<< Previous   of   Next >> Enterprise/CHRIS GOODENOW  (click to enlarge) The pink house, in Edmonds, is staying where it is on the corner of 6th Avenue South and Main Street. Photo taken Monday, Nov. 17.

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Edmonds' Pink House staying put

• Landmark home will be rented as a residence by corporate owners

By Chris Fyall
Enterprise editor

For months, conservationists tried unsuccessfully to save Edmonds' Pink House, but where they failed, a slow city government and a devastating global meltdown have succeeded: the landmark Victorian mansion is staying put.

For now.

Instead of the site of a new corporate headquarters, the home at 555 Main St. will be rented for the next 12 months as a residence, said officials with MaverickLabel.com, the Edmonds-based sticker and label distributor that purchased the house for $1.1 million in January.

The news is likely a relief to groups like the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, which in May listed the posh 101-year-old house as one of eight buildings in the state on its Most Endangered Historic Properties list.

The four-bedroom, four-bathroom home -- which is no longer painted pink, like it was for decades -- should be available for a yearlong lease starting soon, said Rick Kent, MaverickLabel.com's president.

The fate of the house after the lease is up in the air, Kent said.

For sure, officials with MaverickLabel.com never intended to own a rental property.

In fact, company officials hoped to turn the property into a new corporate headquarters, Kent said. Architects envisioned a two-and-a-half story, mixed-use development with retail space, office space and parking for the company's 25 employees.

Preliminary plans were even presented to the city this summer.

There, the whole project stalled.

"We are in pause mode," Kent said Nov. 17. "At this point, we are re-evaluating (the headquarters building). But we were forced into that."

Forced, because when the company presented some preliminary plans, city officials couldn't decide if the building was legal.

By trying to squeeze in a half-floor of parking beneath their building, MaverickLabel.com's architects raised interesting questions about the city's newest design zone -- called the BD1 zone.

The proposed parking area chewed into the height of the ground floor, which was mandated to be 15-feet tall -- for some, if not all, of the ground floor. How much of the ground floor was the question.

Finally on Oct. 21, after months of indecision, the city decided MaverickLabel.com's parking plan was legal. Ceilings need to be 15 feet tall for only the first 30 feet, the city council decided.

By late October, of course, the credit crisis was in full swing.

Loans were hard to come by, and MaverickLabel.com's position had changed, said Kent, the company president.

"What was best for us in December 2007 (when the company agreed to purchase the home), is not necessarily best for us in the spring, summer or fall of 2009," he said.

The company is growing, he said. It might need more square footage, or new requirements by the time a new building could open.

Slow government and tight credit have given the Pink House a reprieve, but they haven't necessarily saved it.

It is possible the Pink House will face the same fate a year from now that it did this past summer, Kent conceded.

That fate was never demolition. Aware of the Pink House's importance, company officials offered it to conservationists, requesting they find a downtown location where the home could be relocated, and pay for the relocation.

But despite months of meetings and hearings, the city's historical society and its historic commission could not find a new home for the Pink House. City officials said they couldn't help.

Without a local solution, officials seemed to believe the home would be sold to the highest bidder, who would have been able to move it wherever he or she wanted.

Many homes like the Pink House are sold, and moved intact to locations in the San Juan Islands.

Conservationists were resigned to that fate, said Fred Bell, president of the Edmonds-South Snohomish County Historical Society.

A year from now, they might need to resign themselves again.

The city cares about its landmarks, but it is not equipped to relocate them on public lands, said Mayor Gary Haakenson.

"We are just not in that business," Haakenson said Nov. 17. "We weren't in that business six months ago, and I don't think anticipate we'll be in it 12 months from now."

Reporter Chris Fyall: 425-673-6525 or cfyall@heraldnet.com