EVERETT – An attempt to draw attention to drug dealing in the city’s entertainment district drew curious looks from passersby this week.
A downtown business owner fed up with drug dealers hung two white banners with the word “CRACK” scrawled in red paint from the rooftop of a Hewitt Avenue apartment building.
The apartment is accessible from an alleyway just a stone’s throw from the $71.5 million, publicly funded Everett Events Center.
“Why shouldn’t I be able to sleep at night without people knocking on the door trying to buy drugs?” said Ken Schoener, owner of Papi’s pizzeria at 1816 Hewitt Ave.
The apartment is an around-the-clock beehive of drug activity, Schoener said. Police have made drug-related arrests over the past month and the tenant is being evicted.
With views of City Hall and the Snohomish County Administration Building, the old building also is ground zero for an expensive government-led urban renewal experiment.
Papi’s opened in May 2005, hoping to cash in on a flow of customers drawn to a revitalized downtown.
But panhandling and street-level drug dealing have prompted some people to skip businesses on Hewitt Avenue.
“Their patrons aren’t going to come there if there’s open-air drug dealing,” said Everett police Capt. Bill Deckard.
On Tuesday, the Everett police reactivated their downtown bike unit, which had been suspended earlier this year to shift resources to regular patrols.
Deckard said the bike patrols are a good form of community policing, and they allow officers to interact with the public more than patrolling in cars.
Investigations of downtown drug activity, including the incidents above Papi’s, are being pursued by Everett police and other law enforcement agencies, Deckard said.
The apartment’s property manager has gone through the legal steps required to kick out a tenant, and now is waiting for assistance from Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies to serve the legal notification.
“I know that tenants have rights,” Schoener said. But because police have made drug arrests in the apartment, “you’d think they could speed this up.”
Because of a backlog of cases, landlords typically have to wait about 10 days after an eviction notice is issued before they can reclaim their property, sheriff’s spokesman Rich Niebusch said.
Countywide, four deputies process about 1,500 evictions per year, he said.
While the pending eviction is hardly out of the ordinary, it serves as a case study for a larger problem that continues to beset much of the downtown area, City Councilman Ron Gipson said.
While stopped at the intersection of Rockefeller and Hewitt avenues recently, Gipson said he saw cash exchanged for a bag with white powder.
“It doesn’t sit well if we’re spending all that money downtown and that activity happens in broad daylight. You can imagine what happens at night,” he said.
Marilyn Rosenberg, owner of Zippy’s Java Lounge at 1804 Hewitt Ave., said she takes a few steps to keep her business and customers safe.
Bathrooms are for customers only, and unattended children are not allowed in the cafe, she said.
The bohemian coffee shop with worn wooden floors and student artwork recently celebrated its first anniversary.
Rather than getting angry at homeless people, she said, she would like to see them get help.
“We have to get people to a better place,” she said.
Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.
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