Edmonds Forum

I’m writing in response to Chris Fyall’s article: Council Considers ‘Code Compliant’ Waterfront. At the November 20 council meeting, to which Fyall refers, several citizens requested that money be allocated to explore an alternative plan for the Waterfront. We asked the Council to back further citizen involvement because the plans developed by LMN architects ignored the input of citizens, including members of the CG33 group, which was created for just that purpose. Citizens’ reaction to 5-6 stories of mixed-use buildings was overwhelming negative, many asking that no code be changed.

Fourteen thousand dollars of Edmonds citizens’ money, and $72,000 of Port of Edmonds citizens’ money, has already been allocated to develop what has been called the “refined” plan for an urban village.

Chris Fyall’s article reported:

“It is problematic for cities to design projects on private property that might eventually be used in development applications,” he [City attorney Scott Snyder] said.

And:

“Because Edmonds can get involved doesn’t necessarily mean Edmonds will,” Mayor Gary Haakenson, said. Mayor Haakenson was also quoted as saying: “I just do not believe that our place is to design their project for them.”

These statements are confusing and require clarification. Because over $100,000 of public funds ($86,000, plus many hours of staff time) went towards designing the “refined” plan for the private and public properties on the waterfront, Edmonds is already involved.

The final design on the waterfront will affect Edmonds for generations to come. It behooves all of us, citizens, property owners, and elected officials, to continue to work together on this project.

The last time I spoke before City Council was in December of 2006, in response to a request by the Mayor that the citizens of Edmonds become involved in planning for the future of the Edmonds Waterfront. At that time I characterized my vision for the waterfront as a cross between Pike Place Market, Granville Island, and The Third Place in Lake Forest Park.

Since that time I was selected to be a member of the Waterfront Citizens’ Group (CG33), which met in July of this year. I did my best to promote the concept of creating a destination on the waterfront, which would include pedestrian friendly heights and amenities.

The results of CG33 were deeply disappointing. What I saw were four plans for an urban village, ranging from 3-4 stories and as high as 8-10 stories, not the destination that I and others envisioned. I regret that I did not register my dismay by abstaining from voting for any of the concepts.

Following the gathering of citizen input on the four plans, a final version was unveiled on October 25th. It again was an urban village with buildings 5-6 stories high. On November 2nd, the Edmonds Enterprise reported: “Still, a clear majority of the community members who spoke at the Oct. 25 meeting were unhappy with the newest vision for Edmonds’ waterfront.” I counted only three audience members who spoke in support of the plan.

On page 26 of the Edmonds Comprehensive Plan, under Vision for the Downtown Waterfront Area, it states: “Opportunities for new development and redevelopment reinforce Edmonds’ attractive, small town pedestrian-oriented character. Pedestrian-scale building height limits are an important part of this quality of life, and remain in effect.” And under Goals for the Downtown Waterfront Area, it states: “Promote downtown Edmonds as a setting for retail, office, entertainment and associated businesses supported by nearby residents and the larger Edmonds community, and as a destination for visitors from throughout the region.”

In Chris Keuss’ editorial in the November 8th issue of the Edmonds Beacon, he characterized the private property owners’ solicitation of input on how to develop their property as “an exceptional display of regard for what other people think.” The key word in that sentence is “display.” If it had been anything other than a “display of regard for what other people think,” the final plan would not have included six-story buildings. On October 12th, regarding comments gathered at Harbor Square, the Edmonds Enterprise stated: “Almost every single comment that has been left has insisted that no code be changed.” The current code for building heights is 25 plus 5 on the Antique Mall and the Skippers’ properties. Citizen input has, so far, been dismissed.

$14,000 of Edmonds citizens’ money was allocated to develop the plan that was unveiled on October 25th. The Port of Edmonds contributed $72,000 plus the cost of staff participation, for over $86,000 of citizens’ money allocated to develop a plan for an urban village. I am requesting that money be allocated to develop an alternative plan that is consistent with the goals of the Edmonds Comprehensive Plan, stated above—a plan that is within current height limits, and one that creates a destination.

I urge the City Council to demonstrate an exceptional display of regard — no, make that more than just a display of regard — for the opinions of the citizens of Edmonds by allocating funds to develop an alternative plan for the waterfront.

Twenty years ago, no one knew what Edmonds would be like, today. No one knew that a combination of the big-box stores and the web store fronts would result in the disappearance of many of the retail stores that served the local population. Who knew, back then, that someone living in the Edmonds bowl in 2007, could have her own personal bank, antique store, and real estate agent, but could no longer get a prescription filled without jumping in the car?

No one knows what Edmonds will be like twenty years in the future or, as the rate of change tends to increase over time, even in ten. For example, will the trend continue of Edmonds drawing more and more retired people (especially to the bowl condominiums), or will our fiber-optic infrastructure attract a horde of young entrepreneurs? Visualize each trend and you’ll imagine a very different town. Think of the many variables that can affect our future, especially swings in energy, economics, weather, technology, transportation, and politics.

