Neighbor's Clothes an Odd Fit for the City

By Jeff Boone

About a year ago Northgate neighbors went to Seattle City Councilmember Richard Conlin for help with an obstinate developer named the Simon Property Group. The Northgate community had developed Seattle's first neighborhood plan--the Northgate Comprehensive Plan--and their ambition was to create a true town center upon the concrete plain. Their ambition had merit, given that Northgate had been designated an urban center, which meant the grimy little strip malls lining Northgate's main streets would soon fall to the wrecking ball so that growth might continue up.

Northgate neighborhood planners had successfully thwarted an earlier development proposal by then-mall-owner DeBartolo Realty. The Maple Leaf Community Council asked the city for an 18-month moratorium on development at the mall while the community created the comprehensive plan. The subsequent comprehensive plan introduced a new planning concept: the general development plan. Citizens would help guide the mall's redevelopment so that growth did not compromise livability; in fact, citizens envisioned that Northgate Mall would introduce the element of livability the town's commercial center had long lacked.

The comp plan was conceived and written with the blessing of the city.

The plan was and remains the community's best opportunity to introduce the idea of livability to Northgate.

But in August 1996, DeBartolo merged with the Simon Property Group. Simon is headquartered in Indiana. Simon is a developer of malls. Naturally Simon's intent at Northgate was not to create a neighborhood amenity but a regional attraction.

Simon's first action was to change the name of the mall, advising the media that Northgate was now the Simon Mall.

It's called branding but the name never stuck.

Simon has ambitious plans for Northgate: more parking, office towers, a hotel and a 6,000-seat cinema. If Simon is correct, people will come from miles around to eat, drink, shop and play at Simon's Northgate mall. Northgate the neighborhood won't exist for the mall visitor. Northgate is a freeway exit, an entrance to the mall. Once within the mall, skybridges will move the shopper from the mall to the hotel to the cinema--the shopper's foot need never touch a Seattle street.

Simon's plans landed them at the table with the citizen's advisory group, but with land use code on their side, they didn't really have to listen to the official neighborhood advisors. Neighbors were savvy enough to introduce the idea of a general development plan into the comp plan, but some elements of a pedestrian-friendly urban center cannot be forcibly written into land use code or forced upon a developer.

In their frustration the neighbors turned to Conlin. The councilmember is the chair of the Neighborhoods, Sustainability and Community Development committee, which has as a mandate the development of policies and practices related to sustainability. Conlin appointed himself the mouthpiece of the neighbors, with the idea that he might effect a compromise among the unhappy parties.

It's clear that Conlin believes he has reached that compromise: he has secured the Bon Tire site for a library, he has helped compel the developer to rotate the cinema and build a detention pond. And he's writing new city policy for general development plans based upon his experience with the Northgate Mall general development plan.

But let's note here that at this stage in the development process, a rotation of the cinema is the work of a pen on paper and a detention pond is not an amenity.

It's a garbage dump.

Conlin's efforts, gauging from the response of citizens to subsequent iterations of the plan, have done little for the neighborhood and much for the developer.

Northgate neighbors wanted a town center; they got more mall.

There are 13 acres in Northgate Mall called the south parking lot. Its disposition will tell you much about where this city stands in respect to its citizens, sustainability and livability. The city can choose to take the south parking lot for a library, a community center and a park. Or the city can let Simon's mall creep across it, burying the idea of a livable Northgate with the creek that runs beneath its asphalt.

What the city does with this 13 acres will tell you if the city is with you or against you.

Will Seattle remain a place where people want to live, or will it become a place to park and ride through in a tunnel?

Will Seattle be shaped by its citizens or shaped by its greed?

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