Will Ballard Eagles' survival plan fly?
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Once inside the dented metal front door of the Ballard Eagles clubhouse on 24th Avenue Northwest, daylight gives way to pockets of fluorescent haze. The permanent twilight accentuates a Nordic mural of Viking ships, snow-capped peaks and deep blue water behind the bar and draws the eye to the people seated inside nursing mixed drinks and cigarettes.
It hides the fact the place is nearly empty.
At a table next to the pull-tab machines and an old red telephone sit three members of the Eagles Auxiliary: Sibyl Brown, 83; Mary Korth, 80; and Cleone Christian, 68. Together they help run thrice-weekly bingo games at the clubhouse. On most days, they are lucky if 40 people show up.
Bingo isn't what it used to be for the Ballard Eagles (Aerie 172). Neither are the charity drives, holiday dances and Tuesday-night dinners. In the past five years, as Ballard has evolved from an old Scandinavian outpost to one of the city's hottest neighborhoods, membership has dropped by half, leaving the shadows to slowly take over the clubhouse.
Faced with a decline that has devastated fraternal organizations across the country, the Ballard Eagles decided to take a risk.
Next to the bar is an architect's drawing for the Ballard Eagles Office Building. Boasting shops, office space and enough room for a new Eagles clubhouse, the five-story building — to go up on the site of the present club — looks like a smart business move for a 100-year-old organization worried about disappearing. The plan is to lure younger members to the Eagles.
Some longtime Eagles greet that future with ambivalence, though. While a new generation might mean survival for Aerie 172, it could mean an end to the old ways. Younger recruits, for example, aren't likely to accept the division of sexes at the club, where women have never been full members.
But spend time at the clubhouse and a mantra will rise out of the smoky darkness: There is no other choice.
"We don't have anything here to bring in younger members," says Mike Lagervall, 53, the Eagles' manager since 1974. "They consider us an old-folks home."
'A war of attrition'
For much of the lifetime of the Ballard Eagles, both club and neighborhood changed at a common, leisurely pace. Then came the 1990s.
On Ballard Avenue Northwest, fishing gear and machine shops yielded to trendy bars, boutiques and New Age therapists. Real-estate prices soared. The Eagles were left behind. In the past five years, membership dropped to about 2,400 men and women. Only a fraction of members do more than just pay their $40 annual dues. The average age of Eagles is now 65. Members say 10 past presidents have died in two years.
"It's a war of attrition," says Bill Loffer, membership director for the International Eagles office and a Ballard member.
In his book "Bowling Alone," Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam writes that all the big clubs — Lions, Shriners, Masons, Jaycees — have lost from 12 to 44 percent of their membership over the past 20 years. The Elks have shrunk nearly in half; Moose Lodges are closing across the country. Twenty years ago, there were 1.6 million Eagles in the U.S. and Canada. Now there are barely 1.1 million.
Trying to halt the decline, Eagles clubs have added bowling alleys or trumpet expanded benefits for young families. In Spokane (Aerie 2), members can enjoy an RV park, swimming pool and ice-skating rink.
Tom Holland, director of the Institute for Nonprofit Organizations at the University of Georgia, doubts enough younger people will join most fraternal organizations to make them healthy again.
"The next generation is not interested in being Eagles," Holland says. "They're interested in coaching their kids' Little League teams, in building a Habitat for Humanity House, in pushing a cause.
"For the Eagles to survive they need to give up their old structures and assumptions and reinvent themselves. How many 70-year-olds do you think are willing to make that kind of change?"
Fewer members, more space
The walls of the Ballard clubhouse are fake wood, its floor part industrial brown carpet, part white linoleum. Bar stools and chairs are aging Naugahyde. At any time of day, the air is clouded by cigarette smoke. On the jukebox, disco rules.
The Ballard Eagles lost their original home on Market Street Northwest during the Great Depression. Around the same time, there was a schism — still unsettled — within the club. One faction founded the Salmon Bay Eagles (Aerie 2141) a quarter-mile away, while the other built the clubhouse on 24th Avenue Northwest.
In the past 30 years, the structure has had three major renovations, adding two floors in the back and increasing the space by 5,000 square feet. As membership shrank, the space became a financial drag.
