Valuable lessons from an active neighborhood
Published 4:45 pm Thursday, November 29, 2007
Citizens of Everett’s second-oldest neighborhood (and all citizens) won a major victory when Bethany Christian Assembly announced this week it was abandoning plans for a huge expansion after a two-year battle over the proposal.
Riverside residents stood fast in their opposition to the church’s plans to buy all of the houses on a block of Baker Avenue with the intention of demolishing them to build a youth center or some other structure. The church is selling two of the three properties it owns and is no longer interested in buying the rest of the block for future growth.
M.J. Donovan-Creamer, an active Riverside neighborhood association member, summed up the inspiring lesson: “We know that if you stand up, you get your facts straight, and you don’t back down, you’re formidable. We do have rights as neighborhoods,” he told Herald reporter David Chircop.
Neighbors feared the church’s plans would clash with the character of the neighborhood, which is filled with restored homes from the 1900s. They were right. And while Bethany Christian is to be congratulated for coming to the right decision, it took too long to do so.
Bruce French, business administrator for the church, said: “It wasn’t worth making enemies with people we’re trying to reach. We’re trying to help the city, not hurt it.”
The scale of the project, which would have included tearing down one of the city’s oldest houses, was obviously too overwhelming from the start. The church grounds at 2715 Everett Ave. is already about the size of 2 1/2 football fields. Taking over an entire street in an older residential neighborhood is just too enormous.
After protests, the city withdrew permission for the church to build an additional 24-space parking lot at 2619 Baker Ave., which would’ve required tearing down a house built in 1903 that has long been a seven-unit apartment building. Now that the church has sold it, the building is being renovated. When the church and an affiliated foundation were landlord of the apartments, they faced accusations of being unresponsive to the tenants and not keeping up the building. Which is another way to lose goodwill with neighbors.
French said the church could have done better at informing neighbors of its intentions.
“You cannot over-communicate,” he said. “That’s the lesson in this.”
That’s one of the important lessons. Others include the need to listen, to have empathy and historical understanding of where you are, where a neighborhood has been, and where it is going.
