Building the new City Hall to LEED gold level started with "deconstructing" the Safeway building on the site and reusing the material. The beautiful wooden arches which once held up the ceiling of Safeway can now be seen as steps leading up to the Council dais.

Building a better community starts with planning.  We planned to build our new City Hall downtown to promote redevelopment on 4th Avenue.  I represented City Council on the committee that selected the design/build team and supervised the design and construction of our new City Hall.  Council set a goal of meeting the U.S. Green Building Council’s silver standard for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).  I thought we could exceed the LEED silver goal and supported hiring a design team that promised to make sustainable building a top priority.  Through creativity and diligence our team delivered a building that meets the LEED gold criteria.  Certification from USGBC acknowledging our achievement is expected soon.

The most important element of comprehensive planning is involving the public early.  Many times in my years of public service I have heard an outcry from people who became aware of planning decisions they disliked only when bulldozers started moving on a property.  Each time the planning decision had been made years, sometimes decades, earlier.  Once a permit is issued and work starts, state law protects the property owner’s rights.  At that point, planning mistakes, however objectionable to neighbors, cannot be fixed.

The document which describes the kind of development we want in our community is called the Comprehensive Plan.  We are currently working on a multi-year effort to update it.  I chaired the Land Use and Environment Committee which designed a process to involve the public in our Comprehensive Plan update.  We called it “Imagine Olympia” and it is so good that Governor Gregoire gave us her 2011 Governor’s Smart Communities Award for it.  Our planning department receives calls from cities all over the state asking how they can re-create “Imagine Olympia” for themselves.