In recent elections, we’ve often had to choose between the “museum curators”—those who just say no to any change—and “Faustian bargainers,” who think that if we just dump enough cement, our budget problems will be cured.

The nay-sayers think that “no change in height limits” and “keep the small-town atmosphere” are sufficient strategies for our future. They’re not. Notice that change happened, anyway.

The let-the-developers-solve-our-problems gang want to hand our future to those who often care for only profit and ego. How’s that worked for Edmonds so far?

I will no longer support the museum curators or the Faustian bargainers. I no longer want council members who run on a platform of no or platform of yes, I want council members who run on how. How can we make change, since it’s inevitable, work for Edmonds?

In the coming election, I’m going to vote for the four candidates who I feel are how people, candidates who don’t necessarily think they have the answers but, at least, have thoughtful questions and an open mind, candidates who can consider that, because change is constant, we may need lots of low-scale plans (that can be easily modified if they are not viable) rather than The Plan That Saves Edmonds Forever.

In my participation with the Waterfront Group (WG33), I have found DJ Wilson to be exceptionally committed to holding out for a superior plan for the Edmonds waterfront—he was the only member who refused to vote for any of the four plans (as I wish that I did), because all were uninspired and mediocre. In talking with DJ, I know that he is ready to continue with the planning process as long as necessary to do what’s best for Edmonds. I am certain that DJ Wilson will bring that attitude to every issue that comes before the Edmonds City Council. And he will do that with considerable intelligence, knowledge, experience, and perseverance, while remaining a pleasant man with whom to work.

Steven Bernheim is passionate about the conservation of Edmonds and the planet, and doesn’t mind driving the ugliest car (but with the smallest footprint) in town. I work with him on the Transportation Committee and participated in the public meetings that he sponsored regarding the waterfront (before WG33), and find that his strong opinions do not keep him from considering ideas from others. Steve wants to conserve what works and change what doesn’t and is careful about what that means.

The last time Strom Peterson ran, I voted for the other guy. I’m supporting him now because I believe that he is not a yes guy but a how guy. He is a strong advocate of green development and considers ideas both as a business owner and a resident. And, as I do not want to see a high level of negative campaigning, so common at the national level, become a staple in local elections, I have admired his restraint in the face of the nasty tactics of his opponent.

I have had my share of disagreements with Mayor Haakenson, but he has always been open to discussing my dissenting views. In other words, he listens to those who disagree with him as well as those who don’t, and is capable of checking his ego at the door. I believe that Gary Haakenson is the best candidate to mediate among different points of view regarding the decisions that confront Edmonds in the near future.

One summer when I was a teen, a nightclub appeared just outside my hometown of New Castle, Pennsylvania. A dirt driveway led to what looked like an old barn. The area was dark, no signs marked its presence. I don’t even know how we found it. We climbed rickety wooden stairs to a second floor, filled with tables holding overflowing baskets of peanuts. We ate the peanuts and threw the shells on the floor. It was exhilarating! There was music. Whether or not there was a band I don’t remember, but I do remember dancing. As suddenly as it appeared, the club was gone.

That was the most memorable summer I ever had (aside from the summer I worked at a tobacco pickers’ camp, but you don’t want to hear about that). I don’t remember anyone drinking, and though we were energetic, loud and lively, we were reasonably well-behaved teenagers.

I wish Edmonds had a place like that for my teenage daughter. Not just for a summer, but for every summer, spring, fall and winter until she goes off to college. It’s too late for my son who’ll be gone by September. And I’d like it to be in downtown Edmonds, easy to find, easy for young people to get to, with or without cars.

On a younger note: With the help of the little kids in my neighborhood, I’m making a children’s play area in my yard. It has a table and two kid-sized chairs, a children’s park bench (Bartell’s Drugstore, $24.99, some assembly required) a bucket, a trowel and two half whiskey barrels that will be filled with soil and plants. I’m hoping that, with a little encouragement, the children will make the area their own by adding stuff my middle-aged brain would never think of. This is a token offering from someone who, as a child, had a huge woods with a creek running through as my own personal playground.

What do the teen club and the play area have in common? They are both places for young people to have fun.

The Edmonds City Council is in the process of envisioning the future of Edmonds. I would like that vision to include the needs of children and adolescents. Along with the condominiums and retail space that are being discussed (and the height limits of those buildings), I would like public spaces to include trees and flowers; spaces to play, entertain and be entertained; and places to eat reasonably-priced food and enjoy each other’s company. I would like to see Edmonds draw the young as well as the old, young families as well as middle-aged and older couples. I would like Edmonds to offer a range of goods, services, housing, entertainment, and transportation so that an eclectic group of people will be drawn here to live, work, and play.

