Coping with Growth in Thurston County - An Interview with Sandy Desnerby Dave Catterson Special to the Green Pages Sandy Desner is a 20 year resident of Thurston County and President of DESKOBA, Inc., a real estate development and holding company incorporated in 1984. Sandy's firm has renovated and still owns 11 properties located in downtown Olympia and Tacoma. More recently DESKOBA has been involved in the development of housing projects for the elderly. The following are excerpts from an interview conducted recently in Sandy's office in downtown Olympia. GP: What are the barriers to redevelopment here in Olympia? SD: Probably the greatest barrier that exists right now is that there's an economic disparity between developing within Olympia, and most of Thurston County, relative to the adjoining more rural counties like Lewis and Mason counties that aren't operating under the same regulatory framework. The implementation of impact fees, design and review requirements, and the difficulty of getting through the regulatory process prior to developing a project are all factors that increase the cost of a project. Ultimately there is an end user who pays for all of the costs of the development through lease rates or sale price. Right now there is an economic disincentive to redevelopment relative to other communities ..." GP: What could local governments do to address the disincentives to redevelopment? SD: The first thing we need to look at as a community is, do we want to create incentives to foster redevelopment. In the short term we might have less redevelopment occurring today, but at some point not too far down the road there's going to be more parity that will exist in adjoining communities. We're already starting to see that. Lacey, which didn't have impact fees now has what we call LID fees [Local Improvement District]. Do we want to continue to have the type of growth occurring in our communities that has occurred over the last 20 years? If we say yes, and we want to foster redevelopment then we need to recognize that developers are going to go where there's an economic incentive that gives them a weighted advantage over doing the same thing in some other area ... In the longer term, green field development in other surrounding communities will diminish, as the available properties will become more expensive ... and all-of-a-sudden places where infrastructure exists, like urban cores, will become more attractive. The economic disparity will switch around and Olympia will become a more desirable place to develop. There are things we can do to promote redevelopment in the short term. The broader question though is, are those steps that we want to take ...It's very clear that while business and development have slowed in our county, the number of people moving here has not slowed. We are going to continue to have growth in terms of population. The real question is, how do we foster the type of development that we want to see as a community, and have it brought to market at a reasonable economic cost? That's the crux of the issue as it exists today. GP: Even amongst environmentally conscious people here in Thurston County there seems to be a fear of density. Yet, if we're really going to manage growth we're going to have greater densities. Can we overcome that fear? SD: We have to go back to the basic question ...I was reading this weekend's Olympian article about the transportation impacts as a result of growth. And to me, the discussion should be, do we really want to have 130,000 more people in this community in 20 years. I don't see that we have had a real discussion. We seem to accept that this is the predicated growth of this community over the next 20 years. Maybe the conversation should be ... and not having grown up here I'm not going to say that now that I'm here let's raise the drawbridge, but perhaps we should have a conversation and say as community maybe we're only willing to accept 60,000 more people. Communities are not supported solely on residential property taxes. If you do not have a healthy business community, you cannot provide the level of services and the necessary infrastructure to keep a community really viable. Many people in our community feel like we don't want to have growth, and I don't necessarily say that they're wrong. We need to have certain types of growth, in certain areas. Residential growth is what drives costs, in terms of government expenditures, so the whole question should be, what is acceptable to us a community ... I support the regulatory environment because it means that we're thinking about where we want to go as a community. It's very clear that when we look at Lacey, they're trying to develop a city center, because they don't have one. That's the result of a laisse-faire market environment for the past 20 years that has said that anything you want to do is OK. In the 20 years that I have lived here it has become clear to me many long-term members of this community perceive Olympia as a small town. We're right on the cusp of transitioning from a town to an urban center, so people are not going to comfortable with the concept of density ... We as a community need to take a step back and look at what we really want, not just at the number of people we expect to move here in the next 20 years. If we're not willing to do that, then the only way we can deal with growth is to increase densities ... The planners are down the road here. They are already saying ' this is what we can expect for population growth, and we need to put people somewhere.' They may be right, but I don't remember any conversation ever happening as to what we are willing as a community to absorb in terms of growth. That, to me, is the most primary issue that we need to resolve. Dave Catterson is the Project Coordinator of the Energy Outreach Center.
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