In coordination with Bread and Roses, OlyBlog is seeking a student who is interested in working on a project that will include the collection of video from people who are homeless and living in the downtown area of Olympia. If you are interested, please contact Rick or Rob.

Capital Press reports that Bellingham will make a $2.75 million investment to build a covered farmer's market called Depot Market Square:

Griffin believes that the investment will prove to be a good one for the farmers, the community and the city. He said that across the country, it has been shown that farmers’ markets grow rapidly after a permanent structure is built for them.

“We’ve seen that here in Washington state with the Olympia Farmers’ Market,

This is mostly a comment I just posted at Rob's blog, but I think it deserves repeating. Last week the Thurston County planning commission had a public hearing that was pretty depressing if you come from a "let's preserve natural resources" point of view.

If you're interested in preventing detritous covered water from taking over Budd Inlet, now would be a good time to comment on the county's Critical Areas Ordinance.

In Washington, local governments (cities, towns and counties) are the governments empowered to do the most in terms of protecting water quality and fish and wildlife habitat. But, it makes little difference if people don't comment.

Thurston County Critical Area Ordinance webpage -- go here to comment

The Olympian reports that Capitol City Press is moving out of downtown:

Connie Lorenz, executive director of the Olympia Downtown Association, said she met with the company earlier in the year as part of the association's efforts to create a business improvement district for the city, but she said by then it was too late to convince the company to stay downtown.

"We hate to see any long-term business leave," Lorenz said.

As many as a couple dozen vacant downtown storefronts have become an issue in recent months for neighboring businesses and tourists.

I know of at least two recent examples of significant rent increases (30%) for downtown businesses. This seems like it might have something to do with the problem. Does anyone have any more data on rents for storefronts?