capitolympia
Covering Planning and Community in Washington's Capital
The City of Olympia is seeking public input as they prepare to put together a master plan for the future of West Bay Park. Currently, four acres of the park have been developed, but there are still thirteen undeveloped acres. The project will include park space, habitat restoration, and contamination clean up. You have until November 30th to take the survey, which you can take here. The survey is fairly high level. Each question will give you a list of amenities, art styles, habitats, pathways, types of spaces, and structures and ask you how important they are to the future park. The final question asks about what kind of views of the water and how much water access you feel is appropriate. Below are some screenshots of the habitat portion of the survey to demonstrate the typical layout of the questions. During a public meeting held on November 15th, the city also gave a presentation, which can be found in its entirety on the project website. On that presentation were several concept designs for the park. To my knowledge, these designs aren't the official proposals, but future potential designs will likely look very similar if not identical. For now, I believe they are helpful when taking the survey and thinking about what you'd like to see developed in the park. They give you a chance to see how your choices might impact future decisions around the park. For instance, if you like the look of lagoon option 4 then you might consider rating over water boardwalks as an important feature. One of the main differences between the park option one directs a stormwater creek straight towards the Budd Inlet while option two directs it south towards the lagoon. This results in option two having less saltwater marsh habitat and more freshwater wetland habitat.
All of the "lagoon" options have some type of boardwalk trail roughly following the path of the current railroad tracks. In my opinion, it would be great if such a boardwalk could incorporate some kind of design feature that's reminiscent of the rainbow bridge (pictured at top). Several years ago the rainbow bridge became a considerable draw for locals despite the no trespassing fence. It's a type of placemaking that was uniquely Olympia until someone painted another abandoned railroad bridge in Illinois rainbow colors, but Olympia did it first. Moving forward there will be an open house on January 17th from 6 pm - 8 pm at City Hall. The final master plan for the park should be completed sometime next December.
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The idea of an isthmus park is about to come one step closer to reality. The city has released the final concept design for interim use of the publicly owned properties on the isthmus. About a third of the 2.3 acres of city-owned properties are going to be developed as part of this project, which has a budget of $500,000. The interim uses are going to be built roughly on the footprints of the former building. The larger half-acre parcel will be primarily covered with crushed granite, similar to the nearby Heritage Fountain and Capitol Lake trails. It'll also have some plantings along 4th & 5th Avenues, and large concrete steps on the east and west sides. The smaller space will be a grassy area with trees planted along three sides. Collectively the two spaces are slightly smaller than Heritage Park Fountain.
Do you remember that brief period of time during the Obama administration when it looked like America might finally be getting high speed rail? It may have been a short lived program, but Washington State is about to finally see some real benefit from it. This Fall WSDOT is adding two more trips to the Amtrak Cascade Service between Seattle and Portland. These two extra trips will be used to increase the span of service. Currently the earliest train arrives in Seattle at noon, but under the new schedule a person will be able to board a train in Olympia at 8:13 am and be in Seattle at 9:40 am. The last train to depart Seattle will be a new trip departing at 7:45 pm. A person could now spend ten hours in Seattle when traveling by train. Compared to the current six hour time span between the first train to arrive in Seattle and the last to leave, this new schedule will be much friendlier for day trips. While the two extra trips are the main benefit, there will also be a small travel time reduction. Trips from Olympia to Seattle will now be scheduled to take about an hour and twenty-seven northbound and an hour in fifteen minutes southbound. For reference, driving between the two train stations takes about an hour and nine minutes without traffic, which is a rare occasion in Seattle. I believe the reasoning behind the different travel times for northbound and southbound trips is due to where WSDOT places travel time padding. The benefit of the Amtrak Cascades service will still be hampered by our train station's less than ideal location. However, it will continue to be Olympia's only passenger rail connection for the foreseeable future despite some efforts to have Thurston County join Sound Transit and the state's high speed rail study currently underway. These improvements are primarily thanks to the construction of the Point Defiance Bypass project, which can be seen along I-5 between DuPont and Lakewood. This project is taking trains off of the curvy route along Puget Sound and putting them along a much straighter and less busy alignment. The disadvantage being that the trip to Seattle will no longer have the scenic views of Puget Sound. However, additional and faster trips are well worth the trade. If you want the Puget Sound views, there is still time. An official start date for the new service hasn't been announced yet.
