Just Whose City Is It? Paul Schell's Anywhere, USA

By Jeff Boone

A recent neighborhood tour of Ballard propelled the Mayor to the keyboard to pound out another straight-talking, peer to peer "Schell Mail." The vision of Ballard's civic stalwarts to drive downtown Ballard's civic renaissance with the Ballard Municipal Center so impressed the Mayor that he wrote, in his mail titled from "From Ballard to Berlin,"

The Mayor concludes his heartfelt missive with the following,

One band of dedicated, energetic, thoughtful people the Mayor has yet to meet live in and around Northgate. But he did find time to write a thoughtful letter to these citizens, who are members of the Thornton Creek Legal Defense Fund and Citizens for a Liveable Northgate. In the letter dated April 28, the Mayor told Northgate neighbors, whose vision ostensibly reflects the Mayor's enthusiasm for town squares, to kiss off.

Citizens for a Liveable Northgate have conceived a plan to put a library, community center, affordable housing and a daylighted creek on Northgate Mall's south parking lot, adjacent to the transit center.

But the Mayor said no. Among his reasons?

It costs too much.

Daylighting the creek won't help salmon. Besides, the creek doesn't exist.

The vision promotes sprawl.

The Mayor then suggests Northgate neighbors get behind spending city money where it might do the most good, like the Skagit River Valley.

Last we checked, voter-approved money for community center and library construction was not earmarked for purchases of land to offset Seattle City Light's Ross Dam damage to the Skagit River watershed and its fish runs.

That doesn't matter. In Schell's Seattle, citizen money is better spent on a downtown library that costs $500 a square foot, a new city hall and such salmon-saving measures as a brand-new world-class fish tank.

But Schell doesn't stop with a letter. In Schell Mail number 63, sent to his list of 4,446 subscribers, he puts the dream of Northgate neighbors to the guillotine. The Mayor casts it as density versus daylighting. Town square advocates are sprawl's foot soldiers; the high road is to bury the creek and permit mall expansion.

Welcome to Anywhere, USA.

Northgate will meets its housing goals with or without 450 units at the south parking lot. The $20 million price tag? Tap into library money, community center money, city housing money and Seattle Public Utilities money.

Schell accuses both groups of fostering a narrow interest at the expense of the greater good. But those people who live in Northgate know housing is only one part of density; the other part rests on creating a city where people want to live. Breaking up the components of a true town square and scattering them piecemeal over Northgate subordinates the urban center's civic life to commercial interests. Paul Schell's Anywhere, USA pushes families to the Eastside because it doesn't offer them anything they can't get in Bellevue, Redmond, Duvall or Monroe. Anywhere, USA is just another pile of concrete--it's Starbucks, the Gap, Target, Rite-Aid and Blockbuster. It's a multi-plex cinema with the same six films playing at the multi-plex up the street. Anywhere, USA gives people plenty of reason to move. And when those people move, they put pressure on the urban growth boundary. They want good roads and boot King County Councilmember Brian Derdowski from office. They want schools and the Issaquah school district jumps the urban growth boundary. They want big yards and nice houses and hiking trails: bid adieu to the lowland forests around North Bend and pristine creeks of the Lake Alice plateau. That's sprawl, Paul.

So, Mayor, stop moving your lips and catch up with the neighbors on this one. We don't expect you to make it to the front but you're material for a fine foot soldier.

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