor@theolympian.com
