Neighborhood Centers

Neighborhood centers are small walk, bike, and transit-friendly business clusters within residential neighborhoods that serve the day-to-day retail and service needs of local residents and foster community interaction. Neighborhood centers are important to community-wide goals to increase walkability, reduce our carbon footprint, improve human health, and foster neighborhood resiliency.

Olympia’s Comprehensive Plan identifies 17 locations for neighborhood centers. Conditions of these sites vary from thriving retail centers to vacant or completely undeveloped. Despite long-held goals to encourage them, neighborhood centers have not developed as envisioned. In 2014, the Olympia Planning Commission set out to find out why this was the case and to help create a path to implement the City’s vision. Early efforts included a community wide online survey and stakeholder interviews.

• View 2014 outreach summary

In January 2022, the City hired the consulting team of MAKERS Architecture & Urban Design and Leland Consulting Group gain a better understanding of barriers affecting neighborhood centers, and identify strategies for addressing these barriers. This team is focusing on the twelve neighborhood centers that are not part of Olympia’s master-planned communities.

View details about each of these 12 neighborhood centers at the bottom of this page.

The consultants spent the first half of 2022 evaluating each of the neighborhood centers, talking to stakeholders, and conducting a market analysis. The next phase of the project is to share findings from these efforts and get community input.

• View market analysis

Community input

Your input is important for identifying actions the City can take to implement important community goals for walkable neighborhoods, reducing reliance on cars, and fostering neighborhood connections. Over 350 people participated in an online survey from July 13 - August 15.

• View survey summary