It’s time to remove the ‘ugly building’

This is the 58th year of Lake Fair as the biggest event in Olympia. It is truly a community celebration with five days of the downtown festival with live music, carnival and food vendors that support local charities, a parade with royalty supporting scholarships for local high school students and a dazzling evening of aerial fireworks.

This all takes place at the wonderful grounds on Heritage Park surrounded by the waters of Capital Lake and the Puget Sound in downtown Olympia. The open green space at Heritage Park with its water park across the street is an ideal place for our community to gather and is the envy of many cities around the county. However, the view of our beautiful Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains is blurred by an ugly tall building referred to as the “mistake by the lake.”

It is time for the city to buy and take down the vacant dilapidated eyesore. The voters approved the new Metropolitan Park District along with funding to expand city parks and the “mistake by the Lake’ was a big part of the momentum for the MPD. The City of Olympia should get off the dime and remove that ugly building to make our downtown waterfront a more vibrant asset for this community.

This story was originally published July 12, 2016 at 3:58 PM with the headline "It’s time to remove the ‘ugly building’."