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May 11, 2002 Dear Council Members: I'm opposed to the current proposal to rezone the blocks on the waterfront downtown. I live up by the Capitol, and my friends and I often walk downtown. I think putting buildings like these where the current plan proposes to put them will significantly reduce the attractiveness of the park and waterfront. I don't mind nearly as much rezoning the four north/south blocks on the side of the park, or the piece on top of the hill. They feel like part of the city edge to me. But the four blocks between the current park and the Sound open toward the water, and ought to become part of the park in the long run, offering views out over the sound for people driving back and forth, and for pedestrians. In twenty years, as our population grows and grows, we'll need that park space. In fact, I think that making the downtown more beautiful is what will encourage housing in other locations downtown in the long run. I understand that the city can't just buy that land now, but I think you ought to look for ways to make it possible to acquire it over the long run, as money becomes available. Though I'm not crazy about lower office buildings and parking in those blocks, I'd rather have views of the sky and Capitol over cars and have two-thirds of those blocks free of buildings than have the sky and space in them filled up five stories high. We'll have more chance of tearing down buildings like that in twenty years than five stories of private housing. At the final Planning Commission meeting, the supporters of this plan appealed to Portland and Vancouver as models to support this rezone. But this isn't what either Portland or Vancouver is like. They don't have housing smack on the water. Both those cities have the waterfront, then a significant width of park in which the public can walk, play and enjoy the water, and then the buildings. That's what we need too. I don't think that the quite substantial ten year tax subsidy that the rest of us are going to be paying to encourage each of the people who buys a condo in downtown housing like this should be used to support buildings in a location that will significantly reduce the pleasure the rest of us take in the way the city opens to the Sound.
Yours, Thad Curtz |