Funds from the city of Port Townsend’s Lodging Tax could potentially be used to create a small “parklet” at the water-side end of Adams Street.

Mari Mullen, executive director of the Port Townsend Main Street Program and Simon Little, co-owner of the design group StudioSTL, presented the proposal during a Feb. 17 meeting of the city council’s Transportation Committee.

The “Adams Street Plaza” would be in a similar vein as the Tyler Street Plaza, completed in 2018, and will be situated directly beside Adams Street Park.

The Lodging Tax Advisory Committee awarded the project $25,000 to purchase furnishings for the site. The Port Townsend Main Street Program will manage the project on behalf of the city. 

“We came up with a concept we thought would be responsive to the site and to the needs of that particular area of town,” Little said.

“The idea here is to really put in some benches that give people the opportunity to grab a bite to eat downtown and walk over and sit on the water side and share space with a friend, meet somebody down there, just take in the shoreline; just use that part of town,” he

said.

Little added that the small parklet would take a page out of the Tyler Street Plaza’s playbook in a “first pass” way using the limited funds available, but he noted that opportunities existed for future expansion therein.

Improved plantings and additional benches were among the improvements Mullen said could be added with relative ease at the site.

“We think that it’s a great start and it will be a huge improvement over the borrowed furniture and the big puddles that are there,” she said. “And it will get more pretty over time.”

“We’re trying to dress the area up,” said Public Works Director Steve King. “$25,000 is not enough to make it a nice plaza, like the adjoining winery, but we can certainly do better than what we have.”