The Site Plan Review Committee held a pre-submission conference to reuse two buildings at 525 Cherry Street SE for Ilk Beer and at 2124 Pacific Avenue SE for Vic's Pizza Pacific project on Wednesday, October 19.
Ilk Beer
According to applicant Patrick Jansen, Ilk Beer is planning on operating a portion of the old Fish Brewery building, which used to be a brewery, facility storage, and warehouse. He said the building has utilities in place with limited modification.
Jansen said they plan to put a small bar and kitchen at the front of the building.
The applicant added that they would install two single-occupancy restrooms.
"We are looking at utilizing some of that space to open a brewery and potentially a small restaurant-type operation and then grow into the rest of the space as time goes by," Jansen told the review committee members.
In the downtown business zone, Olympia associate planner Lydia Moorehead informed Jansen that brewing [proposal] itself is not permitted unless done in conjunction with a permitted use.
Moorehead said Ilk Beer's proposal to put a restaurant bar is permitted use in downtown business. "That would work with the brewing proposal."
Jansen also mentioned other proposals, including a food truck or commercial kitchen.
"We could look at all your proposals. The food truck might be tricky because it is not permanent. When you do make them permanent, other requirements come along with it. But we will look at any of your ideas," Moorehead said.
Vic's Pizza
Josh Gobel of Carve Architects is applying for the adaptive reuse of the building at 2122 Pacific Avenue SE to accommodate a restaurant. He said they would be redeveloped the site with new hardscaping and landscaping. The drive-thru will be eliminated.
Aside from converting the building into a restaurant, Gobel said they plan to enclose a large portion of it to provide some screening both visually and acoustically.
Gobel added that the idea is to maximize the outdoor seating opportunities that the site provides and make the place pet-friendly.
"In some stores, people show up with their dogs and sit outside. We can accommodate that and make it friendly to pet owners that come along to grab a slice and a pint, especially to the neighbors," Gobel added.
Gobel said they would remove a lot of landscaping and hardscaping and create some planting, serving as a fence wall in front to help buffer the sound from the busy Pacific Street.
"The building itself would not be altered much in terms of that one side that is a big open office space – which would be the seating area," he said.
According to Olympia associate planner Jackson Ewing, the project is converting the existing use from office space into a restaurant, which is permitted in the High-Density Corridor-2 (HDC-2) zoning district where the parcel is located.
Ewing said the substantial changes to the exterior of the building or the site would trigger a staff-level Design Review. "We want to review those details to ensure they comply with general commercial or HDC [requirements]."
Ewing noted that the building is approximately 2,800 square feet, and the parking requirement for the restaurant would be ten spaces per 1,000 square feet of gross floor space. However, a 20% reduction can be applied because of automatic deep deviation and HDC zoning district.
He added that there would be a requirement for short-term and long-term bicycle parking.
As for the exterior design, Ewing said it could trigger landscaping design requirements.
He told the developer that the landscaping chapter would be applicable if the improvement were over 50% of the assessed property valuation. "This would require additional street landscaping and the frontage and landscaping on the side of the property."
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JohnGear
This illustrates the fundamental weakness of our antiquated use-based zoning system, which puts bureaucrats (city staff) and politicians (the council) in charge of deciding what can go into an empty building in downtown instead of the entrepreneur who is risking their neck trying to put something into the dead spot in Olympia.
A brewery, with or without a kitchen, would be a GREAT use for that spot compared to its current emptiness, so our goal should be removing barriers, not trying to enforce some ancient guess about what "uses" we should allow.
We have planned ourselves into insolvency, preferring the "conforming use" of nothing -- dead, empty buildings -- to productive uses that go against our mindset that a central planning bureaucracy is the right way to determine what should go into our downtown.
I'm not against planning if it means keeping the slaughterhouses away from residential areas and such. But we need a real sense of urgency about attacking nonproductive buildings and spaces -- meaning we need to figure out ways to let these projects work, instead of hammering them with the full set of code requirements as a reward for wanting to bring some activity into downtown. Why shouldn't an associated food truck count for compliance, if our code is so dumb as to require a brewery to have food associated with it (as if a brewery wasn't a valuable and honorable use).
Monday, October 24, 2022 Report this
pheong
let us also reflect upon the antiquated city government structure. This City Manager crap is a throwback to the 50's. One guy gets to make some key decisions and the City Council wrings its collective hands and kisses the ring yet again. It was hoped that with the retirement of the last mildly corrupt City Manager that that would have led to a modern restructuring of the Capital City's government. Nope, not a chance. No we won't be plowing the streets in the advent of heavy snow. We'll just wait for it to melt despite having the machinery to do so.
It is high time for a truly progressive approach to a stagnant downtown and its new population of ne'er-do-wells who have made the downtown a place to simply avoid.
A 30-year resident, by the way, I am. Some of those PBIA funds will surely be lining the pockets of some, or their friends. So, some businesses chose to not join the ODA, let's force them to belong with the PBIA. Rank corruption in your faces. The tales from merchants; some of whom had juice and had their rates lowered and others who had no juice subsidising those with the juice are out there.
PBIA is one glaring example of the corruption in this city. The efforts by the city to cap the artesian on 4th are another example of the back-handed chicanery that this city government can engage in with no repercussions whatsoever.
Time for a change!
Wednesday, October 26, 2022 Report this