Hinterberger: The Commons Was To Be Fun

JOHN HINTERBERGER, now a freelance food and restaurant writer for The Times, conceived of the idea of a grand Seattle park - a Commons - four years ago as a staff columnist in the Scene section. With a vote on the park a few days away, he returns to our pages to offer his perspective:

So it all comes down to this.

The birth or the deathwatch of the Seattle Commons.

An idealistic belief that something as simple and innocent and virtuous as a big park for a big-hearted city ended up being trashed by the selfish, the cynical and the stridently self-serving.

What should have been an election of easy and maybe even joyful affirmation is gasping toward the sharp wire of a rancorous dead heat.

I sat in a back corner of a downtown warehouse, manning phone banks. Talking sweetly to the unpersuaded. Eating donated cookies. Voice reduced to a croak.

"Did you ever think, when you wrote those columns four years ago, that you'd end up like this?" a Commons volunteer asked.

"No," I said. "I never thought I'd have to persuade people in the Northwest of the virtues inherent in growing trees, open meadows and green grass."

I picked up the phone and dialed again. "Hello. My name is John Hinterberger and I am a volunteer for the campaign for the Seattle Commons. Have you heard of the Commons? Oh, I see. Well, do you have some questions or concerns that I can answer? No? That's OK. Thank you for listening. . ."

Ended up being a volunteer in my own army. Well, there's a certain justice in that. As Dan Evans laughingly muttered to me a couple of days ago on the way to the press conference announcing the Paul Allen gift of $21 million, "The next time you get a great idea, try to get one with a shorter lead time."

It was supposed to be fun.

As the election nears I watch a dream get translated meanly into a conspiracy.

I witness honorable people of all political leanings and from all walks of life transmogrified into anti-social demons.

I have read how the Commons was a heartless destroyer of a neighborhood; that it would bulldoze poor people into the streets - when the simple fact was (and is) not a single residence of any kind lies in the 60-acre park path. Not one. And that provisions for mixed and low-cost housing surrounding the park (600 homes preserved and 8,000 new housing units to be built) were part of the plan from the beginning.

I have heard that dozens of businesses will be ruined and hundreds thrown out of work, when, in fact, the Commons has a comprehensive relocation plan to fund moving and re-establishment costs. In addition, the Commons is expected to create 16,500 new, in-city jobs, expand the tax base and attract private investment and jobs back into the city.

Too costly

Some have fretted that the city can't afford to maintain a 60-acre park. Yet Allen has designated a $7 million portion of his $21 million gift specifically to fund a higher level of maintenance and security needs - forever. Keeping the Commons safe and beautiful will never cost the taxpayers of Seattle additional funds beyond the regular park budget.

I have contemplated and wondered as reporters and editors from all corners of the media produced verbiage that ranged from glowing to fair, from glib to slick, from smart-assed to sinister - and just plain ignorant. And because I am of the media and from them and forever linked to them, I have been at times alternately proud and ashamed.

I watched a longtime friend, the day after he wrote an oafish story, blush deep red.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

I expected differences; I anticipated and hoped for lively debate. But rancor? Over playing fields and flowers?

No, the shrill bitterness had nothing to do with playgrounds and shrubs, running paths for the fit or park benches for the elderly.

It had to do with asphalt and concrete, half-empty warehouses and car lots - and how some people make money on keeping them just as they are, snarled traffic and all.

Yet - even when their own business interests might be placed at possible, temporary risk - more than 200 South Lake Union business owners have signed on with enthusiastic support for the Commons.

Why? Because it is the civic thing to do. If you believe in community, you build on it. You nurture it. Because without it, we are all adversaries - we are all strangers belonging tonothing we can believe in or count on.

I wrote the first four columns proposing the Commons a little more than four years ago. Literally thousands of people came forward to donate their skills, their enthusiasm, their money and long months of their lives.

Response required

I had not intended - or thought it necessary - to write about it again. But a visionary, public-minded addition to our city is in jeopardy of being lost in a riptide of doubt and suspicion and misinformation. And that requires a response.

I grew up in New England, where every community has its town square or green or common, natural reminders of a more inspirational era in our American experiment, when some choice land was set aside - in common - for the rest and recreation of all citizens, regardless of what they personally owned - or didn't own.

It's tough, in these more cynical times, to appeal to anything beyond narrow self-interests. We live in an atmosphere of unhealthy mistrust of anything to do with government or City Hall. And we are made skeptical of anything as patently idealist as public spirit and community good will.

But in the final analysis these virtues, presently out of fashion, are the most cherished things we have; they are what bring us together and allow us, in common, to work together for the common good.

Twenty years from now, will any person - any parent - be proud to say, "I helped stop that park"?

The Commons matters, because this city matters and because the quality of life we leave behind us matters.

I came to Seattle 35 years ago as a student and stayed - convinced I had found the best city in America in which to live and love and work and play. Forgive me, if you must, for wanting to make it better.

On Tuesday, give yourselves a glorious park.

John Hinterberger is on the Commons board of directors.