A bite out of grime: Everett makes building owners clean up

Published 5:18 pm Friday, September 11, 2009

EVERETT — For the first time in a long time, 1804 Hewitt Ave. is getting a bath.

Workers suspended on ropes hung from the downtown Everett building Monday and blasted away years of soot.

Dennis Wagner, better known as “Downtown Dennis,” said he hired the cleaning crew because he wants to see a better Hewitt Avenue.

The property manager also doesn’t have any choice.

The city of Everett is getting tough on building owners as part of an effort to revitalize downtown.

An ordinance took effect Tuesday that requires owners to take better care of their buildings. No rust, no moss, no grime, no leaky roofs — and that’s just for starters.

The city also is asking owners to register vacant street-level storefronts and pay increasingly expensive fees the longer a property sits empty. Owners must dress up the empty street-level space, such as painting a scene in the window or putting up decorative screens.

The city has always required owners to keep buildings structurally sound but this is the first time its addressed exterior maintenance, said Allan Giffen, director of planning and community development. This ordinance is part of a larger effort to encourage commercial development and create a vibrant downtown.

“We’d love to see all these buildings productively used,” Giffen said.

The ordinance came from a suggestion from the Seattle branch of the Urban Land Institute, a global nonprofit land use organization. The city invited members of the institute to visit Everett in 2006. The resulting report identified problems downtown, including “speculative blight.”

A handful of what the city described as unmotivated landlords, especially along Hewitt and Wetmore avenues, were holding onto properties, perhaps because they had an inflated view of the property’s value. Most of these properties were vacant, unkempt and in need of major repair, according to the report.

The city wants those properties fixed up and filled.

The institute recommended several strategies, including what they called “the most readily available stick”: aggressively enforcing current codes and establishing a maintenance ordinance.

Now the city is doing just that.

The city wants to work with property owners, not be a heavy, said Kirk Brooks, Everett building official. His staff wants to work with owners to seek voluntary compliance and that includes grace periods when appropriate.

So far, his staff has sent property owners downtown a letter explaining the ordinance.

City employees are also taking photos of every building front in the Central Business District — about 350 — to establish a baseline for maintenance.

He guessed about 80 street-level spaces downtown were unoccupied. Under the ordinance, property becomes vacant after 90 days and in the next 10 days property owners are supposed to register empty storefronts with the city.

The fee for leaving a vacant space is $250 a year and it gets more expensive each year, topping out at a $1,000 at three years. Owners didn’t have to pay the fees if they were actively trying to lease the space or renovate it.

It seems to be this last portion of the ordinance that isn’t sitting well with some land owners.

If the city is going to collect fees, maybe the money could be put toward creating new landlord-tenant relationships, said attorney Russel Hermes, co-owner of a building on Hewitt Avenue.

Wagner, the downtown property manager and real estate agent, said he likes the maintenance requirements in the ordinance.

However, in a tough economy, it doesn’t make any sense to penalize owners who are already having a hard time leasing space, he said.

“I don’t get that part,” he said. “My God, there’s vacancies everywhere.”

Debra Smith: 425-339-3197, dsmith@heraldnet.com