Last night (03/12/2008) I attended an "Oly Alley Project" presentation conducted by Ruth Snyder, a Code Enforcement Officer for Olympia, and Amy Stull, Olympia Police Department Senior Program Specialist. The purpose of the presentation was to bring together members of the ODA to further develop civic-business partnerships around the city's desires and plans for improving downtown alleyways.

Conceived as an offshoot of CPTED philosophies the goals presented were:

• To develop a natural surveillance through lighting improvements and increased foot traffic as a way to discourage illegal activities.
  
• To improve the aesthetics and usability of the alleys through the consolidation of garbage collection.
  
• To engage local building and businesses in this process by making the benefits apparent.
  
• To facilitate maintenance of private properties through the development of comprehensive resource lists.
  
• More active code enforcement in order to jump-start any deferred maintenance.
  

Two facts about downtown Olympia were highlighted: 1) State Avenue is the second most heavily traveled street (by car) in Thurston County 2) Most North-South alleyways in downtown Olympia are no longer large enough for emergency vehicle access. As this presentation was geared toward downtown business owners the audience was asked to imagine what potential customers see as they drive through on State Avenue and several slides were shown to exhibit the high visibility of our alleys. Among those slides were examples of local businesses who have already taken steps to improve the aesthetics of their alleys.

Improvements were broken down into the "3 Steps to Beautification" and were presented along with methods of attaining each step.