Five Proposals Submitted for Conference Center

OLYMPIA-The Olympia City Council next month will choose between five development proposals that include a publicly-owned conference center it hopes to finance with a sales tax rebate from the state.

Four of the proposals — by Landmark Organization of Austin, VIP International Corp. of Wilsonville, Ore., and Opus Northwest of Bellevue, Wash. and M.A. Mortenson of Minneapolis, Minn.–generally include a 10,000-sf main hall and break-out rooms totaling 5,000 sf and a plan for adding nearby hotel rooms. They are proposed for three different parcels, however, and two of the proposals–by Opus and M.A. Mortensen–also include plans for privately developing complementary projects on contiguous land.

The fifth proposal, by the Kalakala Foundation, would put the conference center in a decommissioned art deco ferry that is its namesake. The ferry, which is 276 feet long and 55 feet wide and encompasses about 25,000 sf of space, would be permanently docked on the waterfront at Percival Landing, which is within walking distance of 200 existing hotel rooms.