Downtown Olympia Could Actually Be Cool

At Kiwanis yesterday the Olympia 2012  folks shared their vision for improving the downtown area.  Their goal is to see a vibrant location for dining, shopping, people-watching, living, playing.  It seems I am not the only one that feels it could be so much more than it is now, which is basically a very small collection of good stores and restaurants, but otherwise a ghost-town come 5:30 PM except for several bars and tattoo parlors that bring in customers in the evening time.  Every Arts Walk I see the scores of people walking the streets and think that this could be the case every weekend if there was something interesting to bring people in. 

So I joined their group and I urge everyone to do the same.  One big point they made was that by joining you are not supporting everything proposal they come up with blindly. They are gathering a mailing list together to let people know when they have a proposal so you can read it and decide for yourself if you want to take action (such as going to city council meetings, etc.).  It’s being spearheaded by a cross-section of people from different backgrounds (political and otherwise, not that this matters to me one way or another) with no commercial interests, although they would allow anyone that did to be a part of the change.

Let me say there are stores I like downtown- Olympic Wine Merchant, Archibald Sisters, Batdorf, Fishbowl, to name some. I remember when the city council came to Kiwanis and I asked if they would ever consider encouraging established businesses (a refrained from using the word “chain” as the ultimate dirty word here)  to come in. They said “no-way”, that they can do that on the west side or in Lacey. I was further chided after the meeting by individuals who said I “should really go downtown more because they have some good stores.” That wasn’t my point!  I am there several times a week, but I don’t go there to have fun or spend leisure time and I am not the only one, because stores and restaurants are going out of business (Cielo Blue, a recent victim). If I was a business owner I wouldn’t mind an Urban Outfitters or other such place right next door to me.  I would prefer all locally owned businesses, of course.

Dowtown could be so cool. I know people already think it is now, but it is not my vision of it and I am glad to hear I am not the only one. I had a coworker say she did not want “my kind of people” downtown anyway so she didn’t want it to change.  I don’t know what she meant by my kind of people  (I guess that meant over the age of 26 with wife and 2 small kids) and I chose to ignore that bigotted remark, but my friends, my family and I would all spend more time and money down there if it was vibrant place in the evenings and weekends; live music more often, outdoor cafes, a nice theater showing better movies (no, not Hollywood blockbusters, but something along the lines of a Laemle) are all things I would love to see- but of course this is all just my opinion. Everyone is open to share and fight for theirs if the proposals the Oly2012 group come up with matches up.