Olympia’s Percival Landing needs a makeover. The city needs a plan and funding first
Percival Landing is one of Olympia’s most distinctive features. It gives people the chance to be on the water while visiting downtown parks, restaurants and more.
But the boardwalk has been gradually falling apart since its construction began in the late 1970s. It’s named after a dock built in 1860, and some of the wood pilings it’s built on are from the early 1900s. Much of the structure isn’t up to today’s code, and city officials say some repairs are costing so much that it doesn’t make sense to invest in them anymore.
So it’s time to rethink the whole thing.
Paul Simmons, the city’s director of Parks, Arts and Recreation, gave a presentation to the Olympia City Council Tuesday evening to highlight the need for reconstruction. The presentation was originally scheduled for April 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And with how expensive the landing project is expected to be, other projects that were easier to fund were prioritized.
The city will need tens of millions of dollars for the project. But securing funding, creating a plan and engaging the public all need to happen first.
Simmons said the boardwalk was built in three phases from 1978 to 1988 and is almost a mile in length. All three phases need updating, from the Port Plaza to the Fourth Avenue bridge.
Monitoring conditions
The last time the city looked at the design of Percival Landing was 15 years ago, which was around the time it started annual inspections of the boardwalk. Since about 2007, hired consultants have gone out every year for walkthroughs of the boardwalk, and in-depth inspections of the structure are done every five years.
Those inspections led to a portion of Section A getting a $15 million upgrade in 2011 that included the addition of the Harbor House, the playground, meadow, shelters and a portion of the boardwalk on the east side of the landing.
Simmons said working at the waterfront is a difficult and expensive task, so projects are few and far between. Between 2009 and 2015, parks money was tight and trying to tackle all of Percival Landing’s needs was bleeding the department’s budget dry. They were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars just on repairs to the wooden floats in the marina.
But now Simmons said the city allocates $150,000 a year out of the Metro Parks District budget, allowing them to build a reserve for waterfront projects. It’s now at $1.4 million, and they’ve mostly been using the money for inspections, which range from $10,000 to $50,000.
In 2019 the city spent $2.3 million to replace the bulkhead along Water Street and Fourth Avenue, after a 2014 assessment showed concern for the road collapsing in a seismic event. And concerns over Puget Sound flooding into downtown as sea level rises have only increased throughout the years.
Simmons said sea level rise research shows Olympia-specific projections of 24 inches to 68 inches in the coming years. Percival Landing is in a ‘vulnerability zone,’ he said, and last winter’s rain events pushed the sound to under a foot away from spilling over the marina.
Sea level rise wasn’t really looked at as a concern back when the city was reviewing the landing’s design in 2007. Simmons said it’s time to partner with vulnerable business and building owners in the area to help modernize the downtown site.
Section A, which wraps around the Oyster House and is the oldest section, needs the most attention. Simmons said it’s estimated to cost $15 million to $19 million for this section alone. But it’s needed to make sure the boardwalk doesn’t decay further and wash into the sound.
Revisioning the downtown waterfront won’t be as simple as updating the current structure, Simmons said. It’s old and has seen numerous repairs already, and the wooden floats that were installed in the 1970s are well beyond their life span. They’re also not environmentally healthy structures to have in the water, so their existence as a whole may be questioned.
Simmons proposed to the council that the city reopen its 2007 study and restart the community engagement process. He said he’d like the city to hire a consultant to lead the process at a cost of $275,000 for the work.
Simmons said he will be giving a similar presentation to the city’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee in October. Then the process of hiring a consultant would begin and they would hopefully start work early next year. Chances for community input will likely be on the calendar by next spring.
Simmons said the hope is to have planning for the revisioning done and in the 2028 Parks Plan.
Some council members brought up the growing interest in a public small boat center and more hand launches close to the city. Simmons said that’s a separate project that parks has in mind, and they’re hoping the landing will be accessible to all in the future.
“One of my hopes and dreams as we launch this project is how do we create opportunities for more people to build stronger connections to the water and access the water,” Simmons said. “I don’t know what that looks like, but I don’t think owning a boat should be a prerequisite to enjoying one of our most incredible assets.”
.jpg)