Your Average Small Town -- Sure, Normandy Park Is Average. That Is, If You Earn An Average $67,000, Or Live In A $225,463 Home, Or . . .

-- NORMANDY PARK

You won't run into food banks, homeless people or urban blight in South King County's most exclusive city. But you will find big bank accounts and beautiful houses, with gobs of greenery and sweeping Sound views.

Let's see, for a piddling $3 million, you could have the Frederick J. Davis home. It's part of a three-acre waterfront estate being sold by the orthopedic surgeon and comes with a four-car garage, slate roof, two hot tubs, two kitchens and white oak imported from the Carolinas - all the essentials for fine suburban living.

Normandy Park is a place where, despite high incomes, you can belong to a beachfront community club for $25 a year, and have as a neighbor such well-known residents as retired Boeing chairman T.A. Wilson, wildlife photographer Bob Spring or King County Councilman Paul Barden.

It's a place of few minorities and greater-than-usual numbers of older people, and a place where residents prize single-family-home lifestyles more than apartments.

"You can still have a fox cross your lawn," says City Manager Jim Murphy.

The "Park," as some residents call it, is the wealthiest community in South King County and one of the richest in the state.

It ranks 11th in the state in average household income at $67,000, and stands 10th in per-capita income with about $26,000, placing it ahead of Bellevue, but behind other Eastside communities such as Medina and Mercer Island.

The city is squeezed between Des Moines and Burien and criss-crossed by winding roads and dead-end streets. Above all else, it's a private place. Until Marine View Park was built three years ago, there was no public beach access.

"The first thing I think about is it's such a beautiful setting along the Sound," said Jacquelyn Wieland, deputy city clerk. Wieland lives in SeaTac but has worked for the city of Normandy Park for 19 years.

TOWN HAD NOISY PAST

Normandy Park's outward tranquility belies some of the political upheaval it has gone through.

Ehman Sheldon, a former Army officer, resigned as city manager in 1990 after two years on the job after city employees charged he was too dictatorial and gave him a vote of no-confidence. Preceding him out the revolving door, after complaining about Sheldon's "authoritarian" ways, were the police chief, the public-works and planning director, and the city clerk/finance director.

A controversy in 1989 led to the resignation of Mayor Norm Strange, a retired United Airlines manager. Strange, the third mayor to quit in two years, accused council members of working behind his back.

Strange's predecessor, Vince Yeager, quit during a King County Superior Court hearing on recall charges brought against two Normandy Park councilmen. The case was thrown out for lack of sufficient evidence. Yeager succeeded Tom Dawson, who stormed out during a tumultuous council meeting.

Though Lillian Limage's departure was less dramatic, nobody ever accused her of being dull. When she completed her term as the city's first woman mayor in 1960, Limage was asked what sort of a gift she wanted. She answered, "a frilly, black nightie." That's what she got.

Limage, now 85 and blind, still lives in Normandy Park, and the city she helped start in the early '50s now has 28 employees. But many of them can't afford to live there, including City Manager Murphy, a Federal Way resident.

Murphy, who put in 20 years as a police officer mostly in California, said Normandy Park has its share of thefts and burglaries, as well as auto thefts and domestic-violence cases. He said he's also starting to see more robberies.

"There's an awful lot of people who make their living off criminal activity, and when they get into a community like Normandy Park, they see dollar signs," he said.

NO CENTER OF COMMERCE

But while some of the city's houses may look inviting to criminal types because of their remoteness or ritziness, the stores and offices are less than imposing.

Along with a bank, two large grocery stores, a couple of pharmacies, a gas station, a florist, a medical clinic, and several places to eat, there are probably fewer than 40 businesses in Normandy Park.

The oldest firm still in existence is Northwest Archery Co. near the XL Sooper grocery store. It was started in 1949 by Glenn St. Charles and also served as his house and the original City Council chambers.

"You could lay on the highway for half an hour before a car went by; it was wild out here," said St. Charles, now 80, who still lives above his archery museum and archery-supplies store.

All the businesses are along the west side of First Avenue South, South, the town's eastern boundary. Also situated there are Normandy Park's only apartments where Police Chief Al Teeples' officers walk a beat patrol.

This town doesn't readily welcome apartments, or any kind of development. In 1959, 500 residents signed petitions stating they did not want a large apartment complex or, indeed, any apartments - forcing the city to rescind permits.

GREENBELT PLANNED

The city recently purchased, with King County open-space bond money, a 27-acre tract which it plans to retain as a greenbelt. It won a bidding war with developers who wanted to subdivide the property for houses.

Many residents also objected several years ago when developers proposed showing off new homes in the Normandy Province subdivision through a Street of Dreams promotion. Even though developers said they would bus in outsiders, thus limiting the number of vehicles, community leaders blocked it.

