Let’s avoid new mistakes by the lake

Once again a proposed high rise development is rearing its head on the Olympia isthmus. This is the same downtown area where building heights sharply divided our community nearly a decade ago.

Perhaps a gambler with a dice or roulette problem can have convictions about which way this latest project is ultimately headed. Our early advice: Don’t rule it out, or in.

The property in question is the nine-story office Capitol Center Building, which was built in 1966 on the isthmus between Capitol Lake and the western finger of Budd Inlet. That was during an era when tall structures were totems of progress and environmental concerns were seldom voiced.

The office tower served for many years as the Department of Corrections headquarters, but it badly deteriorated after Corrections vacated it in 2005.

Activists now want to demolish the eyesore building and replace it with a large park. These critics call Capitol Center the “mistake by the lake,” due to its location and conflict with the public view corridor from the nearby state Capitol Campus.

A group calling itself Views on 5th LLC submitted an application earlier this month to redevelop the site, refurbish the tower and erect two adjacent buildings to provide a mix of commercial space, 138 residences and parking.

The promise of a $20 million investment in a rejuvenating downtown is something the city can’t easily turn its back on.

But there are lots of questions yet to be answered. One is whether the zoning is grandfathered in for such a tall structure if it is extensively renovated. Another is whether developers would consider a shorter building. Others include risks of sea-level rise on this low-lying land and earthquake risks on soils prone to liquefaction.

Another is whether the city’s mood has changed since the controversial Larida Passage project that rose and fell in 2007-10. That earlier project led to rezoning to allow taller buildings and a political uproar that led to restoration of lower height limits. Eventually the developer went into bankruptcy and dropped the project.

More recently Olympia has seen hundreds of new living units built in the downtown. Higher densities are clearly more welcome, especially those on higher elevation lots that are less at risk from sea level rise.

As Olympia continues its downtown renewal, it’s assumed that having more residents will make core areas more enticing to visitors, producing more activity during evenings and improving safety.

There is also a fair question about the wisdom of the city spending perhaps $10 million to buy the property and demolish the tower.

Jerry Reilly, a retired state employee and lobbyist who leads the Capitol Vista Park advocacy group, argues that the building is the wrong project in the wrong place. His group wants the city to buy the property using some of the proceeds of the successful city park bond campaign in 2015.

Reilly notes the isthmus has earthquake risks and that renovating the tower means that a tall building would interfere with Capitol Campus views for another half-century or longer.

A project of this size could also have big impacts on isthmus traffic corridors.

But Tumwater developer Ken Brogan and his Views on 5th group have rights to develop the land in some fashion. Brogan reported in December that he purchased the property for about $6.8 million. He deserves a fair hearing on the complex he is proposing to build.

Preliminary public comments must be sent to city planners by 5 p.m. Friday. The city plans a neighborhood meeting at City Hall at 5:30 p.m. July 12. Design review is also in the works — including a 6:30 p.m. meeting at City Hall on Aug. 10.

City Manager Steve Hall says a public hearing will come later, ensuring the public has opportunities to speak.

It remains to be seen whether Brogan can pull off the project or who is going to finance it.

We should learn from the mistakes of Larida Passage when planners and council members gave the go-ahead to something the public soon regretted. We should also learn from the mistakes of 1960s when an insular worldview kept our community from really seeing the long-term impact the Capitol Center project might have.

Rolling the dice is never a good idea, but neither is a reflexive response that flatly rejects a potential $20 million investment near the downtown core.

We encourage Olympians on both sides of this issue to ask questions and to consider the values expressed on all sides of the debate.

This story was originally published July 4, 2017 at 8:30 PM with the headline "Let’s avoid new mistakes by the lake."