While I appreciate seeing this being reported on, I disagree with the focus of this article. I attended the meeting and heard less about the connectivity of neighborhoods and more about the challenging process that individuals must take to develop their personal property into "neighborhood retail" as the reason we are failing on our neighborhood center goals.
They mentioned many cases where individual citizens would come to the city with a plan, and instead of moving forward, they would walk away because of the arduous back end planning work as well as the steep fees that are required to develop property. Such as, frontage improvements for any properties within the designated neighborhood zones. Who has the cash to build sidewalks when you're just trying to open up a mom and pop coffee store??
It seemed to me like the council members were cluing in on this issue and I appreciated the questions they asked. Robert Vannderpool knows a lot about this, as well as Dani Madrone and Jim Cooper. I think that if the council can make changes to the OMC that allow for easier, lower cost development we might actually have a chance at making these neioghborhood goals actually come true. Without a change to the mentality of city planners and using the OMC as a roadblock to imagination, we will not achieve the goals that the previous council intended when their envisioned the neighborhood centers. But I believe that the people of Olympia to WANT to make neighborhood centers with their private property, so lets just actually allow it to happen. looking at you @OlympiaPlanning&Development.
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