Last night I attended the quarterly membership meeting of the ODA. The theme was Olympia Goes Green in celebration of Earth Day. It was yet another zero waste event (something we're getting pretty good at downtown) and had quite a decent turnout. Several businesses were highlighted, including 510 Interiors, Eco-Lux, Radiance, Creative Office Supply and Casual Tee. 510 has made quite a name for themselves already, being honored at the Economic Development Coucil's annual business awards luncheon. Eco-Lux is on Washington St. had sells not only amazing organic body care products but also fantastic chocolate. Creative Office is a long-time downtown business and Casual Tee provides a highly needed service in a town like ours that prints more shirts per capita than we really need--environmentally (and economically!) friendly screen printing.

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From the press release:

Artists Sought to Spruce Up Downtown Benches

A downtown Olympia group is inviting area artists to submit designs to artistically enhance existing benches in downtown Olympia. The PBIA (Parking & Business Improvement Area) will be selecting up to five artists for the project, which is designed to add artistic interest to the streetscape of downtown Olympia, engage the local arts community in a downtown project, and create a more inviting, welcoming atmosphere to downtown. Each artist will receive an honorarium of $1000 plus up to $500 for materials.

I'm starting a separate thread because a discussion about the actual proposed PBIA budget, I believe, is important. However, the title of Emmett's post is misleading and a mistake made by many.