EVERETT – City officials say increased regulation of certain types of nonprofit groups and businesses downtown is necessary to continue the city core’s revitalization.

Opponents say the restrictions unfairly target low-income people and churches.

On Nov. 17, the City Council started requiring food banks, social service agencies, churches, tattoo parlors and other establishments to get a special permit from the city planning department to locate downtown. The new regulation will last six months while the city studies whether to make the restrictions on such uses permanent.

After a public hearing on the measure Wednesday night, Joel Starr, owner of The Flying Pig restaurant and bar, said it’s important that the city attract more stores, restaurants and businesses to complete the downtown revitalization.

Starr, one of a handful of people who spoke, said patrons of downtown businesses like his don’t want to constantly confront homeless people and others who use social services.

“Those people need our help,” Starr said. “But what impression will that leave and what will a family think if they have to walk through that element to our restaurant?”

“It’s still kind of a fragile balance that exists downtown,” planning director Allan Giffen said before the meeting.

Some people are intimidated when they see large groups of people outside plasma donation centers and social service agencies, City Council President Marian Krell said. “Whether it’s real or perceived, I don’t know,” she added.

For example, she said, plasma donation centers typically attract people who congregate outside the building.

“That isn’t particularly attractive,” she said. “You see them lined up at the door waiting to get in. What we’re trying to make our downtown is a place where people want to shop and live.”

Kelly Oland, 45, of Marysville has been going to Biomat USA Plasma Center at Hoyt Avenue and California Street twice a week for 10 years to sell plasma.

“I’ve never seen any problems whatsoever,” she said as she left the center Wednesday afternoon. The ordinance, she said, is “totally, completely ridiculous.”

Plasma donation centers not only provide much-needed cash for people, they also help others, she said.

“We’re not just donating for the money,” she said. “We’re helping people who can use plasma.”

Jana Lindstrom, who spoke out against the ordinance at last week’s council meeting, said she didn’t object to increasing restrictions on food banks, social service agencies and other places that primarily serve low-income people.

“I can see where they’re trying to get a certain type of business that would draw a certain type of person,” she said.

But it’s wrong to include churches, she said. She doesn’t buy city the argument that churches create parking and traffic problems.

“Are they going to say no more theaters?” she asked. “Why would churches specifically be on that list and not theaters and not gyms and everything else? It seems very discriminatory.”

Starr said any place that serves alcohol is barred from within a few hundred feet of a church. Restaurants and nightlife are key to downtown’s revitalization, he said.

Mike Hinkle, a tattoo artist at Tattoo Evolution in south Everett, said at Wednesday’s hearing that he and his wife Jennifer were thinking of opening up a tattoo parlor downtown.

Hinkle said city officials have outdated stereotypes of tattoo and piercing shops.

“It’s not just sailors and bad guys,” he said. “I want to be part of this community.”

Reporter David Olson: 425-339-3452 or dolson@heraldnet.com