PORT TOWNSEND — The official opening of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute office in Port Townsend highlighted a tour of visitors who walked the walk Wednesday to learn why Port Townsend is a model for walkability, bicycle friendliness and healthy living.
“We really are trying to make sure that we are paying attention to the kind of community growth we have here,” Port Townsend Mayor Michelle told more than 50 national and international community development and transportation experts who came to Port Townsend on a leg of the Northwest Smart Growth in Small Towns Tour.
Historic City Hall
Sandoval welcomed the group inside the city-restored historic City Hall council chambers that blends old Victorian design with new lighting, sound, video and computer technology.
Sandoval, City Manager David Timmons and Scott Walker, a longtime advocate for making Port Townsend a walkable community, joined the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute’s executive director, Dan Burden, at City Hall where they talked about what the community has done to make the downtown oriented to pedestrians.
“This organization is what puts it together, and the love of the community,” Timmons said of how the downtown streetscape has been accomplished — with much resident comment.
The city leaders and visitors were joined by downtown business owners and Main Street program representatives.
Timmons pointed out the first streetscape work on Water Street, stretching from Point Hudson Marina, past the new Northwest Maritime Center, which will soon wrap around City Hall and stretch up Madison Street to Washington Street in the project’s next phase.
Downtown accessiblity
The work, Timmons said, will make the downtown accessible to all, as well as more attractive with wider, improved sidewalks, pedestrian curb ramps and rain gardens to absorb stormwater runoff.
Burden quoted Walker, who said his first priority was to build the downtown improvements for the community residents.
“If tourists like it, so much the better,” Burden said, echoing Walker’s words.
“We haven’t done it all right, but we have done it better than other towns,” Walker said later while walking some in the visiting group down Lawrence Street.
‘Mr. Roundabout’
Among those joining the group was Michael Wallwork, who is known as “Mr. Roundabout,” having designed more than 600 roundabouts in six nations.
He critiqued Port Townsend’s proposed roundabouts going in on Upper Sims Way as part of the “Gateway” project, saying they needed to be designed less for highway driving and more with a “Victorian” design.
That would feature sharper, more angular turns to slow traffic for pedestrians.
As designed now, the roundabouts will make it more difficult for motor vehicles to yield for pedestrians at crossings.
It would be worse to have traffic lights instead of roundabouts on Upper Sims Way, Wallwork contends.
“I hate traffic lights because a traffic light stops pedestrian movement,” said Wallwork, of Melbourne, Australia.
After getting off the Port Townsend-Keystone ferry with the tour group Wednesday, Wallwork proposed a roundabout where the ferry terminal’s traffic comes out on Water Street.
Many on the tour said they were impressed with the improvements the city has made, and will be making to further improve its walkability.
The visiting group walked up the stairs past Haller Fountain, which connect downtown to uptown, to have tea and cake at the Lawrence Street home of Marion Huxtable, another of Port Townsend’s advocates for a walkable community, who now sits on the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute’s board.
The group then trickled over to the Institute’s new office inside a former dentist’s office at 326 Benton St., near Washington Street uptown where they were greeted by Sarah Bowman, Walkable and Livable Communities Institute general manager, who just moved in and lives upstairs.
Burden and Bowman broke out the champagne to dedicate the office with a toast before the group jammed inside it.
“Seems like they are doing lots of things right here,” said Joel Russell, a consultant and attorney from North Hampton, Mass. “And much of it is a work in progress.”
The Walkable and Livable Communities Institute-sponsored Port Townsend tour group had members from as far away as New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico and California.
Three-day tour
It was part of the three-day Pacific Northwest Smart Growth in Small Towns Tour sponsored by the Institute and led by Burden.
The tour started in Seattle and stopped at the High Point neighborhood, then traveled by charter bus to University Place, Mercer Island, Kirkland, Mill Creek, Snohomish and Langley before stopping in Port Townsend and finally Winslow on Bainbridge Island.
All are considered model communities for placing emphasis on active community environments, encouraging social engagement and allowing seniors to “age in place.”
Each town offers ideas, techniques and examples of how to transition from a car-centered design to one with people at the center, Institute representatives said.
“Port Townsend is a prime example of place-making — a concept that describes how environments are attractive because they are interesting, pleasurable and designed to immerse people in experiences that promote community building,” Bowman said.
Tour group representatives included public health officials — from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Centers for Disease Control — who will be looking at how the built environment affects individual and community health.
Burden has bought a Willow Street home he plans to move into some time in the future.
One of the tour group, Noelle Melchizedek, with the Redwood Community Action Agency in Eureka, Calif., left with a good impression of Port Townsend.
“I’m impressed that such a small community has done so much to preserve the town,” she said.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
