Mary Zuanich loves downtown Everett, especially Colby Avenue with its block of chic stores.
She not only shops on Colby, Zuanich enjoys cooking classes at J. Matheson Kitchen &Gourmet.
“And I like her,” said Zuanich, 68, who lives with her husband, Andy, in Everett’s Lowell neighborhood.
Her? I didn’t need to ask. Zuanich meant Judy Matheson, who opened her original shop, J. Matheson Gifts, at 2615 Colby Ave., in 1991. Her kitchen store, a couple doors to the north, is a newer addition to the block that includes Pave Specialty Bakery, Burkett’s women’s clothing store and Erickson’s Jewelers.
I like her, too. In the 16 years I’ve been her customer, Judy Matheson has never failed to be friendly, helpful and interested in what I’ve needed.
Matheson has done as much as anyone to bring life to a downtown once dead. It wasn’t that long ago I wouldn’t have felt safe walking alone on parts of Hewitt Avenue. What’s so much better now began with Matheson’s faith in downtown.
Zuanich and I both like her. We just don’t agree with her.
In a Herald story Tuesday, Matheson and several neighboring shop owners recently voiced strong opposition to plans by Catholic Community Services Northwest to move a drug counseling clinic from Pacific Avenue to an office building at 2601 Wetmore Ave.
J. Matheson Gifts and the other Colby shops would share an alley with the counseling office.
While they appreciate the work Catholic Community Services is doing, they worry about the center’s proximity to two schools, Immaculate Conception/Our Lady of Perpetual Help school and Everett High School.
The Pacific Avenue clinic now serves about 300 teens and adults with counseling services each year. Many are referred by drug court or Child Protective Services.
“Let’s give everybody a chance,” said Zuanich, who believes the clinic should be located near the shops. Her take is that there’s no problem until there’s a problem.
“And if something happens, and this is a detriment, we would all stand behind the shop owners to protest that. We won’t let that happen. Colby is too important.”
Lora Miner works in Edmonds but is keenly interested in the Everett dispute. She’s been where the addiction clinic clients are today.
“On Monday, I’ll be 16 years clean,” said Miner, executive director for the Center for Counseling &Health Resources Inc., a private facility founded by Dr. Gregg Jantz. The Edmonds-based center treats people for substance abuse, depression, eating disorders and other issues.
“When you face up to what you’ve done, that’s who shows up at a counseling center,” said Miner, who was a cocaine user when she went into treatment 16 years ago. The shop owners, Miner said, “should be sending them fruit baskets and saying keep up the good work.”
Drug addicts are everywhere, Miner said.
“They’re in doctors’ offices and hospitals giving you medication. They’re in your school and in your family,” Miner said. “There is no face to addiction. I was disappointed to hear people so judgmental. It’s an illness. I lived it. I got into trouble, and the legal system saved my life.”
Heidi Sawdon has her own issues with downtown Everett but agrees with Zuanich that the city ought to be accepting.
“There’s a kind of stereotyping of a certain type of person,” Sawdon said.
The 31-year-old Everett woman is a manager at a local Starbucks, but she also runs a business, Hotrod Heidi’s Vintage Closet. She sells vintage clothing at hot-rod and motorcycle shows.
Her husband, Matt Sawdon, runs a tattoo shop in Everett, the Sunken Ship. The couple live in the View Ridge area and have two children.
They’d like to open a vintage clothing store and tattoo shop downtown, but rules enacted by the Everett City Council prohibit those uses in the city’s core. “What’s happening now, basically they’re trying to gentrify,” she said.
Sawdon finds it ironic that a city that pushed for a Navy homeport would ban tattoo parlors downtown. “Rich people come here,” she said of her husband’s tattoo shop, which is on Everett Avenue east of Broadway. “Aesthetically, I wanted an art deco building downtown. I wanted to break the stereotype.”
No one wants the bad old Everett back again. There were years when downtown was scary. Now, there’s something else to fear. Wash away the life, it won’t be a city. A newly antiseptic place, it will only look like one.
Zuanich is right. Colby is for all of us.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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