By Peggy Sturdivant

At 10 a.m. on a Thursday morning a librarian unlocked the new White Center Library where I was attending a meeting. A bit stunned by the glass, vaulted ceilings and bold art and glass I was delighted to see something familiar…a stack of the just delivered Westside Weeklies with my column on the back page.

In my insular focus on Ballard I never gave much thought to the paper’s other neighborhoods. In a new library where I felt like a stranger I realized my ignorance of the larger community, one that is glorious and challenging in its ethnic diversity. White Center, Burien/Highline, SeaTac, Des Moines, West Seattle…by dint of cutting printing costs in an effort to keep publishing we’re now linked in old-fashioned newsprint.

“I used to read you,” say people in Ballard, many unaware the Ballard News-Tribune still exists. But in the last 20+ months I’ve been hearing from new readers like Carol Ellis and West Seattle subscriber Karl Krull who shared that he is still waiting for a response from Governor Inslee’s office with the simple question, “Are you committed to buying local?”

As part of Seattle Green Spaces Coalition I have been in Seattle branch libraries for the first time: High Point, Southwest, Delridge, and coffee meetings in Beacon Hill and Seward Park. I have visited former Seattle City Light substations outside of Ballard, reveling in Delridge Neighborhood Development Association’s acquisition of one to create a Wetlands Stewardship Partnership with nearby schools. Meanwhile the Urban Homestead Foundation is fundraising to acquire the Dakota Substation across from the new Genesee Hills School in hopes of a gathering place and community education center based on agriculture.

But the biggest revelation for me has been White Center. In January when the City of Seattle announced potential sale plans for 33 acres of publicly owned land by White Center I barely knew where it was. Myers Way Parcels were just a shape on a diagram on a city website. Then I made my 1000th trip to the airport and noticed the exit as for the first time. Myers Way/White Center off of 509, the lush greenbelt between downtown and the airport exit in Burien. Just like seeing the Westside Weekly in the library I realized, I’ve been there, I’m already there.

Speaking from Ballard with its spike in housing costs and development boom I want to warn the south end, you’re next.

The City of Seattle once again talks of annexing White Center, yet is weak on informing them of changes that could greatly affect them, for example the recommended sale of 33 acres abutting neighbors including White Center, their own renters in SHAG housing or King County’s mixed-use housing development, Greenbridge. As a local resident said of the proposal to sell the flat, middle section, “ “It would be like putting a Lowe’s in the middle of Seward Park.”

White Center and areas to the south still have land, some of it like Myers Parcels still zoned for industrial in an area with already poor air quality. They have families not yet priced out. They are about to experience the boom that is imploding the City of Seattle while growth explodes. The gaps in infrastructure and disconnect between departments can’t be temporarily plugged. At this point the new Equity & Environment Initiative is only a phrase and not a guideline for departments that issue permits and sell property without regard for its value as open space rather than built. Social and environmental equity has always been an issue for the neighborhoods with the most people of color.

And when the City of Seattle’s Financial Administrative Services (FAS) was supposed to send notices to neighbors within 1000 feet of the Myers Way Parcels they forgot many renters and missed homeowners. Over 50% of the community doesn’t list English as a first language but the notices were only in a real estate language that I have trouble deciphering.

When the city finally did schedule a public meeting on Myers, with two weeks notice, the agenda didn’t include an opportunity for public comment or a chance to hear from many of the nearby community leaders. The designated FAS contact, Daniel Bretzke assured the packed conference room at the Fire Department’s Joint Training Facility by Myers about comments, “They’ll all be on our website.”

I may not know their streets but I do know this about readers in Ballard, West Seattle, Highline, Burien, White Center…they don’t all have computers. They don’t necessarily “do” the Internet or email. They are relying on information from their church, social club, their neighborhood paper, because it hasn’t been mentioned in The Seattle Times. Good luck making or finding comments on the city website.

White Center has been off the radar for too many for too long when it comes to creating jobs and a healthier environment for its diverse population. As Sili Suvasa, Executive Director of White Center Community Development Association said at the FAS meeting to a mostly white audience. “When we meet at the CDA it’s like a U.N. meeting. Let us be part of the solution. Help us elevate our community’s voices. Ask families what they need.”

Hello White Center. I want to hear you. In order to create a healthy region we all need to hear King County and unincorporated North Highline. We need to be Top Hat and South Park and Highland Park. We need to be Ballard and West Seattle, Highline and Burien. We need to be White Center, because as I learned at the new King County Library, we’re really all there already. We may speak 70 languages but for now we need to be able to communicate as one, elevating one another’s voices.

To comment on the proposed sale contact Daniel.Bretzke@seattle.gov and read comments to date here:
http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/FAS/RealEstateServices/Pro…

Reach Peggy at peggysturdivant@gmail.com