Note: The meeting minutes and transcript indicate this meeting occurred on September 25, 2025, but the user-provided date is October 1, 2025. This summary uses the provided date as instructed.
The Olympia City Council Land Use & Environment Committee met to discuss three major agenda items: amendments to the Urban Village Code (OMC 1805) related to Briggs Village, the Climate Action and Resilience chapter of the Olympia 2045 Comprehensive Plan, and the Housing chapter of the Comprehensive Plan. The committee heard extensive public comment, primarily concerning the proposed changes to the Briggs Village commercial requirements. All three items were unanimously recommended to the City Council.
All right. Hello, everybody. This is the Land Use and Environment Committee of the Olympia City Council. My name is Danny Madron. I serve as the chair, and I'm calling this meeting to order. Today's Thursday, September 25th, and we're just a couple of minutes after 4 p.m. Uh roll call. We've got uh myself and a committee member Jim Cooper here. Uh uh committee member Vanderpool is excused this evening. Uh so just two of us here. Um first thing we need is an agenda. Can I get a motion, Jim? Move approval. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. We're gonna start off with public comment. Um, and we do have quite a few people who have signed up today. Um, I do typically allow three minutes for public comment, but because we do have so many people who are signed up, I am going to limit it to two as uh as identified in the um agenda. And I'm just gonna go ahead in the order that people signed up. So the first person I'm going to call is Heather Burgess. And uh, oh, there she is. Okay, go ahead, Heather. And so Good afternoon, Councilmember Madron, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, wonderful. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, my name is Heather Burgess. I'm a real estate and land use attorney, and I represent Briggs, RE development LP and Gordy Gill, who are the owners of the remaining undeveloped portions of the Briggs Village Development, to which your item 6A uh would make certain amendments to the governing codes. I did just want to draw your attention to a letter that I believe I copied both you and Councilmember Cooper on, dated September 22nd, 2025 regarding um two provisions of the draft. One had to do with minimum grocery store size and requesting a clarifying amendment, and the second having to do with the maximum building height in and around the town square versus relative to the number of stories. So just wanted to draw your attention to those additional clarifying comments. Appreciate all of the time and effort that you, the staff, and the uh members of the public have given to this process so far, and looking forward to bringing this to council. Thank you very much. Great, thank you. And thanks for being brief, Heather. I forgot to mention that the timer is at the top of the Zoom screen. Uh, so you are very well within time. Uh up next, I have Gordy Gill. Gordy, you could go ahead and unmute. There you go. Hi, um uh uh my name is Gordy Gill. We're a medium-sized real estate development company that's operated in British Columbia for over 30 years. We own and manage a diverse uh diversified real estate portfolio comprising of office, retail, and industrial properties, mainly in the greater Vancouver area. We purchased a property, we purchased Briggs Village property from California developer in December 2015, comprising of nine commercial lots, 20-acre parcel, and a couple of other parcels that will be developed in the future. We sold two commercial lots to local investors, and we still own uh an intent to develop the remaining seven commercial lots. We have constructed and still own 33 unit apartment complex on one of the commercial lots and have developed the 20-acre parcel into 45 single family lots, which are currently being planted.