City holds meetings for Downtown Business Plan

Advisory committee made up of citizens, business owners

Paige Richmond

of the Gateway

Lee Desta is concerned about the future of downtown Gig Harbor. She moved here nine years ago, and since then, she’s taken a vested interest in the part of town known as the “view basin” — the area around Harborview Drive with a clear view of Gig Harbor bay.

One of her hopes is that the downtown area will maintain its livable, residential quality even as it grows and develops commercially.

For the past few weeks, Desta has been able to express her views openly and honestly with Gig Harbor city government. She’s a member of the Downtown Business Plan Advisory Committee, a group organized by City Administrator Rob Karlinsey to offer ideas while the city develops a business plan for downtown growth.

The committee is part of a $30,000 contract with a consultant who will develop the plan throughout the summer. It is also the result of three previous attempts by the city to evaluate Gig Harbor’s downtown — all of which led to community debate but never created an economic plan.

Desta hopes this attempt will be different.

“I’m hoping that we come out with some suggestions and action items that are immediately doable, so that people know that it’s going to happen,” she said.

Karlinsey thinks that the makeup of the advisory committee is what makes this business plan different than previous attempts.

“It’s a really good group: a mix of the usual suspects and the not-so-usual suspects,” he said.

The usual suspects are local business owners or members of the Gig Harbor Historic Waterfront Association, the recently formed non-profit group devoted to preserving the downtown area using the Main Street Approach.

Others are local residents like Desta, who doesn’t own a business but worked for the Main Street Association in Colorado 30 years ago, and Julie Ammann, a concerned citizen who has lived in Gig Harbor for the past four years.

Ammann, who has an architecture degree from the University of Washington and has worked as a journalist, was recruited by Karlinsey to join the committee in order to create more diverse opinions. Even though she lives far from downtown, Ammann said that the future of the area affects both her and her children.

“We love to go down to the harbor, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to draw us down there,” she said, adding that the area seems to appeal more to tourists than to local residents.

She said she’d like to see more restaurants downtown, but she also understands that growing and developing a business district can be complicated due to zoning laws.

That realization is also one that Julie Tappero, another committee member, came to after a few planning meetings. As the owner of West Sound Workforce and a member of the GHHWA, she said she often hears about people wanting more restaurants downtown. But when she posited those ideas at the advisory committee meeting, she learned there are city parking requirements surrounding restaurants that may prevent one from being added in the area.

“I have a lot of opinions about it, but you learn that some kinds of business(es) can’t go in there, because of regulations,” she said. “What residents want is not what can actually go in there.”

Tappero said what has been most helpful is having city staff like Karlinsey present at the meetings to discuss ideas.

Which ideas will be implemented into the business plan, however, remains to be seen. Karlinsey expects the consultant will present a draft of the plan to the city council in August, but he’s unsure when any changes proposed by the plan would be implemented.

Those specific changes will eventually be hashed out by the committee. For now, the Downtown Business Plan remains only an idea.

“We’re not into the specifics of things yet,” Ammann said about how the committee meetings are progressing. “I hope — I really hope, for the future of Gig Harbor — that these considerations are listened to. I think it would make a lot of community members happy.”

Business plan timeline

Members of the Downtown Business Plan Advisory Committee began meeting in early June and will continue to meet two to three times a month until August.

The plan’s consultant, Rod Stevens, will likely present a draft of the plan in August or September to the Gig Harbor City Council.

Reach Reporter and Columnist Paige Richmond at 253-853-9243 or by e-mail at paige.richmond@gateline.com.