POULSBO — Hats are being tossed into the ring for ideas on Poulsbo’s current city hall property. The land on Jensen Way will be vacated early 2010 when city offices are moved to a yet-to-be-built new city hall at the corner of Moe Street and Third Avenue.
Poulsbo’s Economic Development Committee discussed the lot’s potential Wednesday afternoon. Ideas focused on downtown revitalization, with a parking garage, hotel and the making of Anderson Parkway into a park as mentioned possibilities. But the majority of conversation focused on including the public in the matter.
Poulsbo Council Member Ed Stern reported on informal ad hoc discussions in which he has participated with Poulsbo Mayor Kathryn Quade and various downtown stakeholders. Part of the reason the city chose the Kitsap County Consolidated Housing Authority as its city hall project manager is because of the agency’s experience in revamping downtowns — specifically Bremerton, he said. Also included in discussions have been various community members with experience in such efforts. Stern added he’s looking to find a multiple solutions approach to downtown problems, addressed in part by the vacancy of both the city hall parcel and the King Olaf lot, the potential combination probably being the largest plot of land to open in downtown.
Stern said the city’s vacation of the area will be the perfect moment to address the decades-long parking dilemma, as well as prod a downtown overhaul. Brainstorming has remained informal, as feasibility has yet to be determined, but the committee gave Quade the go ahead to authorize an environmental soils assessment through the Department of Ecology.
Council Member Becky Erickson said spot zoning could be an option for the city in directing the economic flow of the space. She said she’d like to see a hotel downtown, with the possibility of 300-400 additional parking spaces so that Anderson Parkway could be reverted to an actual park. The waterfront parking lot was formerly part of the bay, before it was filled in and paved in the early 1950s.
Most important, she said, will be a collaborative visioning process for the downtown core.
“This is a really big question. It’s as big a question if not bigger than the city hall,” she said. “We need a true visioning process for our downtown core.”
Both she and Council Member Kim Crowder urged Stern and Quade to make the process a community-involved, open-door one reflective of the needs of citizens. They also asked for the inclusion of other city stakeholders, including those involved in the business community, Poulsbo Place and the Poulsbo Village.
Quade said no deals or promises to various stakeholders have been made, and questions are still being formulated so that public involvement isn’t a free-for-all but instead a constructive process. A common denominator among all interested parties so far, she said, has been an increase in parking.
