Rebuilding A Neighborhood -- No Longer `Rejected,' Judkins Park's On Its Way Back Up

Venessa Henry, who some call the "mayor" of Judkins Park, has watched through the steel-screened windows of her tiny grocery store as her neighborhood went from Rejected to rejuvenated.

"Ten years ago, it was miserable," Henry said. Calling itself "Judkins Rejected" after years of city neglect, in the late 1980s the area was full of vacant lots, drug-dealing and crime.

But now, "they're building a lot around here, there's a lot of new people," Henry said. "It builds the neighborhood up."

Though it began the decade as one of the poorer neighborhoods in the city, Judkins Park is now benefiting from the region's real-estate boom. As property values go up, developers and homebuyers are rediscovering the area's convenient location near downtown and relatively low land prices.

And Judkins Park, no longer rejected, is discovering the progress and problems of a neighborhood on the way up. As new houses and businesses pop up and residents like Henry look proudly on a community rekindled, some longtime neighbors are worried about losing their place in a changing neighborhood.

Judkins was first "rejected" in the late 1950s, when it lay in the path of the proposed north-south R.H. Thomson expressway and later Interstate 90.

The state Department of Transportation bought up houses, tore some down, and left the others abandoned while construction plans stalled. Urban-renewal projects demolished other old buildings, then

sputtered out.

"It was a disheveled neighborhood, pockmarked. There were a lot of abandoned homes," said Al Bianchi, who lives on South Judkins Street and grew up in the area in the 1920s and '30s when it was known as "Garlic Gulch" because of its large Italian-American population.

By the late 1980s, the neighborhood's vacant lots saw high rates of drug trafficking and other crime.

From this low point, the neighborhood's turnaround began with Block Watches and other community efforts to help police.

Next, nonprofit agency HomeSight took vacant city land near the I-90 lid and built two impromptu neighborhoods of modest homes, as well as other houses. These homes were then sold to low- or middle-income people, with down-payment help and financial incentives to stay in the home for many years.

In total, 49 HomeSight homes were added in Judkins Park. Two developments on Martin Luther King Jr. Way South straddle the I-90 lid park, whose trails, green fields and tennis courts residents say are another welcome addition.

Craig Berrysmith, a furniture maker and father of two who grew up in the Central Area, owns one of the HomeSight homes near South Judkins Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way South. He said he was glad to be back. "I'm happy, I'm rediscovering people" from his youth, Berrysmith said.

Locals say the drop in the crime rate and the very visible new HomeSight developments helped open the neighborhood to private developers, who are building houses on vacant lots and - said one resident - bombarding residents with solicitations to sell their houses.

According to Steven Wayne, an associate broker at Windermere Real Estate, homes in Judkins Park that cost $50,000 to $70,000 in the late 1980s are now selling for upward of $160,000.

Judkins Park's appeal includes a convenient location - within walking distance of downtown and the Kingdome, residents say - and a lot of vacant land and homes much cheaper than the nearby neighborhoods of Leschi and Madrona.

The rejuvenation has brought new residents to the neighborhood - a total of 57 new houses so far, including HomeSight and private development - and new money.

That has helped attract new businesses, including a Walgreens drug store, Hollywood video store and the international sign of neighborhood success - a Starbucks - to the corner of 23rd Avenue South and South Jackson Street. Starbucks officials say this was the most successful of 30 new stores opened in the Northwest in 1997.

The neighborhood felt so good about its future that three years ago it dropped the "Rejected" from its name and took the name "Judkins Park."

But the rejuvenation of Judkins Park isn't being applauded by everyone. Some longtime residents say the sense of community in the predominantly African-American neighborhood is being lost as new residents, many of them middle-class whites and Asian Americans, move in and older residents move out.

Pinched by rising property taxes and the cost of keeping up an older house, many longtime Judkins Park residents say they are being tempted to sell their houses and move to suburbs such as Renton, Kent and Federal Way, where they can get more house for their money.

"Any time you have growth, white people have more opportunity than black people," said Jackie Moscou, who is black, from her 24th Street Avenue South porch. "(But) do I mind having white neighbors? No."

Another issue confronting the neighborhood is the city's plan to rezone the area to allow mixed-income housing - developments that would include subsidized units along with market-rate housing - and low-income housing for the elderly.

Paul Crane, former president of the community council, says home ownership has saved the neighborhood, but fears a higher concentration of low-income housing in the future could hamper growth.

Still, older residents and new neighbors say they are hopeful that the neighborhood will become diverse rather than divided.