23 May 2002
Via E-Mail.

Dear Honorable Mayor Biles and Honorable Olympia City Council Members:

I write to encourage you to remove the parts of the comprehensive plan that allow full coverage, 5-6 story construction on lands adjacent to the waterfront in downtown Olympia at tidewater elevations. Specifically, I urge you not to amend to shoreline master program to allow 70 ft structures along the shoreline. I also urge you not to change zoning on the isthmus between Capital Lake and Budd Inlet. You have heard several arguments in favor of preserving human-scale housing development along our shores and nixing these changes and I agree with most of them. However, here I would like to try to respond to some arguments I've heard in favor of the proposed changes:

1. We need to reduce sprawl and this zoning change encourages less car dependence.

If the goal is to discourage auto use, there are other more direct ways to do it. The city could stop encouraging cars by not widening arterials like Mud Bay Road or the 4th Avenue Bridge. The city could halt extension of city water and sewer to the very periphery of the Urban Growth Boundary. The city could compress this boundary. You could allow construction near the waterfront without the need for garage space and so allow it to "pencil out" at three stories. If people want to live downtown and ostensibly use their car less, we could encourage that by having fewer places to park their cars. The new apartments at the Yardbirds site have 1 parking place per 3 residents. I'm sure the TRC can come up with 15 other ways to discourage sprawl and traffic if this is really the salient goal of the current proposal.

2. We need market-rate housing downtown.

First, it is not market-rate if it is subsidized and you must see the subsidies you have created. Reduced impact fees and a 10 year moratorium on property taxes for the buildings is a subsidy. I submit your proposed relaxation in height and coverage restrictions constitutes regulatory "givings" of a portion of the human scale commons that surround the waterfront. Landowners and speculators bought these properties in a certain zoning climate and to now allow much more density represents a windfall to these owners at the expense of us all.

It's like the Jim Hightower parable - How many legs does a dog have if you count its tail as a leg? Answer - four - calling a tail a leg don't make it so. Calling this market-rate doesn't mean it is. We are all giving the new waterfront residents something precious at our expense.

3. OK, subsidized or not, we need more housing downtown.

I would agree more housing downtown would be good. The question is what are we going to give up to get it. If we paid each new downtown resident $100,000 to move in, we would be knee deep in downtown dwellers - but it would cost too much. This current proposal gives up too great a portion of our livable city in the name of encouraging downtown housing. Why not seek more public guidance on what we are ready to give up to subsidize downtown housing. Or why not wait and see, as the county gets more congested, if people will move back to the city.

4. We have tried zoning in other areas and no one has built.

Developers may be waiting to see if they can score better along the waterfront. The best thing the council could do right now is to clearly state that no variances will be given and no changes to the current zoning will occur for the foreseeable future.

5. We must do this now.

What in the world is the rush? This is not some golden opportunity that will slip by. The waterfront has been here for awhile. The opportunity that may well slip by if you hurry will be the opportunity to prevent another abomination like the Corrections Building (Capital Center).

6. Opponents to this project are NIMBYs, haven't read the studies and don't understand.

The staff reports and the Realvision marketing study were not on the Web as of last week. No copies of the marketing study were available to the general public except to read at TRC (although land owners got them). Please make the materials on which you base your decisions easier to get and to analyze. I understand that a vast public treasure in the form of a commons and open space may be given away to "Second City Elites - Upscale Executive Families", who will purchase housing at $197 to $367 per square foot (from Realvision Marketing study 2001). The whole elitist nature of this study and also of this argument is a bit galling. We may disagree, not because of ignorance, but because we have different interests or analyses - and you might be better informed if you provided more than one night at 12:20 AM to hear them.

7. We need to create an 18-hour city.

This isn't New York, it isn't even Portland, it's little Olympia Washington. We can't get sushi ice cream at midnight after the play, and I'm not sure we want to. If we create new waterfront housing, who will be up at 11:00 pm on a Tuesday? It won't be the "Upward Bound", dual income professionals aged 50 who bought them. They have important meetings in the morning. As someone who works regularly downtown late into the night, I can attest that Olympia has denizens throughout the evening, but subsidized housing for the wealthy will not turn Olympia into Capital Hill. This is a planner's fantasy.

8. We have ameliorated the visual impacts through upper story setbacks.

Lipstick on a pig don't make it beautiful. These are tiny consolations in the face of 5 story buildings that are taller than the high voltage lines that run along 4th Ave to LOTT. These buildings will tower over the street, the sidewalks, and our minds; walling off our views of the Capitol, the Sky and the Sound .

9. Sometimes leaders like the City Council must buck the tide of public opinion for the greater good.

All good leaders have their moments of crisis and call upon their inner reserves to do the right thing as they see it. However, if you approve these buildings, it will not be a legacy you will fondly remember in your retirement...unless you buy a 6th floor condo on the waterfront. Sure, it's true, the council went ahead and built the Farmer's Market in the face of a "no" vote, but remember, more than 50% of the people wanted the Market, but because it was a bond, it needed 60% to pass. If the straw poll at the only hearing on waterfront zoning is indicative, 90% of we the people are opposed to these proposed "Middleburg Manager" trophy canyons. Please listen to people when we tell you that you have wandered astray.

Please reconsider and at least allow more public input. I think I understand the tradeoffs, and I'm not eager to make them. Thanks for your attention and thoughtful consideration of this letter.

Best regards,

Jim Cubbage
Working Systems Inc
218 W. 4th Ave
Olympia, WA. 98502