COMMUNITY

ORTING WANTS THEMED POST OFFICE

By: Melissa Santos June 20, 2008

Robbie Burns said the quaint, turn-of-the-century architectural scheme in downtown Orting helps make it a more attractive tourist destination. Even the McDonald’s, Safeway and Starbucks stores boast Western-style wooden facades.

“We have a great little town, right on the way to Mount Rainier,” said Burns, owner of the Rose Quilt Shop. “It’s nice to have something else to offer visitors.”

Right next door, a U.S. Postal Service expansion project is riling up city officials because of its failure to comply with building design codes.

Since the early 1990s, the city has required all building projects in the city center to follow a turn-of-the-century, Victorian or Western theme.

But as the USPS starts constructing a $1 million addition to the Orting office, it says including those design features would be too costly.

Postal officials are more concerned with ensuring that the expansion’s design matches the adjoining building, spokesman Ernie Swanson said. The brick post office was put up in 1977, before Orting’s design ordinance went into effect.

“We looked at the city requirements and felt it was too much of a change,” Swanson said. “We couldn’t put it in our budget. We’re already spending more than $1 million.”

Swanson couldn’t say exactly how much USPS engineers estimated the improvements would cost.

Orting officials said that since they require small, struggling businesses to comply with the code, they don’t expect less from a federal agency. They’ve written U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Auburn, asking him to intervene. Construction on the 2,500-square-foot addition began this week.

“We can’t just sit here and say, ‘They’re the federal government, they can do what they want,’” building official Ken Wolfe said. “It’s all about making them accountable, just like we make every business accountable within the zoning area.”

That area covers about a 11/2-mile stretch of Highway 162 through the center of Orting, starting at Rocky Road and continuing to the southern city limits.

Mayor Cheryl Temple said the design ordinance aims to keep a small-town feel in Orting, even as the city has grown to more than 6,000 residents.

“We’ve worked really hard to create an architectural look in this community,” she said. “Why wouldn’t the federal government want to help?”

Downtown businesses, including chains such as Subway and Blockbuster, use wooden placards as signs instead of the plastic or neon they favor elsewhere.

Even the local teriyaki joint, Wa Wa Teriyaki on Calistoga Street, features a carved wooden sign and flat-roofed Western design.

Swanson said USPS tries to follow city building ordinances when it builds a new post office, but not necessarily when it adds to an existing structure – especially one that predates a city’s codes.

The post office in Leavenworth, in the Cascades, conforms to the Bavarian-village theme of the rest of the town. Leavenworth City Administrator Richard Brinkman said the U.S. Postal Service built there after the city enacted its architectural regulations in the 1960s. The agency voluntarily complied; Leavenworth officials couldn’t have compelled them to, Brinkman said.

In Orting, most local business owners support the design ordinance, said Dave Harmon, president of the Orting Chamber of Commerce.

He said the benefits of the ordinance are clear to anyone who drives through downtown.

“We don’t have big, ugly signs, and we don’t have buildings that look like they don’t belong,” Harmon said. “I think it’s irksome to a lot of people that the federal government rules our lives on a daily basis, but when they come and build something here they don’t have to follow our rules.”

Reprinted from The Tacoma News Tribune: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/392704.html