For Lacey, Sixth Avenue plan is a work in progress

The yellow crane rises above Sixth Avenue Southeast, a beacon to the transformation occurring below.

Workers are constructing a four-story office and retail building. A short distance away, an apartment complex completed last year is filling with tenants. The street has new pavement and on-street parking.

Nearly 10 years ago, a committee of citizen volunteers charted a new course for the city's core. Sixth Avenue was to be the main attraction.

According to their vision, residents would want to walk and discover the shops along the tree-lined streets or enjoy time at the plazas that dot the route. With apartments above the shops, people would have the opportunity to live within walking distance of their jobs at the nearby state offices and close to shops or eateries.

The recent construction is evidence that, like never before, the vision is on the path to becoming reality. However, there is a long way to go.

Retail storefronts both old and new sit empty.

And at least one longtime business, Paulson's, stands on the outside looking in at this new future.

"It's a transition, and it takes time," city senior planner Rick Walk said of the progress on Sixth Avenue.

Woodland District

Sixth Avenue connects the city's academic and civic heart with its commercial center. City Hall, the Lacey Timberland Library and Saint Martin's University are along College Street, and South Sound Center and Fred Meyer line Sleater-Kinney Road Southeast.

Combined, they encompass the 260-acre core area known as the Woodland District, which city officials, business leaders and residents wanted to move in a new direction in 1997. It was zoned a central business district eight years earlier, in 1989.

The vision "moves the city from an automobile-oriented shopping area that people pass through on their way to another destination to a center where people can gather, interact, shop, play and walk," according to an introduction to the development guidelines that the committee and a consultant drafted in the late 1990s. That proved to be forward-thinking; in the years since, skyrocketing gasoline prices have prompted some to reassess their driving habits.

The development guidelines identified Sixth Avenue as "the major pedestrian corridor."

About the guidelines

The guidelines were melded into the city's zoning code in 2000.

They encouraged mixed-use development with unique architecture built next to the road, on-street parking and pedestrian amenities such as benches and plazas. The Bell Towne Center, across from Office Depot, became the first new development to embrace the vision when it was completed a year or two later.

One of the key ideas was to realign the western end of Sixth Avenue to create a single entrance to South Sound Center on Sleater-Kinney. The two signalized intersections are close together, a situation traffic engineers said clogged traffic on Sleater-Kinney and raised the potential for collisions. The city then would develop the abandoned half-acre parcel into a plaza featuring a bell tower.

Both changes were intended to draw more people to help reinvigorate the corridor.

In August 2006, however, the city lost a court ruling in its effort to condemn most of the Office Depot parking lot it needed and abandoned the project.

It now is in the midst of a road project to make smaller fixes to Sixth Avenue, Sleater-Kinney and the intersections to improve traffic flow and safety. On-street parking has been added to Sixth Avenue.

Some of the parking serves Sixth Avenue Place, a 103-unit apartment building that tenants began moving into in October.

Kristie Danielsen, the property manager, said the units should be full by August and that about half the tenants are soldiers and airmen.

Nearby work

To the east, construction workers are busy with the four-story Sixth & Woodland Building, which features office space and, like Sixth Avenue Place, ground-floor retail space. Three tenants have signed leases for the office space, with one, Fast Transact, taking the entire top floor, said Nicole Potebnya, commercial real estate manager for The Rants Group. Fast Transact is an Olympia-based company that processes credit-card payments.

No leases have been finalized for the retail space at the Sixth & Woodland Building.

Up the street at the Columbia Plaza, near the transit center, one of the three available spaces is leased. Prime Locations has not yet found a retailer for Sixth Avenue Place, and there are empty storefronts at Bell Towne Center, which it co-developed.

Potebnya said that's to be expected as retailers feel out which product or service is most beneficial for residents and visitors.

"It's going to mold itself around what the community is asking for, and then it will be successful," she said.

"That all takes time. You just have to be patient and watch it unfold."

Jeff Powell, co-owner of Prime Locations, said there's not enough foot or vehicle traffic to attract retailers, although that could change.

"The critical mass may not be here yet," he said.

Chris Paulson, manager of Paulson's, wondered why the city's vision doesn't embrace his motor sports dealership, which opened on the street in 1975 and became one of the first businesses there. The zoning changes bar him from remodeling and expanding.

He approached the city about the proposal last month and was told it didn't fit with the vision for Sixth Avenue.

He hasn't ruled out relocating but is embittered that his business can't expand on a street with several empty storefronts.

"They've been that way for six or eight months," he said. "Hopefully, they fill them up and get what they want as a pedestrian corridor."

Christian Hill covers Lacey and the military for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5427 or chill@theolympian.com..