Neighbors who raised a stink about pungent smoke wafting from a downtown Edmonds restaurant into their personal air space have been asked by the Edmonds City Council to follow Mom’s classic advice: Try to work it out on your own.
The Council decided at its Aug. 22 meeting that rather than apply city muscle to the squabble, Councilman Ron Wambolt, who made the original complaint, and his neighbors, should try to reach a compromise with the owner of Shell Creek Grill &Wine Bar over smoke emissions from his wood-burning oven.
Wambolt agreed to monitor when and to what degree smoke wafts into his top-floor condominium at 530 Dayton St. Scott Abrahamson, co-owner of the restaurant at 526 Main St. with his wife, Cindy, agreed to check with the oven manufacturer to see if anything can be done to temper smoke output.
The complaint by Wambolt was the only written one the city has received, according to Mayor Gary Haakenson. Wambolt’s wife, Shirley; Terry Lengfelder, who resides in the same condo as the Wambolts; and Shirley Botwinis, who works at a nearby business, also complained to the Council about the smoke.
Wambolt, who moved to Edmonds from Woodway about three years ago, said he didn’t notice the problem until Lengfelder brought it to his attention. “I started noticing it this year … we had a hot spell and opened the windows quite a bit,” the councilman recalled.
Wambolt described the smoke as intermittent and worse when the wind blows southward.
Smells and noise are part of urban living, Wambolt conceded. Some, like transit exhaust and emergency-vehicles’ sirens, “are necessary,” he agreed. “But I don’t think people should have to close their windows just so people can cook with a certain kind of wood.”
Wambolt said after the Council first discussed the matter at its Aug. 15 meeting that this is “not an issue that can be solved by people going to talk to the (restaurants’) owners.” After Tuesday’s decision, though, he said he will attempt to reach a compromise with the Abrahamsons and if he cannot, will resurrect the matter before Council.
Lengfelder, a retired CPA who sits on the board of Northwest Hospital, said he first thought the odor was from “medical waste being burned in the incinerator at Stevens Hospital.” A former Shoreline resident who moved to Edmonds about two years ago, he admitted the day prior to the Aug. 22 Council meeting he had not talked with Shell Creek’s owners because “I thought since it was a nuisance, I should go to the city.”
Country Cove Used Furniture and Antiques at 529 Dayton St. gets “the brunt of the smoke” which “billows all the time” and drives away customers, said Botwinis, who works there.
Botwinis said the recently deceased owner of Country Cove had talked several times with Cindy Abrahamson about the problem but no relief was found.
Scott Abrahamson said he is unaware of anyone complaining personally to him about the smoke and said he is “baffled” as to why no one spoke to him before complaining to the city.
The first he heard of the matter, he added, is when Councilwoman Mauri Moore called him before the Aug. 15 meeting to ask him some questions about it.
“I really feel as a neighbor he (Wambolt) should ‘man up’ and say ‘I have a problem with you,’” Abrahamson said. “I really feel slighted. He’s my city councilman,” he added, emphasizing the “my”.
Abrahamson said he has received one complaint in the past two years over smoke from the specialty oven in the restaurant that’s been open nearly five years. In July, the city sent a letter notifying him of the complaint and requesting he “periodically inspect and confirm that the grill is being utilized according to optimum manufacturer’s specifications and recommendations regarding smoke emissions.”
The $20,000, igloo-shape oven burns virtually smoke-free at an excess of 500 degrees F., except when it’s fired up in the morning and closed down in the late evening. It burns apple wood from Eastern Washington. a wood preferred by restaurants using the ovens, Abrahamson said.
The owner said the smell is not offensive; Wambolt and Lengfelder labeled it “noxious.”
Both Abrahamson and city staff said they have talked with authorities at Puget Sound Clean Air who said they do not enforce restaurant commercial-cooking regulations.
Abrahamson said he’s willing to adjust the hours he starts and closes the oven, which vents atop the restaurant, to avoid times such as when his neighbors might be on their decks. But he said he can’t eliminate it.
“I’m not saying there’s no issue,” he said. “Just let me know there is one.”
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