Westlake: Where `Granola Eaters' Feud With `Suits' -- Disputes Over Mall, Pine St. Have Been Around Since 1959

PUBLIC HEARING TOMORROW ----------------------------------------- The Seattle City Council will hold a public hearing on the reopening of Pine Street tomorrow at 5 p.m. in council chambers, 600 Fourth Ave. On Wednesday, two council committees are scheduled to take up the issue at 3 p.m.

Pine Street again?

There have been many battles in the history of Seattle. To save the Market. To save Pioneer Square. To stop a freeway through the Arboretum.

But those battles ended. Not this one.

Once again, the city is polarized over whether to open a portion of a street that runs through Westlake Park.

Folks, it's only 286 feet.

Can't we all get along?

What is it about Westlake that stirs such dissimilar souls? Why do the stereotypical Suits and Granola Eaters get worked up over the same single acre, a park without grass?

What's the big deal? How did Westlake become the West Bank of Seattle politics?

To those engaged today in the Pine Street flap, the debate over Westlake has always been about who ruled the city and how the city saw itself.

To oversimplify, Seattle's history has been conflict between the mercantile minds, who came here to make a buck and build, making business the first order at City Hall, and the starry-eyed idealists, less driven by money than a desire to make a better life in a lost corner of America. Seattle has had its Henry Yeslers and its Doc Maynards. Its C.D. Stimsons and its Wobblies. Its Martin Seligs and its Victor Steinbruecks.

Seattle politics have generally been dominated by the mercantile class, but there have been flirtations with populism, most recently in 1978 with Charles Royer, who partly credited his election as mayor to his opposition to a Westlake plan embraced by downtown retailers.

The Pike Place Market may be the soul of Seattle but Westlake is the city's crossroads. It's where friends run into each other, where lovers meet, where tourists gawk, where bums bum. As such, the starry-eyed idealists have always seen that acre as something that could be better. With a little more open space. More trees. Fewer cars. Or better, no cars.

Westlake is also the center of what makes Seattle a city - a gathering place for trade. The business people around the square have long argued for a center that attracts wallets and stimulates spending. Westlake has the opportunity to reverse the erosion of shoppers to suburban malls. With Seattle's grand lady, Frederick & Nelson, gone dark, the spectre of a downtown in accelerating decline is frightening. The merchant class is now more determined than ever to have its way.

Nordstrom, the city's preeminent retailer, has cast the debate in stark terms: If the city doesn't reopen Pine Street, it will not spend $100 million to relocate into the old F&N Building. Without Nordstrom, the city has been told, we won't get a $350 million-plus redevelopment of a three-block area.

Nordstrom is refusing to release any specific evidence to back up its claim that the street reopening is critical to justify its investment.

Trust us, Nordstrom seems to be saying. What's good for Nordstrom is good for Seattle.

And that's enough for City Hall, where Mayor Norm Rice has switched sides and now favors opening the street. A majority of the City Council seems to be edging toward approval as tomorrow's public hearing approaches.

Here we go again

So now the battle is joined. The activists against City Hall. Again.

Same names, different faces. Westlake is a fight that's spreading to new generations.

The Nordstroms go back to earliest discussions of Westlake. Company Chairman Lloyd Nordstrom died. Now it's Bruce, Jim and John Nordstrom, his nephews and now co-chairmen.

The late Victor Steinbrueck campaigned for a true park at Westlake. Now his son, Peter, has joined the fray.

Howard S. Wright's construction company built Westlake Center, the 24-story complex activists didn't want. Now he and his son, H.S. Wright III, are backing Nordstrom and are investors in the F&N redevelopment.

Old hands in city politics have returned.

There's Paul Schell, now a port commissioner, dean of architecture at the University of Washington and a private developer. Schell first got involved in Westlake in 1972.

"It's amazing how long this goes back," he says.

City planners in 1959 proposed "a landscaped pedestrian mall" on Westlake between Pike and Stewart streets - and no cars. The idea won support from all the right people - the Central Association (later called the Downtown Seattle Association), the Chamber of Commerce, Allied Arts, the Park Board and the World's Fair Commission. But almost immediately the first squawk of protest was heard: Metropolitan Savings and Loan, which fronted Westlake Avenue, said the mall would attract bums.

A vision of balance

From then on, community activists, visionaries and even some business leaders pushed for something bigger, something that would serve dual purposes that, balanced just right, could coexist: a stimulating shopping center and a breathing space in the urban jungle. But something had to give as activists pushed for more open space and retailers pushed for more shops. Various ideas went forward that stumbled over opposition by one group or another. Lawsuits were filed. Planners planned. Judges ruled.

Royer's hope for putting the Seattle Art Museum north of Pine died of legal complications. He offered a compromise that included an office tower. Westlake Center got built, but no one got happy.