A new condominium building has been proposed for a small property across from Percival Landing at the intersection of Columbia and Thurston. The lot is currently a vacant gravel lot, so almost anything would be better than its current use. The building would be seven stories tall with the lower two levels for parking providing 50 spaces and a small lobby, and the upper five levels housing 28 units. Units are to range between 1,300 sq. ft. to 2,500 sq. ft. Given the size I'd guess they'll be one and two bedroom units, but that hasn't been confirmed. Three on street parking spaces along Columbia would be replaced with an extended sidewalk and landscaping. Three other parking spaces would be removed on Thurston Ave. to provide access to the parking structure and for garbage pick-up. The fact that the building would be purely residential works for the area. It's located in a quieter part of Downtown. Plus High density residential neighborhoods serve an important role in making nearby mixed use areas vibrant. If you want fewer vacant storefronts than focusing on surrounding the commercial core with more residents is one potential solution. My main concern with this project is its removal from Columbia Street. With the bottom two floors primarily composed of parking it will likely leave something to be desired in the pedestrian realm. Thurston Ave. is a long way off from having an attractive pedestrian realm, but it also doesn't have much reason for foot traffic. Columbia on the other hand has heavier pedestrian traffic. If I could make one change to this project, it would be to add a ground floor townhouse style unit or to extend the lobby across a larger length of Columbia to create a more active frontage or at least visually interesting pedestrian space. One design aspect I could see becoming a concern in the future for Olympia more broadly is empty/parking lots being developed into essentially parking lots with apartments floating above them. A few here and there as architectural oddities is fine, but it's definitely not a style a city wants as a defining feature of its urban design.
Intercity Transit is in the middle of a rather large public outreach campaign. They have released a mock participatory budgeting survey. Different ideas for improving transit service in Thurston County are given a monetary quantity ranging from $10 to $50 and you are given $150 to "spend." This section below from the survey describes it pretty nicely. While working through the budget exercise, imagine you are a member of the Intercity Transit Authority. Knowing that it would take $430 to support all the services the community wants, your job is to decide how to spend a limited budget of $150 on transit services and customer amenities. This is then followed by a short section asking for your big ideas for improving transit in the county. I highly recommend taking the survey. It also enters you in to win a $250 visa gift card. I'm not going to tell you specifically which ones to vote for. There are well over $150 of valuable options on the list. However, I will say that what makes good transit service is having a lot of transit service. In particular I'm talking about frequency and the time span of service. That may sound obvious, but sometimes people get caught up on what's flashy and will forget that improving a route so a bus comes every 15 mins rather than 30 mins is much more useful than an electronic sign that tells you that the next bus will come in exactly 27 mins. Additionally the option of "improve speed and reliability" sounds promising, and several projects in the Pacific Northwest have already shown that capital improvements are an effective way of growing bus ridership. While most routes in Olympia simply need more service, there are some corridors that could benefit from infrastructure improvements. You have until September 15th to complete the survey.
