End the blight, approve the height

The Olympian • Published June 15, 2008

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The Olympia Planning Commission must vote to increase height restrictions on the isthmus between Capitol Lake and Puget Sound to make way for 141 units of market-rate housing.

Public hearing and comments

•The Olympia Planning Commission will take up the urban waterfront rezone proposal at 6:30 p.m. June 24 at The Olympia Center, 222 Columbia St. N.W. Public testimony will be accepted.

•Written comments may be addressed to Jan Weydemeyer, senior planner, city of Olympia, P.O. Box 1967, Olympia, WA 98507-1967.

See the PowerPoint presentation

•Developer Tri Vo has created a PowerPoint presentation on the Larida Passage proposal, which can be viewed at http://media.theolympian.com/static/larida/lpo.ppt. It's a large file (nearly 14 mB) so Web users might want to load it onto their local hard drive.

For more information

•Developer Triway Enterprise's Web site for Larida Passage is at www.triwayenterprises.com/land_larida.html.

•Friends of the Waterfront, opponents of the isthmus project, have a Web site at www.nuprometheus.com/friends.

•Olympia 2012, a downtown redevelopment group, has a Web site at www.oly2012.org.

•City of Olympia staff members have prepared a staff report on the urban waterfront rezone proposal that can be found at www.ci.olympia.wa.us.

If downtown Olympia is to rebound, the first step is the creation of nonsubsidized housing that will draw more residents to the business core. Those homeowners will patronize shops, restaurants and entertainment venues, adding to the vitality and sustainability of the capital.

The planning commission will take testimony on the rezone and comprehensive plan amendment proposal at a public hearing June 24 — a hearing that likely will draw hundreds of concerned residents. Let’s hope facts, reason and good judgment win out over emotion and empty rhetoric.

Planning commissioners and members of the Olympia City Council have said for 14 years that they want to jump-start market-rate housing in downtown Olympia, where 95 percent of the housing units are rentals and largely subsidized. This is the pivotal test for planning commissioners and City Council members to see whether they are willing to live up to the vision they have set forth in the city’s comprehensive plan.

City leaders must stand up to the naysayers, many of them followers of Friends of the Waterfront, a grass-roots organization that’s short on vision but very good at telling private property owners what they cannot do with their property. The Friends know what they don’t want, and have expressed that with simplistic signs that say “Don’t wall off our waterfront” and “Save our waterfront views.” If they are serious about saving the waterfront and views, why haven’t they put their money where their mouths are, purchased the property, taken it off the tax rolls, torn down every building and built an expansive public park?

The simple answer, of course, is that it’s not financially feasible — not for private citizens and not for government jurisdictions. That leaves the naysayers with few options beyond screaming and shouting tired tirades that “view corridors” will be destroyed by allowing multistory buildings on the isthmus.

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