I just went to The Olympian website looking for news about the suicide jumper on Capitol Blvd... and was surprised to find an article that paints Triway in a pretty negative light and casts doubt on their ability to responsibly develop the Isthmus.

Excerpt:

Residents have complained of crawl spaces filling with water and lawns installed improperly — among many other things.

Triway project manager Janine Smith declined to comment, "until we have a meeting with the city of Olympia."

Triway is the same major South Sound developer that has asked the Olympia City Council to raise building height limits on the strip of land between Budd Inlet and Capitol Lake.

What's going on here?

Almost every week this is the "What's on the city council's plate this week" review. I don't cover everything, so if you want the full rundown, read the packet and agenda yourself.

The only interesting thing out of the very thin council packet before the big show public hearing next week was this little nugget:

We would be willing to entire into a developer agreement proposed by City Staff ... The proposed developer agreement would be used to ensure that the additional height that we are requesting will, in fact, produce a mixed-use project that will not only accommodate street level retail, offices and parking, but also provide the highly desirable housing element on the floors above.

That came from a response to an Environmental Impact Statement from one of Triway's outside consultants. Full letter here.

What is sounds like to me is that Triway is willing to let the city dictate exactly what they want the project to look like, in exchange for the rezone.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of interviewing Fred King, a retired architect who is the Chair of the Capitol Campus Design Advisory Committee regarding the proposed rezone of the Fourth Avenue isthmus, for the upcoming issue of Works In Progress. Here is a sneak preview:

Works In Progress: I understand that there were two presentations regarding the rezone proposal made by City of Olympia staff to the Capitol Campus Design Advisory Committee (CCDAC)?

Fred King: The first time we were just told there was a rezone proposal, and CCDAC members said we don’t know what the effect of this will be, give us some graphic illustrations of how this will affect views. The second time, the city staff came back with some building block type illustrations that purported to show how it would affect views from several locations on campus, although it wasn’t entirely clear at which locations. At that meeting, CCDAC expressed some concerns. We still felt that we didn’t have adequate evidence that the views on campus wouldn’t be adversely affected, especially by the taller buildings. From the beginning we have been opposed to any buildings in the fountain block. The reason for that is that during the several years when we were planning Heritage Park, there were discussions between the city and state about the overall park grouping, with Heritage Park on state land and the city park on city land, and there were agreements about how this would proceed, which included that block being entirely park.

The public hearing for Larida Passage is tonight and the city is expecting a lot of people to show up. But, like a lot of folks, I'm not going to be able to attend and just emailed in my comments to the council and planning commission.

Rules for this thread: Share what you're going to say tonight or are emailing in. But, don't respond to anyone's comments. There are plenty of other threads here for back and forth, this is just internet public comment time.

Email for the city council (citycouncil [at] ci.olympia.wa.us) and planning commission (cpdinfo [at] ci.olympia.wa.us).