The City of Olympia recently released the results of their parking survey. They got 2,623 responses, which is impressive. Over half of participants indicated that parking in downtown was an inconvenience or a deterrent. Perhaps attributing to this, or at least not alleviating the situation, is that 51.4% of respondents indicated that they don't know what off street parking facilities they can park in. At the same time the solution that received the most votes by far was a centrally located parking garage. So while over half of people don't know where they can park off street, the desired solution is to build more off street parking. The third highest voted solution was better signage and education about existing parking. So in the aim of educating the public on their parking options, here is a brief description of the city owned parking lots and how to use them. City owned parking lots are identifiable by their green signs (see right). They may look intimidating with their "PERMIT REQUIRED," but the general public is welcome to park in them for free on weekends. They're also free on weekdays after 5 p.m. until 6 a.m. the following day. Below is a map showing the city owned parking lots in blue. Collectively these parking lots have room for 238 cars. There are also a few on the isthmus that have a capacity of 120 cars, if you're really feeling desperate for parking or want to jog around the lake on a weekend. About a third of participants indicated that they find weekends, and weekday evenings challenging times to find parking. If you're one of these people, check out the parking lots with the green signs. Sources
City of Olympia. (2017, July). Survey Summary Downtown Parking Strategy(Rep.). Retrieved July 17, 2017, from City of Olympia website: http://olympiawa.gov/city-services/parking/parking-strategy.aspx A new proposal for the Capitol Center building (commonly referred to as the Mistake on the Lake) has come forward. The project is still in its early stages, but Wednesday night an informational meeting was held at city hall. The meeting drew a sizable crowd. City staffed open the event and frequently underscored that this proposal was still in the very early stages and there would be plenty of opportunities to provide public comment in the future. This will include a future public hearing, although the date for that is still to be determined. However, it was estimated that this hearing will happen around 120 days from now or longer. I doubt many of you need a description of the location of this building, since it is its most controversial feature, but it’s located between 4th Ave and 5th Ave across Sylvester from Heritage Fountain. The project would retain the existing nine story tower with some drastic redesigns of the bottom three floors and would build two additional three story buildings. One of the new three story buildings will replace the currently empty one story building along 4th Ave, and the other would be built on the parking lot west of the tower. In total the project would produce 138 units of market rate high income housing. In a future post I’ll try to explain what that actually means here in Olympia, but that’ll take a fair amount of defining things and pulling numbers so I want to make that its own post. The renovated tower structure will also include space for retail, a restaurant, and a bar. 150 parking spots would be provided for the whole project. There’s so much to cover on a project like this, so let’s break it down into its different elements starting with one most people are interested in. The Tower The tower will remain. Many people who’ve left comments have mentioned that the tower is well above the current zoning height limits of 35′. While this is true, zoning heights can’t be imposed retroactively. Therefore it is perfectly legal for the building to remain standing as long as it meets current building codes. However, the current zoning does limit the project. Above the current height limit minimal changes can be made to the tower. Additions can not be made to the tower above 35 feet, but aspects can be removed and the architects on the project mentioned that the mechanical rooms on top of the building (outlined in red below left) are no longer needed and will be removed. The stair access to the roof will have to remain however. More dramatic changes can be made below the 35 feet. The first floor bulb out on the southeast corner (outlined in red below right) would also be removed and replaced by outdoor seating for the restaurant, which would also wrap around the building to face Heritage Park Fountain. Covering the outdoor seating and abutting sidewalks would be a two story wooden canopy that would additionally support a green roof on top of it. Three story additions would wrap around the west side of the building as well as the northeast corner. These along with the canopy are meant to help improve the pedestrian feel of the space and break up the massing of the current tower. One of the more impressive features of the building would be a nine story tall green wall on the side of the building facing Heritage Fountain, which can be seen denoted in green on the image above. There would also be another green wall on the top six floors on the other side. The architect stressed that these would be a planted green walls as opposed to the kind that rely on vines growing up a trellis. This design element is meant to add green to the area as well as help the building blend in better with the forested hillsides from various vantage points. New Buildings The other two three story buildings are almost entirely residential. They’ll front Simmons Street with live-work units on the ground floor. They’ll incorporate facade breaks every twenty-five to fifty feet to emulate the buildings of downtown. They’ll also incorporate windows above awnings, which is a common design feature especially along 4th Ave. At the corner of 4th Ave. and Simmons the building would have a drum shape to create a more iconic look and stronger visual focal point as people come into Downtown Olympia. This also has the effect of creating two circular apartment units. Below the circular portion of the building is the entrance into a workout room. If you'd like to keep up to date on the project or get more detailed information the city has set up a website with all the details. Additionally, stay tuned for further post. Sources: Spiller, D. (2017). SEPA Environmental Checklist(Rep.). Olympia, WA. Thomas Architecture Studios. (2017, June 14). Views on 5th Ave - Concept Design. Olympia. |
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