Riding my deadline tighter than a drill sergeant rides a smart-ass remark, I walk uphill out of downtown Olympia to my spot on the Eastside, all the while running a question through my head: What is Olympia? How do we define a city that is itself an explanation of infinite possibilities?



What truly is Olympia?



It’s a city carved out of the wilderness by pioneers, built on the backs of logging, shipping and beer. (A beer that is the only other thing allowed in Dirty Harry’s hand besides a woman or a gun, mind you.) It’s a city where floating shanty towns marred the grand vision of the Capitol Dome during the Great Depression. It’s the city where Kurt Cobain got evicted the day Nirvana went #1. We have Iraq veterans and WTO veterans. We’re surrounded by natural beauty and three colleges.



In its many fabled bars there’s always someone drinking away the blues and someone just looking for a good place to watch the game. There are good citizens such as Cowboy and Nikki who sweep up the butts out front every morning. There are lost souls trying to find their way home.



There's unemployed and homeless talking with old and wise, flanked by packs of young and outgoing.



Everywhere you look there are these beautiful things called human beings exploring boundaries, pushing new ideas, thriving in the kind of town that allows its citizens to explore its individuality.



Yes, there are also some loud and freaky weirdos who can seem threatening to the uninitiated. But don’t worry, the locals will take care of you. There are a lot of good people around.



It’s also a place where people don’t want to pay to park, PERIOD.



The parking problem — usually yammered about by The Olympian or the City Council — is a myth. Smoke and mirrors. The real fact of the matter is that people just don't want to pay for parking in downtown Olympia, and the obsession with building a parking garage is detracting from real problems.



So I am on the couch in my office, staring out the window at a neon Olympia Beer sign and reminiscing. In front of me sits the sidewalk and four open 90-minute parking spaces. Across the street is the empty Diamond parking lot next to the hollow shell of our old friend, The Reef. (RIP, homey.) Adjacent to that is the boarded-up storefront that was formerly Audio Northwest, recently relocated to the greener pastures of Lacey. Behind that, another parking lot, endowed with both metered and un-metered spots, most unoccupied. Half a block up, across the street from Caffe Vita in the central core of downtown at Fourth and Washington, a pair of construction trucks, both idling with the drivers chuckling at what is surely a manly conversation, occupy the Diamond lot operated at U.S. Bank.



Nobody is parked in front of the darkened windows formerly known as Otto’s Bagels. Vita closed early.



All I need is a leather duster and a tumbleweed.



Granted, it’s Easter Sunday, the M’s are on, and it’s raining cats and dogs, but I did the same little trip around downtown last weekend a few times during the immense bout of sunshine. Lots more people. Lots of available pay parking.



In the central core there are several designated free parking zones with 90-minute time limits. This is where many of the employees in downtown park. There is no program in place that gives downtown business employees an edge up on not getting hammered with tickets for overstaying the limit. Olympia has very aggressive parking enforcement, hence the 90-minute parking tango.



It’s really a thing of beauty to see how employees have it worked out to swap spots on cue while going to get coffee on the company dime. That’s just one of the perks of living and working downtown: cool friends in the same boat as you.



If a program was in place that encouraged business employees to park on metered side streets or any one of the empty Diamond lots, they wouldn’t have to take a break and move their cars, which would open up the free zones for “shopping.” Opening up spots for folks looking to spend money, of course, is the main argument behind the parking garage. The thinking goes: People don’t come downtown to shop because there’s no parking.



Baloney.



Full disclosure: I don’t own a car. I walk. I take public transit. I thumb it. So don’t expect any sympathy from me. When I do borrow a car, I don’t have trouble finding a spot.



Quarters for the bus fit in parking meters too, and there’s always plenty of available metered parking and plenty of open slots in the big orange box at the Diamond lots. So let’s put the myth to bed. It’s a distraction.



Empty storefronts are a reality.



A quick loop through downtown and it is visually evident that Olympia is in the midst of battling a cancer with “For Lease” signs appearing everywhere like malignant tumors. It’s been that way for some time.



Griswold’s burned down four years ago — empty and roofless.



Otto’s has been closed almost a year, no takers.



Ward’s Restaurant has been empty for a decade.



