Comments on St. Edward State Park

I commented on the seattle pi board about this and I will say the same thing. Great idea, but the nimby's will win this. They always do.

I've never visited St. Edwards State Park and don't live near there so I have no personal stake, but the seminary is inside a state park, no? Aren't there valid concerns about letting private businesses operate within parks? What if Starbucks wanted to restore all the shelters in need of maintenance in Seattle's City Parks and put coffee shops inside them - and they put up signage at the entrance of each park directing you to the Starbucks. Would we be in favor of that?

It seems to me that parks should be free of commercial enterprise and that public, not private, funding should be used to maintain them.

I've been to St. Edwards and it's definitly used by the folks who live around there as a private park.

Not that there's anything wrong with people utilizing their area parks, but it is a STATE park, and the STATE can barely afford basic services. Parks are low on the list.

The Starbucks comparison doesn't fly, because we're talking about a single location that could become a destination resort for the park system. Park fees could be charged and become a revenue generator.

If people want to bitch about abuse of the park system, they would do well to look at the north end of Lake Chelan and the "resorts" in Holden and Stehikin.

I grew up right near St. Ed's , and went there very often. I've never been inside the seminary, though, and I'd love to be able to see a restored building, I bet it would be beautiful. But a lot of work would need to be done to make it accessible to more people. The road down to the park is narrow and winding, and wouldn't handle constant visitors streaming in and out. If that were fixed, and as long as the park was still accessible in its entirety (a lot of great trails through the woods and down to the lake there) without having to charge people for parking, I think it'd be a great idea.

I remember always looking at the seminary, wishing I could go inside and check it out. It deserves to be seen and accessible. I assume most visitors to the park feel the same way. I think the people trying to block this have the classic Seattle-area attitude - If it means more people and traffic in their neighborhood, they're frightened of it.

This is a horrible idea, and not every NIMBY objection is invalidated because it comes from those closest to the issue.

There is little or no greater public good to come from McMenamins' proposal, as opposed to Montlake's objection to any 520 alteration which would aggect the public good.

I grew up near St. Edward park and spent countless hours enjoying all that it offers, along with countless others.

Privatizing this wonderful place would be a huge loss, not just for the neighboring community but for the concept of public spaces in general.

This is a horrible idea, and not every NIMBY objection is invalidated because it comes from those closest to the issue.

There is little or no greater public good to come from McMenamins' proposal, as opposed to Montlake's objection to any 520 alteration which would aggect the public good.

I grew up near St. Edward park and spent countless hours enjoying all that it offers, along with countless others.

Privatizing this wonderful place would be a huge loss, not just for the neighboring community but for the concept of public spaces in general.

Would this be the damned NIMBYs that bitch and moan every time a condo goes up on Capitol Hill?

The problem is that public funding is nowhere near enough to keep the state parks running. There was a period a few years ago where the state charged a $5 parking fee at all parks, but that was unpopular and unenforceable. And in the case of St Edwards, there are several (free) parking alternatives to the lot next to the seminary. Realistically, we can expect to see more of these public-private partnerships with regard to public lands in the future. If this goes through, the Kenmore beer festival will probably get quite a boost. Nothing like drinking beer in the woods!

Soupy,
I don't understand why the Starbucks comparison is inapt simply because St. Edwards is one location, but I'll play along. Would we want a Starbucks right beside SAAM in Volunteer Park?

Regarding Stehekin, the resorts are on private in-holdings surrounded by public lands. It is unfortunate that those private in-holdings exist, but it is a different situation than St. Edwards b/c the seminary is not private property.

@4, you are correct that there would need to be a lot of infrastructure improvements on the road to the seminary. If McMenamin's was willing to pitch in on funding those improvements, it would go a long way to establishing goodwill, especially if there were some improvements to the running paths around that area as well.

In a way, the park has already established a private-public partnership in the form of Bastyr University. Granted, homeopathic medical institutions aren't quite as brazenly capitalistic as microbrew chains, but the university and the state seem to have a good equilibrium when it comes to the school grounds and surrounding play fields and running paths.

There are certainly people that have a NIMBY attitude towards St. Edwards State Park, but there are two proposals currently submitted for the use of the seminary building and it appears as though you haven't looked into the other proposal at all.

The other proposal is to restore the building to be used as a small 400 person high school with in the Northshore or Lake Washington public school district. The high school would have an environmental focus where students can apply the things they are learning in the park (think ecology studies, public education, conservation, horticulture, etc). The high school would also be part of a community and interpretive center.

This is a serious proposal put forward by a team of dedicated professionals - educators, architects, scientists, neighbors of the park, community activists, leaders in nonprofits. This proposal is also in keeping with the public nature of the park. www.seelc.org

I hope that you will look into this issue a little more before continuing to report on it. Many people have been working very hard on this.

".. brazenly capitalistic as microbrew chains"

brazenly capitalistic as weekly newspapers?

•••

And btw what would be wrong with allowing Starbucks to take care of shelters which are otherwise abandoned? We are so prissy. We'd rather leave a building to rot because it would be sullied by a money-making enterprise. That's fucked.

