Possible Bayview Garden Loss Enrages Public

Private and public interests are at loggerheads over a garden with large trees and bushes now bright with red berries outside the curving facade of the Bayview Manor retirement home on Queen Anne Hill.

Much of this beauty spot, a bit of green in the urban jungle, will disappear late next year if Bayview Manor is allowed to construct a separate health center there.

Some people would like to give the project at the foot of Queen Anne the boot. They contend that the public interest in preserving the parklike area should transcend the rights of the private owners to build on the couple of acres of property.

``I'm shocked. That's one of my favorite open spaces in one of the more crowded areas of the hill,'' said Kirk Robbins, chairman of the Queen Anne Community Council.

But officials of Bayview might ask: ``Whose property is this anyway?'' Executive Director Marshall Hjelte said Bayview already has a right to cut down a few trees on its own property if it wishes.

The garden is on the south side of the 10-story retirement home, which overlooks Seattle Center and Elliott Bay, and slopes down to a point where Queen Anne Avenue North and curving Queen Anne Drive meet. The point is a little piece of wooded city land that blends in with Bayview's garden, and this public property would not be touched.

The three-level health center, topped with a roof garden, would contain a 50-bed nursing home on one level, a 50-car garage below and below that a day-care center for 25 children as well as administrative offices. The day-care center would be primarily for children of the staff of Bayview, but probably would be able to accommodate a few other children as well, Hjelte said.

Construction would begin next fall or early the following year if Bayview gets the go-ahead, he said, leading to a possible opening of the building late in 1992.

The $3.3 million health center is part of about $9 million in expansion and modernization proposed for Bayview Manor, operated by a corporation on land leased at $1 a year from the Seattle First United Methodist Church.

Once Bayview residents needing nursing care were moved to the new building, a sprinkler system would be installed in part of the existing one and new plumbing would be installed throughout. Larger apartments would be possible and activity centers would be expanded.

Bayview Manor, which opened in 1961, is on the site of the mansion of Charles Kinnear, a pioneer Seattle realtor who willed the property to the church.

No position has been taken as yet by the Queen Anne Community Council on putting the health center in the garden space, but plenty of questions were asked about the project at a meeting this week of the council's land-use-review committee. Some members suggested that the center be redesigned so less of the garden would be destroyed, or that it be built elsewhere on Bayview's property.

Committee chairman Mark Goodwin said afterward: ``I'm still concerned that they are not doing enough to save some of the landscaping that's there. I don't see it as a desirable solution at all.''

Don Bullard, a member of the city citizens' advisory committee on open space, called the Bayview garden ``the best piece of open space along Queen Anne Avenue'' and said officials and residents of the retirement home should be in the forefront of efforts to save it.

Hjelte of Bayview said the garden is the only suitable site at the retirement home for the health center. Eight large trees would be cut down.

``We want to be sensitive to the community, but if you put a 50-bed center on property with trees on it, obviously you're going to lose some,'' he said. ``We are proceeding as planned at this point.''

There might still be room for compromise, however. Representatives of both sides of the issue will walk through the garden tomorrow, past the trees and where some rhododendrons still are blooming, to try to find that room.