The BHR building next door is vacant as well.



Storefronts are staying empty in downtown Olympia. Why?



My phone starts ringing. It is Audrey Henley returning a follow-up call. She’s the head honcho at the Olympia Film Society and Capitol Theater. She has been thinking about something since our chat about the state of our beloved city a few days ago.



“There’s plenty of uncooperative building owners out there,” says Henley. “It’s not just a City Hall thing.”



Personally, she would like to see City Council adopt a more aggressive approach that stresses cooperation with businesses — an approach designed to keep businesses in Oly, such as dropping or freezing rents (similar to tactics Portland utilizes) and providing incentives to staying rather than wistfully letting businesses go and letting storefronts sit empty.



For the business owners who rent, problems can range from out-of-state landlords to repairs not happening due to legal technicalities or lack of money. Henley sympathizes with their choice to close.



“When rent continues to go up and revenue goes down, a lot of people get tired of scraping by. You can see the frustration build, and eventually they choose to pack it up.”

I decide to go talk to one of the many unofficial therapists of Olympia, bartender Jason Kraugh. When asked why he chose to buy a house in Tacoma and commute to Olympia, he replies “Cheaper housing for sure,” before disappearing to pour a drink for a regular.

“They also have a cohesive city vision,” says Kraugh, returning. “They’re attempting to do some compact development in the urban core so you don’t need three cars to get a family around a city to get what they need. It goes along with the idea of having better public transportation.”



“Foresight is essential to revitalizing an impoverished downtown,” quips Eric Johnson, a specialist in economic development, sitting a few stools down. He notes that Olympia is still a viable port with the industrial capacity to support light manufacturing. Johnson believes that Olympia’s layout could support more median income housing and middle class jobs — perhaps in a burgeoning green sector.



“They haven’t really sat and thought through where the people are going to work who don’t have a master’s in public administration,” says Johnson. “And you can’t do it all with retail.”



With an increasing number of vacant storefronts, frustrated business owners, viable options for infrastructure and more than ample — albeit pay parking — why do we still hear cries from City Council and The Olympian for a parking structure in the midst of a global economic and environmental crisis? Where does this need for more cars and more parking come from?



My coffee buzz is running low, and I am getting a headache. I make my way over to see the hook-up at the coffee spot. That’s where I run into downtown regular and former Council member Matt Green.



“If you want the big picture,” says Green, “it’s that there are two competing visions for downtown Olympia. One is clean to the point of sterile, aimed at wealthier people whether they live here or not. They represent the people who want to come downtown but don’t want to see homeless people. They want it to look like a mall.”



He’s an advocate of enticing specific development from the current hot spots in Thurston County such as Lacey and Tumwater with incentives such as lowering impact fees. He feels traditional methods of development are out of touch in a place such as downtown Olympia.



“They don’t see the bars or art galleries as development. They don’t see the kids from Evergreen and other colleges pouring their financial aid checks into downtown as development. They see Cabela’s and call that development.”



Green sees celebrating the cultural significance of downtown’s dedicated artisans, business owners, musicians, and general DIY ethic as crucial.



“Downtown Olympia is the cultural center of Thurston County,” says Green. He feels rather than try and chase out the bars with a preemptive noise ordinance to entice condo developers that maybe Olympians should embrace what is working and build on it.

“Ultimately, that’s the second goal.”



All the ideological warfare in the midst of this recession is getting to my unemployed brain, and I need to get some air. I step outside. To my luck, ambling my way is the one and only Calvin Johnson, founder of K Records. I ask him for his take on the situation.

“They’ve wanted that thing forever,” he says in his signature baritone, in regards to the much talked about parking structure. “People that want to go to the mall are going to go to the mall, and they don’t want to come downtown. What we need is people who want to live downtown and be downtown and not bring their cars with them.”



Who knows, eh? Maybe downtown’s salvation lies in nine-story condos with Ferrari Testarossas driven by fat-fingered millionaires in velour tracksuits double-parked out front. Or maybe it’s in embracing the DIY ethic that dredged this town out of the mud in the bay.



One thing’s for certain though, Olympia has a lot of problems that need fixing. And plenty of empty parking meters.