This is a sampling of my vision for Edmonds.

First place is home, the second place is work, the third place is any neighborhood locale that encourages people to hang out and enjoy each other’s company.

Sounds like fun. Where can I find one of these third places?
The most reliable way is to go to Europe. Try a cafe in Paris or Rome. Or a pub in London. Not being from their neighborhoods, you’ll probably have to bring your own friends.

How about something a bit closer?

I’ve read that Howard Schultz got his inspiration from Italian cafes for transmogrifying Starbucks into European style third places. Somepeople don’t believe you can create the third place en masse, that to create the right atmosphere, the third place must be locally owned and operated.

Does a third place have to involve caffeine or booze?

Not at all. If you’re old enough, you might remember bowling leagues or hobby shops. If you’re young enough (in age or heart) you might have tried an Internet cafe. The third place can happen in any establishment that understands that people are each other’s best form of entertainment.

Can a third place be a shopping mall?

No, if you mean, as in Alderwood Mall or Bellevue Square. The ubiquitous enclosed shopping mall is designed solely to fatten your Visa balance (or Mastercard, Bon, Nordstrom, etc., they’re not choosey). Third place elements placed in malls, such as food courts and coffee stands, are in place to rejuvenate you for continued shopping, not to encourage malingering. Then again, who would have thought that the Crossroads Shopping Center in Bellevue, could have been transformed from a dive into an attractive community center, yet in the 80s, that’s what Ron Sher accomplished. So I guess anything is possible. Sher also developed Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, and recently, remodeled the former PCC Natural Market into Ravenna Third Place.

Where can I read more about the idea of The Third Place?

In addition to the links provided in this article, you can look at a couple of books: The Great Good Place defines the third place; Celebrating the Third Place describes third places around the U.S., including two local examples: the above mentioned Crossroads and the Blue Moon Tavern in the U District.

Can you list the attributes that define a third place?

A list is always definitive; that’s why all of us now choose mates via computer dating. We don’t? Oh. Then I guess a list is just good for grocery shopping and todos for busy people. Instead of a list, how about thinking of attributes as clues that a third place might be lurking inside those doors (or outside those doors).

There is more than one type of third place and types can be mixed. Primarily, there’s the drink, read, and talk joint, which usually (1) has drinks for sale — lattes or Italian sodas, English Breakfast or Sleepy Time, Guinness Stout or Bud Lite, Coke or Mountain Dew — as well as snacks or full meals to go with the drinks, (2) has places to sit conducive to privacy or socializing, your choice, (3) has reading material, free and for sale, (4) is not entirely dependent on rapid customer turnover, i.e, no one is hustling you to exit or to buy more drink or food as the condition of not exiting. Examples of this kind of third place include Barnes and Noble, Third Place Books, and the legendary Blue Moon Tavern, which probably belongs in its own class.

Usually flying under the radar of third place spotters is the hobby shop. To be a third place it must (1) not just sell items that support the hobby but have a place within the store to practice the hobby, (2) have regulars. Examples are Fantastic Games & and Hobbies and The Nock Point.

Another unrecognized third place may be the martial arts dojo, such as Aikido Seikikai, and the exercise club such as Harbor Square. At the dojo or gym, I would look for (1) longtime regulars, (2) friendliness from both staff and patrons, (3) a feeling that it’s not just about the money.

What do you think? Have I missed some categories? Would you put the third place label on local coffee and pastry shops such as Starbucks, Tully’s, or Brusseau’s? Or pubs — Rory’s and Engels? Or an Internet cafe, The Liquid Cafe? Denny’s? Costco?

This study reports the relationship between how much children walk, in the U.S., Australia, and Sweden, and their respective rates of obesity. It should be one of those duh items. Also duh, is that children walk more when there are dedicated walking paths. According to the study, children walk the most in Sweden, the least in the United States.

Edmonds, aside from the hills, is a pretty good walkng town, but it lacks places that attract children. For children old enough to wander on their own, where, aside from the library, is there to go?

I refuse to belong to any club that would have me as a member.
-Groucho Marx

When my wife and I moved to Edmonds, in the Summer of ‘85, we were more than pleased with the number of local grocery stores. We lived within three miles of Albertsons, Haggen’s, Olson’s, Petosa’s, Safeway, and Thriftway. Mostly, we patronized two: Safeway, next to the ferry landing, anchored like an old but faithful tugboat, and Olson’s, a couple of miles down 9th, a quality food center before it was a Quality Food Center.

