Seattle Press on Line - Don't Blame Boaters for Demise of Fremont Spirit--It's Already Gone

My Two Cents

Don't Blame Boaters for Demise of Fremont Spirit--It's Already Gone

By Dan Grinstead

Jun 22, 2001 -- If Michele Burns and Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. are truly interested in the Future of Fremont [Letters, June 13], they should desist with the name-calling. I have considerable seniority in Fremont and I don't like being called a "petty, persnickety, spoiled, affluent boat owner," indulging my whims. As I leave my potty old building (yes, the falling-down one next to 7-11) which I manage and will soon be torn down), get in my potty old truck and drive to the marina where I keep my potty old boat (built in 1903), here's what I'm confronted with on Sunday. (I didn't want to park a "few blocks away" because I'm transporting three tool boxes, an outboard motor (which I got for free and fixed) and a 120-pound battery.) So here's what I see at the Fremont Sunday Market: A bunch of Yuppies and freaks blocking the street with SUVs and Subarus, milling about with their unleashed children and dogs, pawing over tables of overpriced, derivative "art," gawking at dubious piles of "health" palliatives, rooting through junk that wouldn't make a good garage sale in Ballard, and stuffing their trash into other people's dumpsters. How's that for name-calling? At least everyone's having a good time.

Seriously, Ms. Burns and Dr. Giuliano, I'm more concerned about the consequences of Development in Fremont than you think. My tenants and I pay 70 cents a square foot rent (up from 15 cents ten years ago) because of Development, and the property tax has doubled. The bums sleep under my trailer and light it on fire in the wintertime because of Development. Arrogant contractors block the side streets with backhoes and cranes because of Development. Single family rental homes are bulldozed to make way for $1,200 a month "condo" apartments which blot out the sun and whose tenants are forced to park in my driveway, my loading zone and my alley, and that's Development. And you can't turn left at 34th and Fremont. And speaking of our "beloved neighborhood," my beloved building, where I have hung out since 1962, will be torn down in the name of Development, displacing six licensed businesses, two artisans and a musician's studio.

So, Burns and Giuliano, your Fremont Sunday Market was displaced because of Development (but that's another story), and you're camped on the sidewalk in an inconvenient place. Market manager Hegaman is doing his best and wants to move. A key Fremont Developer supports the Market with one hand and buys land and builds huge, expensive buildings with the other. And you blame me? A Sunday boater?

I actually agree with Burns and Giuliano, but am more cynical. The ruination of the Fremont we used to know has already occurred through Development, just as Seattle and the state have grown. Land will always rise to its highest value. Developers have never seen a zoning regulation that they couldn't jimmy.

I know an old man from my shipyard days in the 1970s who was a Fremont native. He could name every business and family on my street sixty years ago. He said Fremont was ruined by 1960 and refused to drive through it, taking the Ballard Bridge instead. Now I know how he felt.

So listen up here, Fremont people: You may take the Fremont Sunday Market as a sop from a developer and call it the spirit of the Center of the Universe, but I don't. What made Fremont loveable was diversity and mixed zoning, a little like South Park and Georgetown. We had light industrial use side by side with single family dwellings. We had crummy (but affordable) apartments next to junk yards (not antique stores). We had scores of small businesses, many with ties to the marine industry. All that will be gone in ten years, to be replaced by something or someone who can afford $2 a square foot to live or work, and pay $120 a month for parking. Me? I'll leave and close my business and sell my boat. You? Try protesting under Developer Suzie Burke's window, if she has one. That'll do about as much good as accusing me of being rich. The Developers will continue to do well by doing good, and call it Fremont. But it's not.

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