Kirkland citizens need to step up | Letter

Published 12:44 pm Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Recent letters from Sean Hodgins (“Kirkland has changed for the better“), Chuck Pilcher (“Cannot afford to risk the city’s future“) and Roger Lowe (“City wasted taxpayer money on moratoriums“) point to one inescapable conclusion: Kirkland is changing.

With the annexation of “those people” north of Totem Lake, the upcoming relocation of the Public Safety Building out of the (former) Central Business District, and last but not least, the updating of Kirkland’s Comprehensive Plan, Kirkland citizens of all stripes need to step up and get involved.

Not just to stymie (similar to what happened to the scrappy developer of Potala Village), but to create a new Kirkland.

Sorry, NIMBY homeowners: This is not the sleepy bedroom community of yore, nor will it ever be, again.

Hodgins aptly described the old Kirkland as “a somewhat dull and dowdy, and dare I say, boring” hamlet. Now 80,000-strong, the new Kirkland deserves to have a “Waterfront Business District” and a “Main Business District” in Totem Lake!

We are one city now and should start acting like it. Banish the waxing nostalgic, the fighting of petty turf wars, the moving of the goal posts whenever a developer capitulates to Mayberry-style protectionism and threatens to actually build something.

Thanks to a clear-thinking judge, the Potala Village developer has survived running the gauntlet known as the “Kirkland Process.” Only Emmett and Floyd down at the Mayberry barber shop would characterize Potala Village as a “high-rise development,” one that should be shunned (“Shunned, I tell you!”).

The next question is: who will step up to upgrade or demolish the sad but persistent little businesses that remain strung along Lake Street, like weeds, just across the street from our beautiful lakefront parks?

Roger Clarke-Johnson, Kirkland