"The people in Normandy Park do prize their privacy above everything," said Dee Towe, a local homeowner and real-estate agent. "They simply didn't want the traffic it would incur and the notoriety."

She recently sold a $464,000 home in Normandy Province to a retired Navy commander and his family.

Her sale came almost 140 years after William H. Brown, a Swede from Goteberg, built his log cabin for next to nothing. He was the first settler on Dec. 5, 1853, filing a claim for 193 wooded acres back when Indian trails were the only link with civilization.

Today, the average home value in Normandy Park is $225,463 and the median price of a home is $196,300, compared with $140,100 for King County. About 85 percent of the housing is single-family, and more than 80 percent of the homes are owner-occupied.

One of Normandy Park's most unusual homes isn't large at all. The 1,200-square-foot home was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1954, just one year after the town incorporated. It is one of only three Washington state dwellings designed by the late architect.

"It's a little gem," said Larry Woodin, director of the Northwest Chapter of the Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy. He arranges tours of the Wright homes to raise money for the national organization.

Built of custom-designed, pre-cast concrete blocks, the home is occupied by its original owners, William and Elizabeth Tracy. The Tracys paid $25,000 for the home but say they have no idea what it's worth today.

Tracy, a retired structural engineer whose first academic degree was in architecture, said people come from all over the world to see his home. He has often thought of turning it into a museum and moving elsewhere, but in all his travels, he said he never found a place to equal Normandy Park.

"It's the most desirable place I can think of to live," he said.

But then, people were saying the same thing more than 60 years ago. Sales brochures distributed by the Seattle-Tacoma Land Co. in 1929, the year the stock market crashed, urged Seattle residents to "steal away from the city for a brief spin on the highway to lovely Normandy Park . . . a great place for a home."

$25 A YEAR FOR CLUB DUES

Rita Creighton, the wife of Mayor Stuart Creighton, manages the Normandy Park Community Club, the city's hub of recreational and social activities.

Annual dues of $25 a year entitle most of the city's families to enjoy the club's 17 acres of property consisting of 700 feet of waterfront, woods, streams, tennis courts, a playfield and picnic area, and a community building known as the Cove.

"We have people from California who try to pay it monthly - they can't believe it," Creighton said.

Weddings and dances are held in the 400-seat Cove, including dances for middle-school students during the school year. The latter, which are chaperoned by police officers and run by local disk jockeys, reportedly are so popular schools have to hold lotteries before distributing the tickets.

Raised in Normandy Park, Creighton moved back so her children could attend Mar Vista Elementary School. Others who grew up in the Park also return when they have children, she said.

She's the co-president of Mar Vista PTA, which was chosen as the state's outstanding local unit of the year at the past two statewide PTA conventions.

"There's a neighborhood feeling," she said. "It's like living in some small town where everything revolves around the school."

About 200 people, nearly half the student population, volunteer yearly at the Normandy Park school. Staff turnover is minimal. But some of the teachers leave because they prefer a school with more racial diversity.

Not only is the city's population about 95 percent white, according to the latest census data, but about 30 percent of its 6,800 residents are older than 55, compared with 20 percent for King County.

The Creightons bought their present house two years ago. They were lucky. The first day it was advertised in the newspaper, prospective buyers swamped the owner with 47 phone calls.

About the same time, the city moved its offices out of a mess hall on a former Nike missile site, one of many that used to dot the Seattle area, and settled in a remodeled school building. The city has never had to buy public art for the building - Mar Vista students provide a steady stream of pictures for the hallway.

That blend of cooperation also will be evident when the city finishes building a park at the city hall site, including baseball and soccer fields, public restrooms and a walking-jogging trail.

City officials also are trying to make Normandy Park quieter. Several years ago, they passed an ordinance to restrict loud music after complaints about boom boxes in teenagers' cars. And, earlier this year they agreed to put in $50,000 for the Des Moines Airport Defense Fund to combat expansion at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

But Don Heinrich, an engineer who worked on everything from helicopters to the 777 jetliner before he retired from The Boeing Co. five years ago, is resigned to a third runway at the airport.

"They made up their mind a long time back," he grumbles.

On summer days, you can find Heinrich lounging poolside at the Normandy Park Swim Club, one of two private swim clubs in town. Setting aside his Reader's Digest while his grandsons splash in the water, he moans about the noise from revved-up airplane engines.

But in some ways, he said the town hasn't changed much since he arrived nearly 40 years ago. He doesn't see owls and grouse like he used to, but he said raccoons still slink through neighborhood yards rattling garbage cans.

Now, that's a sound he can tolerate.