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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