Burien Knows The Pain Of Sprawling Airport

Unless Puget Sound planners find a suitable site for a new regional airport, the Port of Seattle will expand Seattle-Tacoma International Airport by building the long-disputed third runway. The debate over expansion is not new, of course. Before the third runway, a second runway was planned, protested, and finally built. In that fight, as in this one, benefits of economic development for the region were weighed against anticipated impacts on the airport's neighbors. This commentary by a South King County resident describes one woman's experience with the side effects of development. -------------------------------------------------------------------

I get seething mad when I go to port-sponsored meetings and men in three-piece suits carrying leather briefcases tell me that we must build the third runway to ensure jobs and prosperity. It's my home they're talking about ruining. Some people think we just better adjust to it. With progress, they seem to say, you always have to pay a price.

Let's look at the case of my mother, who has often paid the price of progress.

In 1955, we were living in the little house she had had built when my father died, which we'd already had to move once when water flooded the basement. In back of the house, she planted a garden, harvesting tomatoes, green beans, shell beans, carrots, beets, peas, potatoes and the sweetest corn I've ever tasted. We sold the produce at our vegetable stand. Around the house bloomed purple, orange and maroon gladiolas, dahlias, carnations and Sweet Williams. My sister Angie and I contributed to the family finances by working at the produce stand and peddling bunches of flowers for 25 cents at the then Burien Garden apartments.

Behind the apartments, west of our property, was a long hill that we slid down when it snowed, in flattened cardboard boxes. Past that hill was the trail that led through the woods to "The Sound," now known as Seahurst Park. In those days, there was no road - just a trail that followed a stream downhill. We captured polliwogs in glass jars and even my over-protective mother didn't have to worry about us going to the Sound alone. There wasn't any danger to worry about.

My mother made a living off her 2 1/2-acre plot of ground because she worked like a woman possessed and because she was a thrifty person. Some might call her miserly; she saved the string from year to year to tie her peas around the wooden stakes; we didn't have toys, and one Christmas that I particularly remember, my only present was a winter hat which I picked out for myself for $2.98 at Penney's.

We thought we were settled, until hundreds of families moved into the apartments, attracted by the cheap rent. 1950's south-end Seattle had begun to grow.

The school district contacted my mother. They had to have a new school. They must have my mother's property - it was the best property, it was convenient, they would have it. No, she couldn't fight it. We would have to adjust to progress. Sorry, you'll have to move.

My mother pleaded and cried, to no avail. When the school-district official came to apologize, she ordered him off her property.

Because we didn't have the money to build a new house, she had our two-bedroom house moved again, this time by movers who promised a lower charge, but left us up on blocks for two months without plumbing. Finally, though, we settled in. My mother had a garden. There was a sign in front that my sister Angie made, that said: "Flowers for Sale." We lived there until 1961, when heavy traffic on Ambaum forced us to move.

By that time, she had sold the front part of her original property and could build a new house. I remember we looked for a long time, for the right piece of property: a quiet neighborhood, space for a garden, close to the bus, at a price she could afford.

She hired an old friend to build a rambler with a huge living room and an 18-foot hallway behind the living room down which my nephews loved to run. The bedrooms had built-in wardrobe closets, and chocolate-trimmed oatmeal ceramic tile lined the bathroom walls, the kitchen counters and the window sills. The dining area was large enough to keep her dining room table extended to its full length all the time. She had a spacious kitchen befitting an Italian woman who cooked and canned, with three breadboards, flour and sugar bin drawers and a lazy Suzan in one corner cupboard. There was a big backyard and woods and trees in the lot next door. The airport was a few miles away, but planes didn't fly overhead and we could barely hear them.

The area grew. The hill above my mother's house had blocks of new ramblers in the mid-price range that people kept up with green lawns. It was peaceful and safe, with a rural feel. Burien, then, was a part of Seattle, where high-school students ranked among the highest in the state in college-entrance exams. Retail space in Burien was filled. You could walk at night without fear. It was like the Seattle of those days - undiscovered.

Then, gradually, more and more planes flew over. The second runway was built, along with the tall orange towers with lights at the top to show the way for night planes. The towers were built within a mile of my mother's house. Over time, air traffic and noise increased.

The people of my mother's neighborhood had community meetings, and complained to the port. "We don't like all the noise," they said.

If you don't like the noise, move, said the port.

"We like it here, we don't want to move."

Then the port said it must have a "free zone" so that, if there's an accident, planes won't crash into homes. Of course, the people were outraged. They said, let's fight this. We can't let them take our homes. The noise is getting worse all the time. Our kids can't study.

When someone called on the phone and a plane roared over, which became more and more frequent, you had to tell the caller to wait until the plane passed. After a couple of years of planes thundering over her house, the walls of her lovely home cracked.

The people fought to keep their homes: they argued, they filed lawsuits, they cried. In the end, nothing they did mattered. Sunset Junior High closed. Glacier High School closed. People moved from the area. Those who moved early got better prices for their homes. Many had a hard time selling. Who would want to own a home in that neighborhood?

My mother didn't want to leave. But people were emptying the neighborhood. She was afraid to stay there alone. Everyone was unsatisfied with the price of their homes. They couldn't find comparable houses or property with what the port offered them.

My mother looked and looked for a similar house, with the custom features of her own, but if a house like hers existed, she couldn't find it. She even thought of moving it, but it was so wide it would have to be cut in half.

"Your house will never be the same," said the mover she consulted. "There'll be cracks in the walls, the roof will leak, and the floor will creak where it was cut."

This she couldn't face. And so she took the port price, with tears in her eyes and rage that spills into new tears even now, 16 years later.

She found a lot and had a house built, inferior in quality to her other house, but it was all she could afford with what the port gave her. Here, she thought, the airport will never come. After all, it's Seahurst, the best neighborhood, next to Normandy Park, in the south end.

Burien changed. The Burien Garden apartments (now the Seahurst Manor) were no longer home to hundreds of children. Burien Gardens Elementary, the school which had ousted my mother from her home, closed. After a few years of being empty, it became a senior center.

My mother never passes either former property without saying, "There it is . . . Managgia!" she swears in Italian. She remembers the school district official who brought the papers forcing her to give up her land, and curses. She remembers how the port didn't want to pay her relocating costs.

I live in Seahurst now and have my own simple house. I bought my house here because I love Burien. My mother lives a few blocks away, as does my sister.

The wasteland where my mother's house used to be is spooky and foreboding; no one in their right mind would walk around out there, day or night. The "free zone" is being bought out by industries.

More houses are being removed.

Crime is up. There's gang activity. Students in the local high school don't score in the upper third anymore. Burien has deteriorated. There are more empty retail spots than any of us care to look at as we drive past.

The port says expanding the airport is the only alternative. If you want jobs, you must sacrifice; it's a pity it's you people in the south end, they say. Their unspoken message is: progress is more important than peoples' homes.

I say it's too big a price to pay, for the supposed prosperity they promise will come with the third runway.

Let's not let the port create another "free zone" over Burien and Normandy Park. Let's not watch them pull down the old bricks of Highline High School that was just rebuilt for a million dollars.

Let's not settle for a solution which could make us jump from ranking sixth to first in having the nation's worst traffic problems.

We don't have to let the same thing happen as with the second runway.