Percival Landing Bay View

Yellow Cone Flower

From the No Talking Heads blog:

Interview with Vince Brown, local poverty activist and musician (Red Brown & the Tune Stranglers) about redevelopment of downtown Vancouver, WA. After reading a series of articles on the Olympian about downtown redevelopment of 3 regional cities, Bremerton, Bellingham and Vancouver, WA, I wanted to get someone's perspective on how these redevelopment efforts affected the poor and homeless. The Olympian articles didn't talk about this angle at all.

Remember to listen this Sunday at 5p at KAOS, 89.3 fm. And comment over there.

What is Poverty? There are two kinds of poverty: Industrialized poverty, the poor quality of the landscape, the poisoned water and polluted air our communities are forced to endure. The other is a culture of life not based on accumulation, living on the edge of society, tokenized by the left and pandered to by the benevolent. Their communities are ravaged by the rich and destroyed by an uncaring shadow economy built to sate their misery. - Heretic and Wombat, Columbus is Dead #5

Middle class anarchists shouldn't feel ashamed of their privilege. They should embrace it and use it to their advantage. In a country like America, being middle class is being part of the majority, it is being normal. The middle class can easily understand the power of their accumulation and their economic power is expressed in the spaces they control, which is the community assembly, the small business and the union hall. Anarchy from the middle reflects the ethics of democracy and individual initiative in the same areas the middle class control, with worker co-operatives and industrial unionism as the suggested alternatives to liberalism. In recent years it has become obvious that anarchy is growing, but as it grows, a level of exclusion becomes apparent.

Almost every week this is the "What's on the city council's plate this week" review. I don't cover everything, so if you want the full rundown, read the packet and agenda yourself.

This week the city council will hear about a proposed deal between the city and the Colpitts Development company to build 120 "market rate" apartments, two stories of parking and some retail space in downtown Olympia.

I wish I could find some info on the Colpitts company itself, but other than saying they're located in Seattle, there isn't anything to say.

Here is a map of the site, it is the current parking lot behind the Olympia Federal Bank building.

Here is the rundown from the staff report:

Subject to detailed environmental and site design feasibility analysis, Colpitts proposes to construct a development consisting of approximately 120-market rate apartments (a range of studio, 1 bedroom and possibly 2 bedroom units) on the City owned Columbia Street surface parking lot between 4th and 5th Avenues. The project would also include two floors of parking and some ground floor retail.

...

Colpitts pays the City $270,000 for land: The property is conveyed with a deed restriction requiring construction of a mixed-use project. (Page 1, Sections 2.a & 3a-c). The sale is to occur within 120-days of approval of a clean-up plan by Department of Ecology and not later than December 31, 2008.

What's happening this weekend? Who's got plans?