Grocery shopping in Edmonds was good — then it got better. In a newly built mini-mall across from Brosseau’s, Brodeen’s Produce opened. Every morning at 5:00 AM Lou bought fresh produce from Pike Place Market and trucked it to Edmonds. Over time, Brodeen’s added a deli, wines, fine breads, pastas, and other European style foods. Having Brodeen’s was akin to having a mini Pike Place Market in town with all the work of choosing and transporting done by partners, Bob and Lou.

Bob and Lou got along like a married couple — unfortunately, like a married couple headed for divorce. Eventually, Lou sold out to Bob and a while later Bob sold out. The new owners, unfortunately, mistook Brodeen’s for a convenience store — they brought in cigarets and lower quality food — and two months later, Brodeen’s closed.

With the Safeway store giving way to the soon-to-become Edmonds monocrop — antiques — the good life for us didn’t last long. Corporate Pacman saw Olson’s swallowed by QFC, and then QFC consumed by Kroger. The Thriftway at five corners, never one of their good stores, disappeared as well. And Haggen’s became another QFC. Edmonds was left with a bunch of bland corporate supermarkets.

Not satisfied with saddling us with merely dull, the supermarkets, led by Safeway, foisted on us the so-called clubs, memberships, and loyalty programs. Not that I didn’t appreciate it. Who wouldn’t want to be a target of a shakedown? Before supermarket clubs: I would spend $100 on groceries and the clerk would hand me my receipt and brag, “You saved $24.17 today (on discounted items).” Since the advent of supermarket clubs: I drop $100 and the clerk hands me my receipt and exclaims, “You saved $15.92 today, Gary!” (Italics mine.)
Notice the personalized service and savings.

Since Safeway, QFC, and now, Albertsons, have succumbed to food club mania, I no longer have any grocery stores in Edmonds to go to, just ones to avoid. Where do we buy groceries now? Mostly, Trader Joe’s, a compact store that combines high quality specialty foods with low prices. But Traders isn’t a supermarket and has very little choice in produce, meat, and necessary household products. We fill in with Petosa’s, Costco, Top Foods, and Thriftway. That’s a lot of stores. It seems to me there is an opportunity for a first class independent market in Edmonds.

The grocery chains complain that they can’t compete with Walmart on price so they must finds ways to raise their margins. It seems that the warehouse style stores are doing to the supermarkets what the supermarkets did to the neighborhood grocers decades ago — killing them with lower prices based on buying power and a huge landscape of products. Unlike mom-and-pop’s, corporations don’t roll over. So the way they’ve found to fight back is through customer specific marketing: increase profits from good customers and make the rest less than welcome.

I know how customer specific marketing works; I’ve been on the butt end of it. A few years ago, my wife and I were asked by Bank of America to use the servant’s entrance — more accurately, to not use the entrance at all. No bouncers were involved but they sent notice that they were going to raise our checking account fee if we continued to dirty their carpets. On the other hand, if we agreed to limit our meager bank transactions to the ATM we could have a free account. A few years later, after refinancing our house through Bank of America, they rehabilitated us to here’s a customer we make money from. To celebrate, they gave us two free checking accounts, restored indoor privileges, and threw in two free safe deposit boxes.

For me, the food club issue is not so much about customer specific marketing. After all, I took B of A’s ATM only bribe and began using real live tellers again only because deposits get recorded sooner. Nor is it primarily about privacy (but this may change my mind). I’ve been compromising that for years by using credit and debit cards, by shopping over the Internet, by belonging to Costco. I hate food clubs because they insult my intelligence by inconveniencing me with their stupid cards (like I really need to sit on a fatter wallet all day), ultimately raising prices, then promoting with words such as “savings” and “loyalty,” while giving me nothing for my trouble.

Corporate supermarkets are businesses and have the right to try to increase profits, and I have the right to not shop at those supermarkets any longer. It’s one thing to screw me with a candid, “too bad,” quite another to do so and insist that it’s for my our own good. I get my fill of that with politicians.

As I said above, it seems to me that there is an opportunity for a first class independent market in Edmonds.

How could it compete? Don’t sell Cheerios; you can get them, or one of their clones, at any supermarket or warehouse store, and you’ll buy them from whomever sells them the cheapest. Serve customers by providing the best value and experience for the money.

Brodeen’s with its excellent produce. Trader Joe’s with its bargains on specialty foods and spirits are good models with which to start. The new downtown shops such as Olives Gourmet Foods and Arista Wine Cellars are indications that local residents and tourists will spend money. Rather than just overpriced pastries, why not a gourmet cafeteria? Brusseau’s would be perfect. Now add a book store and maybe even a news stand. You can’t compete with the breadth of Barnes & Noble and everybody sells self-help books and best-selling novels. The book store and news stand needs to be run by someone with a vast knowledge of what is the best of the best. Put all this in a building the size of Petaosa’s and have it designed by an architect who understands how to intermingle common and private spaces .

I believe that the demographics of Edmonds, could support a market like this and draw customers from out of town.