The club considered moving to a smaller building. But rising property rates would drive the Eagles out of Ballard. With the help of Scott Clark, who owns an architectural firm on Ballard Avenue Northwest, a solution was found in an office building. Clark believes the new Eagles building will drive the way the neighborhood develops.
"We don't want Ballard to become just a bedroom community for Seattle," Clark says. "The Eagles are integral to the fabric of Ballard. And they're sitting on a valuable piece of property. This way, we keep them there."
The $20 million project — funded by a private developer — will break ground when enough office space is leased and take about 18 months to complete. It will have retail shops, 170 underground parking spaces, 100,000 square feet of office space on four floors and the Ballard Eagles, with a dance hall, kitchen, bar and restaurant open to the public. The Eagles will have title to their club and 25 percent of the revenues from the offices and stores.
Long tradition, lots for charity
Twice a month, the Eagles hold a meeting, starting the evening with a spaghetti dinner and finishing it with drinks. At five Seattle aeries, the night has been a tradition since the Fraternal Order of Eagles was founded in 1898 in Seattle (Aerie 1 is in Georgetown) as The Order of Good Things.
Eagles, best described as religious and patriotic, can hold any political belief but are not allowed to advocate overthrow of the government. The order pushed for the establishment of Social Security in the 1930s. Seven presidents — from Theodore Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan — were Eagles.
On a recent Tuesday about 60 members met in Ballard to discuss whether to allow men to wear caps at the bar. For 100 years, wearing a hat would leave your thirst unquenched. But now it's common for younger men to wear baseball caps indoors — so the rule has to go.
Through the smoke, members make their pitch for why people should join the Eagles. The primary reason is charity.
Every year, the Ballard Aerie donates between $25,000 and $50,000 (an amount that has also declined of late) to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Swedish Hospital, the Make-a-Wish Foundation, Alzheimer's research and anti-drug programs. Every year members decorate Christmas trees throughout Ballard. They sponsor baseball teams and drill squads. Members are proud of their contributions to the community.
They also are fond of their bar, which still offers a $2.50 mixed drink. Older members are as likely to reminisce about their parties as their good deeds. As late as the 1980s, a thousand or more people would pack the hall for events. "When I was young, I liked to dance and get hold of a good woman," says Everett Fletcher, an energetic 85-year-old who was first drawn to the Eagles because of the "tremendous drinks" bartender Pat Shinners made for 30 years until he retired. "Every night, I'd come down here, and the place was jumping," Fletcher says.
If there's a big group there nowadays, it's likely for a show put on by an outside promoter. The club rents out its large dance floor. People in their 20s and 30s will come to listen to a Zydeco band but rarely stay to become members.
Understanding kids these days for many Eagles is like trying to translate a new language when you know none of the words. "I'll go with anything to bring in young people," says Don Riebhoff, 72. "I don't care if they have to play rap ... or bebop ... or whatever. I remember years ago when I couldn't take the two-step. I can handle anything now."
But can they? New members bring new ideas. This summer, a Thurston County Superior Court judge thwarted the attempt of women in Tenino to join, ruling that the Eagles could exclude women from full membership.
Lagervall says each aerie determines its own policies and insists the Ballard Eagles don't discriminate. To date, he says, no woman has tried to become a full member. And if women want to in the future? "We'd probably have to let them," he says.
Fletcher worries that a younger crowd would ruin the club for the older members. "I don't think we could stand them," he says.
But Marty Kasko worries that some veteran members wouldn't give new ones a chance. Kasko, 68, motions to an electronic dart board installed a couple of years ago. One day she noticed a table was blocking the board. "The old-timers thought the darts were making too much noise," Kasko explains.
A good, old way
Off from the bar, with their drinks and a parade of cigarettes, 64-year-old twin sisters relax after cooking the Tuesday dinner. Sonya Post and Sandra Klepp want to lure young members to the Ballard Eagles like most everyone else. But when they talk about the new building, it feels less like a leap into the future than a grasp at a retreating past.
"I hope it's like it was way back when," Post says. "Maybe the young people can bring it back to when we were young."
Post sips her drink, then stirs the ice cubes with the thin red straw. "We all think the old way was a good way.
"Don't you?"
John Zebrowski can be reached at 206-464-8292, or jzebrowski@seattletimes.com.