FIRST WORD

IDEAS THAT
CUT THROUGH
THE BS




Writer House Menaces City-dwelling Suburbanites

by Doug Nufer
The Free Press

Illustration by Jim Gibbs

Art Ward at the Department of Construction and Land Use (DCLU) is on the verge of deciding whether a literary arts center will be permitted to function in a mansion at 1254 10th Ave. E. At first glance, the decision is simple. Linda and Jeremy Jaech want to buy Capitol Hill's $2 million "pink palace" that has been on the market for three years (and occupied for only seven of the last thirty years) and donate it to Richard Hugo House, a nonprofit foundation where writing classes, readings, seminars, and meetings could take place. The Jaechs would also endow afund to maintain the property and, after neighbors complained about parking, Hugo House arranged to use the Scottish Rites lot across and down 10th Ave. for special events. If their request is denied the site covering six city lots could well be sold to a developer who'd replace the unsaleable mansion with a sixpack of houses priced to go. In 37 years at the DCLU Ward can't remember when a conditional use permit has been denied, nor has he had to deal with many cases as contentious as this one.
"People in Seattle don't like change, and they don't like the unknown, and they don't like sudden change, so they rely on the city to protect them," he says, as he considers alternatives. He concedes that parking may be less congested with a literary arts center than with a sprawl of newly developed houses, but says the DCLU can't enforce after-hours parking arrangements. An institution is an unknown quantity, he says. Then again, Seattle housing code allows eight unrelated adults to occupy a "single family" residence. Is the house functionally obsolete as a single family residence or could a few changes coax a buyer out of hiding?
And then there are the neighbors. One group residing in little mansions of their own raised $40,000 to fight the location of Hugo House in their backyard. One of them insisted there is a parallel between this case and the case of the Seahawks possibly moving into the Montlake district's Husky Stadium. Another neighbor expressed intense dismay that her children might be kept from using the property's jungle jim. Their acronym PUNCH stands for Preserve Urban Neighborhoods on Capitol Hill.
What is an urban neighborhood? For stability, civic policy that safeguards or even favors single family dwellings seems sensible, but taken to an extreme this policy excludes many of the cultural advantages that make a city a city. An urban neighborhood, as distinguished from the suburbs, is crowded with restaurants, stores, theaters, and, gasp, institutions. PUNCH's complaints about parking, threatened property values, and their burden of three churches, a college, and a park's off-leash dog run must seem ethereal to those of us who live among halfway houses, hospitals, treatment centers, and dozens of other necessary establishments in what is known as the civilized world.
"Another neighbor expressed
intense dismay that her
children might be kept from
using the property's jungle jim."
Nevertheless, these residents who last year hosted a Norm Rice fund raiser have apparently succeeded in persuading some that their cause is legitimate. In November an organization called the Capitol Hill Community Council voted 45-16 against the proposed location of the literary arts center. Supporters of the literary center were invited to present their case, but PUNCHkins packed the room, eager to pass a resolution condemning the Hugo House permit in the name of 40,000 residents. According to CHCC President Tim Baker, members of PUNCH put the Hugo House permit on the agenda.
I think those people who live very close by obviously should be given more weight than those who don't live in the area," Art Ward says of the influence letters have on his decision.
Speaking for PUNCH, David Spain cites the institutions in his neighborhood as well as a regulation against allowing institutions to exist within 600 feet of each other. He stresses that PUNCH supports the Richard Hugo House, as long as it's located somewhere else on Capitol Hill.
"The main problem is, it's not families," he says of converting the single family house to an arts center.
Not that families won't be able to use the facility, but that a family won't be living there. Get it?
"I would say there's nothing at all surprising to me that people don't understand our position," he says.


[To comment on conditional use permit #9602399, write to the DCLU, 710 2nd Ave. #200, 98104. Comment period expires in early March; decision due April 1.]

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Contents on this page were published in the March/April, 1997 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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