Westlake, the issue, dragged along as Seattle's downtown went through a dramatic transformation. Royer, the neighborhoods advocate, presided over the biggest downtown construction boom in decades. Merchants saw Seattle transformed into gleaming center of Pacific Rim trade. Activists saw concrete-and-steel canyons humble lowly pedestrians.

"Westlake came to represent what was left over," says Roger Sale, author of "Seattle: Past to Present" and the new "Seeing Seattle." "So much of the downtown has been given over to the mono-cultural office world."

From here, the civic tale goes from mere loud to nasty, with allegations of double-cross and back stabbing. Activists thought they were sold out by Royer, who allowed a 22-story building to loom over the park. Merchants felt sold out twice, by Royer and then by Mayor Norm Rice, who decided Pine Street was better closed than open.

The debate of 1994 is to settle scores, with each side taking hard positions to grab what was lost.

Schell wants to see everyone cool off and try for a new perspective. Let's take a look at making improvements along the entire Pine Street corridor from the convention center to the market, he says.

Steinbrueck insists he's willing to compromise by looking at ideas for limited traffic through Westlake. But to him, the importance of setting limits is obvious.

"For people who don't care or who think it's irrelevant, the unity between a park proper and a plaza, unifying that space and quieting traffic - you don't need historical perspective to understand that," says Steinbrueck. "But ask any merchant and it's the kiss of death."

"Unifying" space? "Quieting" traffic?

How can a City Hall bureaucrat make policy to satisfy such squishy language?

Nordstrom has its mantra. "Our focus is that there be a free and uninterrupted flow of traffic," says spokeswoman Kellie Tormey. She won't elaborate. She says it would be premature to discuss how you do that while traffic is quieted and space is unified. "That's clearly a city function at this point," she says.

Nordstrom is being coy, of course. It, not government, is calling the shots in this fight.

Sorting it out

So that leaves it to us to sort this out. We've been arguing for 35 years.

One of the oldest warriors for a public square is Fred Bassetti, 77. Before many of us were born, he borrowed ideas from European squares, drew plans, negotiated with merchants and activists, tried to create the unified space that would stimulate the urban marketplace.

Bassetti is baffled by Nordstrom's insistence that Pine Street must be open. Yet if the $350 million development, which he views as vital to the downtown, needs that street open, then open it, he says.

But not permanently, he says.

That can be discussed later. Leave that to the Steinbrueck and Nordstrom grandchildren.

----------------------------------- A CHRONOLOGY OF WESTLAKE -----------------------------------

1959: City planning commissioners formally propose a "landscaped pedestrian mall" in Westlake between Pike and Stewart streets.

1960: Voters pass $1 million bond issue for parks, including Westlake.

1962: "Temporary" Monorail terminal is constructed in Westlake Mall.

1969: Voters approve Forward Thrust bond issue, including more money for Westlake Mall. City contracts with architect Fred Bassetti, who favors a European-style piazza between Pike Street and Olive Way, closing Pine Street.

1970: Area retailers rebel at closing Pine Street.

1972: Mayor Wes Uhlman appoints first of many advisory committees, which produces first of many studies of Westlake.

1974: Bassetti heads another design team, which proposes a four-story project - shops surrounding a Mediterranean-style courtyard, with an acre park.

1976: City contracts with Mondev, a major Canadian developer, which draws up a major project that includes a hotel, offices, shops and skybridges.

Victor Steinbrueck, champion of the fight to save Pike Place Market, leads citizen activists who vow to stop the Mondev plan.

1977: Mayoral candidate Charles Royer sides with Steinbrueck, depicting opponent Paul Schell as the "downtown candidate" because of his advocacy of the Mondev plan.

1978: Mayor Royer comes up with his own plan - smaller, with more open space. The gimmick: Include a new art museum, and pay for it with a mix of public and private money.

1980: Courts reject public-private financing plan for Westlake. Art museum pulls out.

1982: Royer bypasses a local development team and opts for the Rouse Co. of Maryland to put together a new Westlake plan. Activists pressure Rouse to rework its design to shrink buildings and create a larger mall.

1987: Pine Street closes for Metro bus-tunnel construction, reopens for Christmas shopping and closes again for more construction.

1988: Pine Street reopens. Westlake Center opens.

1989: Brick pavers buckle from rain damage. Street closes until repairs are made. Activists push for permanent closure. The City Council decides to close street when bus tunnel opens in 1990.

1990: Tunnel opens and street closes. Mayor Norm Rice vetoes City Council ordinance that would open Pine Street to electric buses.

1994: Developer Jeffrey Rhodes announces $350 million redevelopment of old Frederick & Nelson building and other Westlake properties. Nordstrom says it can't move into F&N building unless Pine Street is reopened. Rice agrees.

Peter Steinbrueck, son of Victor, joins the opposition to opening the street.