In November of 2002, the City Council adopted the Parks, Arts & Recreation Plan, which established the goals and policies of implementing new parks and selecting park and open space properties. This plan also amended the Growth Management Act ordinance, originally passed in 1994.

The plan inventoried existing city owned park land, and outlined future projects and estimated costs. The document also included an implementation schedule up to 2025.

In all, the inventory indicated that the City owns just below 900 acres of park land, of which 590 acres are undeveloped. This does not include state or federal lands. (Chp 6 p2)

The Parks plan projected their expenditures up to the year 2025. They estimate to spend about 5 million a year on land acquisition or development of current lands, using grants, taxes and levies. (Table 9 - Final Implementation Plan)

The document includes a huge push for the City to acquire the waterfront lands on the west side of Budd Inlet. Currently, the city owns about 32% of Budd Inlet shorelines within the city. [PAR 8.6: With the Port of Olympia, jointly improve public recreation facilities on the East Bay, West Bay, and the Port peninsula. (Ord. #5971, 12/14/99) Also: POS 4.4 An area from the 5th Avenue Bridge to West Bay Marina, from the west shoreline of West Bay to West Bay Drive is an important scenic waterfront that needs to be planned in a coordinated manner. Creating a vision for this area will involve a variety of stakeholders including property owners. Port of Olympia and other local, state and federal agencies and the public. A plan for this area may include recreation facilities, proposed changes in land uses and multi-modal transportation improvements. A planned waterfront from Percival Landing to the West Bay Marina will allow for predictable and organized public and private investments.

Proponents of the park initiative must’ve rejoiced after reading Sunday morning’s front page article in The Olympian proclaiming in bold-face headline front that the “value” of the five isthmus parcels that the Olympia Capitol Park Foundation wants the city to purchase and convert into a park is only $14.2 million.  

Although Matt Batcheldor, the article’s author, does note that this figure is actually an assessment value, not a market value, and that it does not include what it would cost to demolish the buildings, the clear impression left by the article suggests that “the park option” would cost about $14.2 million.

Like much of the discourse around this park concept, Batcheldor’s article is grossly misleading. 

Anyone who has ever owned a house understands that assessed values are virtually always well below actual market values - even in this deadening market we find ourselves in today.   For commercial properties, the spread between assessed value and market value is usually even more exaggerated. 

In the residential market, houses turn daily, good comps are aplenty, and thus, its relatively easy for the assessor’s office to arrive at a figure that maximizes tax revenue while not enraging the homeowner who pays taxes based on the assessment value (assessment appeals and lawsuits are not revenue-maximizing).  But it is much harder to arrive at a “fair” assessed value for commercial properties, especially ones without good “comps” such as we find on the isthmus. 

Even Thad Curtz, one of the most outspoken proponents of the park concept, recognized this reality when he wrote less than two weeks ago that “the land in the original rezone request was *assessed* for [$14.2] million… but that's not its market value.”  He then went on to point out that the isthmus property Triway bought from The Housing Authority sold for a value 1.65 times its assessment value.

Coincidentally, a business that I do some work with has a piece of waterfront property for sale in the downtown core of yet another Western Washington municipality.  The municipality would like to buy the property for the purposes of – you guessed it – extending the adjacent park. (Note: housing would never work in this particular location – a park is the best they are ever going to do).  

The seller’s published list price for the property, which was supported by a professional comp-based appraisal, is 5.5 times higher than its 2009 assessed value.  The first offer submitted by the municipality came in at whole integer multiples above assessed value, though not as high as the seller’s asking.  If a deal is struck at all, it is likely to be closer to the seller’s figure than to that of the municipality.

Of course, there several other important value-related issues that I am not explicitly addressing in detail, including the value of the “improvements” that the owners of the properties have invested (Potter is beginning his extensive remodel of the Capitol Center Building within the next week or two), whether the owners of the properties are even willing to sell, and the usually exorbitant costs of a highly-litigious condemnation process. 

So, this leaves us with a couple of salient questions to answer:

1. What is the realistic market value of these five parcels?  I think most would agree that $14.2 million is laughably low.  Using Curtz’s 65% quotient, we would be at $23 million.  Using the high and low brackets of my example we would be between, say, $28.4 million (2x multiple) and $78 million (5.5x multiple). 

2. What would it cost to convert all of this into a park?  This would include demolishing the buildings, doing all of the environmental clean-up, and building the park.  Keep in mind that building a park is more than simply letting it seed-in naturally – hardscapes, walkways, irrigation, plantings, perpetual maintenance, etc are but a few of the many, easily underestimated costs of building and sustaining a park.

3. Where would all of this money come from?  Sam Hunt didn’t have the answers.  Karen Fraser didn’t either.  No one at the city seems to have any ideas.  Federal funds?  Perhaps Bill Gates or Warren Buffet – they have a lot of money, don’t they?  Does anyone know how they have faired through the latest financial debacle? 

Rhenda Iris Strub has this one absolutely dead-on and should be commended for her bold and courageous leadership:  “It really doesn’t matter to me what the outcome of the study is.  I just don’t support putting a park there.” 

Thank you, Rhenda!

After letting it percolate for a few days, I have a few observations to make about what was said during the first presidential debate. One thing that particularly sticks in my mind is the exchange over Iran. It seemed to me that there are a lot of details that were glossed over, especially by McCain. For example, he perseverated on the fact that President Ahmadinejad said that Israel would be wiped off the map. Well, it turns out that he actually didn't say that. What he said, was that Israel would "fade from the pages of history." This is per, Hooman Majd, the translator for Ahmadinejad at the UN. You can hear an interview with him on Fresh Air. The NYT made a poor translation, resulting in "wiped off the map" becoming the meaning, instead of something far less threatening.

Another detail that is important, and should have been brought out in the discussion is that Ahmadinejad doesn't actually set foreign policy in Iran. The Supreme Leader, The Ayatollah does. Ahmadinejad carries out the policy, but the religious leader determines it. What is Iranian policy toward Israel, you might ask? For years the policy has been that there be open elections in Israel, with both Israelis and Palestinians, including all Palestinians from the Diaspora. Now, this may be unrealistic, but it isn't the hostile, aggressive policy that McCain suggests.

So, my question is: who's going to get the details right? I have much more confidence that Obama will do the research to understand the problem well before he has to make a decision. I don't have that confidence about McCain.

Hola all,

I'm 38 today...

...I was born at 7:58 AM (Monday) in Tacoma, WA (1970), and I was curious is anybody wanted to do me a horoscope on this New Moon?

Cheers,

Chad