Log Cabin Road will not be extended -- at least not for 10 years
Opponents of the extension of Log Cabin Road through LBA Woods won a partial victory last week as the Olympia City Council voted to remove plans to build the road from the city’s comprehensive plan.
The motion approved on Tuesday may nonetheless be disappointing to those who have campaigned for years against the planned road, which would bisect the LBA Woods, a 155-acre wooded area in southeast Olympia.
The group of city residents, supported by the Sierra Club and Audubon Society, had pushed for a citizens’ amendment to the comprehensive plan, which was submitted by Larry Dzieza (a member of The Olympian’s 2020 Board of Contributors who has written about the issue). The amendment would have gone a step further by removing plans to build any roads through the LBA Woods property from the transportation map.
That initiative failed. Instead, the council voted 6-1 for an alternative plan that removes the road from the comprehensive plan while also commissioning a study to re-assess whether an east-west road connection will be needed in the city’s southeast area.
The Log Cabin Road extension has been part of the city’s transportation master plan since the 1990s, when a large housing subdivision was planned for the area. That development didn’t happen, but the references to the road extension remained on the books.
Mark Russell, deputy director of the city’s Public Works department, told the council that the road will eventually be needed to accommodate more traffic traveling east-west, though not for another 15-20 years.
Council’s opposition to the citizens’ amendment hinged on what council member Clark Gilman characterized as an attempt to “bind” the actions of a future council.
Rather than place restrictions on future road building, Gilman and council member Lisa Parshley said that the city’s goal should be to eliminate the need for the road in the future by increasing housing density and the public transit service.
“Our current recommendation is based on a traffic plan that did not make the assumptions that we needed to make to fulfill our climate plan,” Parshley said. “If we live up to our climate mitigation plan, in 10 years we won’t need this road.”
Gilman noted that another amendment to the comprehensive plan, which was approved, changes the way the city measures traffic from “vehicle trips” to “person trips,” which includes modes like walking and cycling, an example of a move away from car-centric planning.
Still, supporters of the citizens’ amendment argue that a more permanent commitment to keeping the LBA Woods intact is needed, especially given the timing — one week after the city approved the Thurston County Climate Mitigation Plan.
“This is an opportunity to walk the walk,” said Collene Hawes.
Members of the public, especially residents of the area near the woods, have been calling into council meetings routinely for months to oppose the road extension.
Michael Ruth, a volunteer for city parks, echoed a common theme, asking council members to live up to the goals laid out in the climate mitigation plan and “reverse business as usual.”
“Are we stuck with a line that got on a map during the Reagan administration that we can’t rethink?” Ruth said. “If we wait until 2025, then the road will be inevitable because other plans will have been put in place -- roundabouts and other improvements that are necessary -- and at that point we’ll be looking at, well, we should have done something about this when it was a climate emergency.”
The sustained pressure seems to have gotten under the skin of Mayor Cheryl Selby, who was the sole vote against the alternative plan, which was brought by Russell, the deputy Public Works director.
Selby said she’d rather the city revisit the road plan later, during the “periodic update” of the comprehensive plan. She defended the plan to build the road, arguing that Olympia has built other infrastructure around the plan, such as a nearby roundabout on Morse-Merryman Road that was built larger to accommodate the expected traffic.
She added that officials in Lacey, Tumwater, Yelm and Thurston County are “not happy with the idea of us pulling the football away when this has been a regional plan for decades.”
The city purchased the LBA Woods property in 2016. According to The Olympian’s previous reporting. city officials at the time said that the majority of the forested area would be preserved as a park, but 10 acres would be used for housing or commercial development and 2.8 acres for the Log Cabin Road extension.
Although he voted to remove it from the plan, council member Jim Cooper defended the plan to build the road, partially on the basis that housing will eventually be built there. While he shares the goal of preserving forests, he criticized the group that brought the citizens’ amendment.
“I have to say I’m a little bit disappointed in the advocacy. We made the purchase of LBA Woods with our eyes wide open that there would be four parcels: there’s a water tower, there’s a right-of-way for a road, there’s a commercial center with housing, and there’s the woods. All four of them are separate.”
“I don’t think it’s the right time for this battle,” Cooper added.
Selby went further, specifically calling out a group called Friends of the LBA Woods.
“Some of the tactics were not well-meaning, and a little bit brutal,” Selby said of the advocacy, though she didn’t specify which tactics she was referring to, saying only that “those aren’t taken well.”
This story was originally published February 14, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
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