Either we spend the public money to take care of parks or if as a society we are too cheap, we find some other mechanism.

Now I don't know all the issues with the brewpub proposal and there may be some fatal flaws but I can't see -- IF we value the old St. Edwards structure -- why any legal enetrprise should not be allowed to compete for its use.

I'm all for turning the place into a giant german-style beer hall. Just don't let McMinimums take it over - famous only for their Fuck-The-Customers service and too-sweet 'beer'. If you've ever been to any of these places (which you have), you know what I mean. Sell it to Paulaner for fuck's sake, or someone who knows how to brew a non-ass beer.

oh please let mcmenamin's win. i've grown up in and around st. edwards - and since i was such a ne'er-do-well kid, i've been inside that seminary and it is Fucking Gorgeous. you all should see it. you won't, though, if it will be up to public funds, since that barely covers picnic table repairs and the tiny salary of some impoverished park staff.

who cares that mcmenamin's beer/service/snootery isn't top-notch. their money and their care to architectural detail is. you beer snobs can drink their root beer instead. it's lovely.

p.s. david sucher, i kinda wanna make out with you.

The perfect is the enemy of the good. If McMenamins doesn't get it, the seminary crumbles into the ground; it's halfway there now. That's what these fuckers want; they want the thing to rot away, so they can enjoy their little chunk of state land without disturbance. The other proposals are jokes; they depend on money from the state, or from the SCHOOLS? Oh, yes, good plan. McMenamins isn't perfect but their restoration record is unassailable. ANY other company would have turned the Olympic in Centralia into a plastic shithole; and the state would have turned it, or this, into a dead museum instead of a live place.

#3,

Have you ever _been_ to Holden Village? Totally not a "resort."

And, as someone pointed out, it was a private inholding that predates the wilderness areas. And not just any private inholding - it was a big, bad copper mine. When the mine closed, the town was donated by the mining company to the Lutheran Church to be used as a retreat center.

Mining vs. Lutherans - I'll take the Lutherans' impact on the environment, thanks.

#11,

Looked at your web site - interesting proposal, but I didn't see anything on there about how you were going to pay for the restoration of the building. I'm guessing from the articles that that is going to run into the millions for ordinary restoration plus the inevitable asbestos and seismic work on an older, masonry building. What is your plan?

umm, yeah, i'm thinkin the usual bake sales won't work, if we go for the high school plan...

we could always go for a brothel/ecology center to fund the retrofit and restoration. volunteer those prostiteens.

I've been to the park, and I don't really care what they do with the building so long as they leave the outdoor portions intact. Privatize the building and upgrade access to the site, and keep the grounds in public hands.

Oh, I've been to Holden Village, lived briefly in Stehekin, etc., and I'm forever disgusted by the fact that those people are subsidized in their anti-society lifestyles by the government bureaucracies that they continually defy.

But I do admit to having a local's perspective on that shit.

We've had a preliminary evaluation by an architectural firm and yes the building will take tens of millions to restore and convert into a high school and community center. That money will come from private donors and government agencies. Fundraising will take a few years, but their are many organizations and wealth holders that are interested in school reform efforts, small schools and sustainability. After the restoration the operating budget would come from the school districts and organizations that use the community center space.

I know public schools have a bad reputation in Seattle, but the districts that border St. Edwards are financially stable and do not have the structural problems that the Seattle district has. St. Edwards would be an amazing place for a high school student to learn.

Also - remember that Kenmore is a suburb that recently became its own city. There is no real town center and many have said that St. Edwards is the best thing about Kenmore. It is really is something that people that live there can be proud of and turning part of it over to McMinimums is not going to go over well. A community center and school could make the park even more central to the surrounding community than it already is.

It's going to cost tens of millions of dollars to restore? Wouldn't it be better to spend that money on, I don't know, actual education instead of a fucking school building?

@21 : Is St Edwards really considered part of Kenmore? It's pretty far up the hill; I would think it's still part of unincorporated KC. However, I do know the beer fest is affiliated with Kenmore, so maybe the McMenamins thing is tied more closely into Kenmore's reinvention plan than previously thought. They are getting underway with the strip mall razing at the north end of the lake as well.

To all the NIMBY retards: McMenamins is not only a great company to their customers and employees (Yes I used to be one, at the Crystal B'room in PDX) but they are excellent neighbors, and take particular care to make up for their impact in the community. I lived by Kennedy School, and they allowed any neighbors to use their facilities for free, waiving the normal fee. They took a building that was about to be torn down, and instead made a great business and community center and restored the building. Unfortunately, they also turned a profit, and that scares everyone in the NW. Thats why I left. Maybe if more people stopped complaining, the NIMBY'ers would have jobs and less time to sit around bitching and moaning.

Wow, I've never even heard of St. Edwards State Park and I've lived in the Seattle area all my life. I'll have to bike over there one nice weekend and check it out.

As for Holden Village, what's wrong with that place? As someone else mentioned, it used to be a mine for christ's sake! Surely some hippy Lutherans aren't as bad as a mine.