I won't talk here about who did or didn't show up at the hearing. We've discussed that elsewhere.

Instead, I would like to respond to Peter's points about the rezone itself.

1. "Olympia must move forward": This is not really an argument, more of a slogan. Suffice to say that some people see the rezone as moving backward.

2. "The isthmus has been studied thoroughly": I believe this is only half-correct. There have been various studies of downtown, and in particular of downtown housing, and often these studies have included the area of the isthmus. Some other studies related to Heritage Park, Percival Landing, and the fountain block have focused on the isthmus, but only for park purposes obviously. But there has never been a study focusing directly on housing on the isthmus itself. More importantly, there has never been a thorough comparison of housing versus other potential land uses (such as a park) on the isthmus (perhaps comparable to the comparison studies now underway regarding Capitol Lake).

Personally, I was involved as both a planning commissioner and city councilmember in the biggest downtown housing study of the past couple of decades (the stuff in 2000 and 2002 that Peter refers to above). As Peter notes, one of the conclusions of that study was that the most financially attractive places for developers thinking of building housing in downtown are the areas with the best views -- that is, the isthmus and the blocks along Water and Columbia streets. That still makes sense to me; in fact, Tri Vo is proving it with his proposal. However, that is not the same as saying those are the best places for housing from the perspective of the entire community, nor that we must put housing there if we have other reasons why we prefer not to. (And by the way, one downtown housing project not near the water is under construction right now, and a second downtown housing project not near the water is going through permitting right now.)

Based on that study, the planning commission (including me) and staff recommended raising heights on the isthmus and the other streets (as well as making numerous other changes to the development code to enourage housing in all of downtown). Yes, you guessed it: this was the study that led to the earlier big debate over building heights on the isthmus.

The mistake we made then was focusing solely on what it would take to get housing, and overlooking all the interrelated issues. In effect, we assumed that housing was the goal and the only question was how to get there, instead of considering other concurrent community goals. (Sound familiar?) The council heard much opposition to raising heights on the isthmus, but very little to raising heights on Water and Columbia streets (and none to the other assorted code changes). So the council (including me by now) followed the advice from the public, and passed it that way.

3. "One simple decision: housing or no housing": I strongly disagree. Even if we declare that it will be all-housing all-the-time on the isthmus, we must at minimum still decide on the height of the buildings holding the housing, the design standards of those buildings, whether it must be housing-only or mixed-use, how to deal with parking for residents, and whether it will be market-rate or subsidized low-income housing or a mixture. In fact, we're actually debating one of those issues now. The zoning on the isthmus already allows housing; Tri Vo could start building housing tomorrow. This debate literally is over whether we want to raise building heights; the idea that allowing higher buildings would better promote housing is an argument used to support the proposed rezone, not the proposal itself.

Also, let's explicitly call out the other possibilities: park, commercial, dig it up and let Budd Inlet back in, whatever. It is not conducive to good debate nor clear thinking to treat the alternatives as merely "not the preferred alternative".

4. "The comp plan is going to be thoroughly revamped in 2011": Comp plans are updated every year and thoroughly revamped every few years, to both update our vision for the community and stay in compliance with state standards. That does not mean we have to make this particular rezone nor postpone a charette if we want one.

I believe the city council repeated the error we made about six years ago: they focused only on what they thought would promote housing, rather than on what the community's overall vision is for the isthmus.  They should have learned from our example. And this council actually made it worse by appearing to act solely at the behest of a developer.

I further believe that the only way this issue will ever really be settled is to take a step back, and have a conversation that starts not with a specific proposal but by asking "what does this community want on the isthmus?"