What is on the table is 141 600 to 1.2K condos with 10 a year property tax exclusion. Nowhere in Triway proposal is any mention of living wage let alone low income housing.  Oly2012's steering committee is proposing millions of infrastructure spending with no realistic funding source. 

The proposal on the table is simply surrender a community asset to a developer with a checkered past for the unsubstantiated promise that the rich will shop downtown. It is vital we debate what is actually proposed, not what other cities have done nor what sounds good.

A need for dense urban high rise living units: This need arises from ecological pressures. Our footprint as a society can be greatly reduced by living more densely urban. On this there is wide ranging agreement. Who would disagree? Suburban sprawl has one of the most deleterious effects on ecology. It swallows up viable and useful farmland. It swallows up wilderness. It's not desirable. It's not sustainable. If we want to keep going as a culture, as a society and as a species, then we will need to "grow up." Wise and efficient land use is a major part of that equation.

Tonight's meeting also had a general agreement, if not an outright consensus, that the "isthmus" area is not the right place for tall buildings. Many people feel that this is a sacred space. It is a place where two waters meet. It is symbolic and special. The public really ought to decide how this area is used. One person felt that it would be okay to develop something there, but just not a high-rise. However, the overwhelming sentiment and general agreement was that the best use for the area would be as a park. I agree. I think it makes the most sense to simply, for starters at least, expand Heritage Park one block to the North. Relocate the businesses in between 4th and 5th, and Water St. and the bridges; then demolish the vacant buildings and expand the park.

I like the park idea because it would be a monument to nature. I think an expanded park would also serve to attract people to downtown. It would attract shoppers and residents. The park would serve as a novel feature, and its juxtaposition to the dense urban core would be striking and remarkable and help to set Olympia further apart as a forward thinking community. A community that takes its relationship with the natural-world seriously.

Maybe a good name for the park would be "Triway Two Waters Park." I like the idea of further expanding the park to the North as businesses located to the North of 4th Avenue become ready to move - in their own time of course (though with community encouragement.)

So I think it is important to think of best use. One of the most convincing reasons not to develop in this location is the likelihood of sea-level rise. Olympia already actively manages for floods during high tides. As sea-level rises, flooding will become more frequent, and it would affect the surface area around where the development is proposed. A park would be much better suited to coping with flood waters than would a multi-use high rise building. Would people want to live there if tides regularly flooded the surrounding area a few months out of the year?

In no area of the city that is flood prone should permanent structures be developed. That is just good business. We can talk of building levees and dikes. But until we take seriously our obligation to reduce output of global warming gases to sustainable levels, putting our effort into building dikes is just unethical - and foolish. We can't run up against the green giant of mother nature and expect to go without getting slapped over and over again, and eventually to have her collapse on us.

Building levees against flood waters is the wrong way to go. It pushed away something that nature is doing to cope with the heating and climate change that we are causing.

Secondly, the condominiums would block views. Views of Budd Inlet and the Olympic Mountains are a public asset. It would go against the public interest to allow private development that would relegate those views to only those who are able to afford them.

Finally, it is important to acknowledge the serious harm that this society is doing to nature. We have an opportunity to formally acknowledge that harm and accept responsibility for doing something about it. We have a responsibility to encourage dense urban housing (the county or state should put a moratorium on suburban development.) And we have an opportunity right here in Olympia to make that a park, a monument to that vision. A monument to our relationship with nature. A formal place where people can be reminded that we are ultimately fighting a terrificly losing battle in humanity v. nature. Let's learn to live alongside nature. To respect it. Triway Two Waters park. Where humanity and nature meet, and become partners.

- bert

* "isthmus" in quotes b/c it's not really an isthmus. It's a peninsula. An isthmus is a land bridge. The Westside of Olympia is connected via aerial bridges. Even the 5th Ave dam is an aerial bridge.

[June 21, '08 update: I put a slightly enhanced version of the above comment on my blog here: Reflection from Envision Downtown Olympia]