Belltown Messenger

I am curious as to how long Charlotte Quinn has lived in Belltown and how much time she has spent at the dog park.

I have lived in Belltown for 13 years. The park at Third and Bell was completely taken over by drug dealers for years. It was a scary place and a blight on the neighborhood. Citizens were afraid to even walk by. There are many places provided by the social services in Belltown for the homeless to spend their time. We do not need to provide a place for drug dealers to do their business and spend their leisure time.

The dog owners wanted a place for their pets to be off-leash, since all the [condo property] owners could provide them with was a small deck at the most. The off-leash park has become a place for community in Belltown. The dog owners come from all different socio-economic groups and conversations are lively. It is not a place for the rich. It is heartwarming to find low-income elderly people coming to the park to watch the dogs and to participate in throwing balls, giving generous pets and pats and sharing in conversation with owners. It feels wonderful to watch my two dogs running around, playing and getting to know people in the park.

Does Charlotte think that the P-patch at Elliot and Vine is a selfish place for the rich?

Mary Alice Shea

I am writing in reference to your article "To the Dogs" in January's Belltown Messenger. I am stunned by the apparent chip on your shoulder, and the amount of misinformation that you gave in that article.

After I read your piece of work, I went to the dog park, and read every sign posted, and I did not find a single park sign that remotely said "Do Not Enter Unless You Have A Dog." By extending a great amount of benefit to you, I would say you are referring to the park sign that lists the rules and regulations for maintaining dogs behavior, just as another sign states how humans should conduct themselves in a public park, such as having a zero tolerance for drug and alcohol use.

That park had been a festering cesspool for the sale and use of drugs. These "homeless people" you refer to are well known by our Seattle Police Department for their frequent visits to jail for drug use, public intoxication, and prostitution. Often hard working, taxpaying citizens (yes, those who pay for that park) could and would not enter that area for fear for their life. Gunshots were frequent, and yes, one option was to remove the statue, because the "homeless" could hide behind it while shooting at Police Officers.

As to your reference that the park is for the wealthy, I wonder where you get this information, and why you would come to that conclusion. I manage a 60-unit community in Belltown, know the income of each of my residents, and I assure you they are not wealthy, yet they do own dogs, and utilize the park. I myself, being a dog owner who frequents the park, have had the opportunity to meet the people who use the park, and can say that very few are "wealthy." They are hard working, taxpaying average individuals.

As to the wealthy family who spent $45,000 on their dog, whom do you think you are to tell others how to spend their own money? They are the ones who earned their money, and they are the ones who should decide on how to spend it. Your audacity to think you should have a say and criticize how they spend their money is incomprehensible to me. If that article is remotely an example of your talent, I highly suggest you set aside your keyboard and find another career.

And if being wealthy is something you desire, then I suggest you do what most Americans who have achieved wealth have done. Roll up your sleeves and work your ass off. And in the meantime, stop showing your jealousy, it's very unbecoming.

Eric C. Kochis

Charlotte Quinn responds:

Yes, I think P-patches are biologically healing and intrinsically wholesome, and they fit into the character of this city; I also feel that way about city parks. Yes, I am a Seattle native who has lived and/or worked in downtown all my adult life. I also don't think that matters when a person is defending civil liberties of fellow Americans (tax paying or not). No, you shouldn't confuse my aversion to capitalistic greed with jealousy. Yes, I concede that the park used to be scary sometimes. There was criminal activity, but also some b-ball and community gathering. Like it or not, you're the ones who chose to move to here, it didn't move to you. And, yes, we have different ideas about progress in this city.

"No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." That's the famous equal protection clause from the 14th Amendment. For this and other reasons we don't kick poor people out of city parks, or the library, or other public places. I feel the off-leash park is a way to get around these citizen protections, and to effectively get the "wrong type" of people out of the park.

No signage says specifically that people without dogs are not welcome, but they understand it anyway. The basketball hoop is gone; signage is geared to people with dogs; the gate is daunting. This was doubtless the intention and it works.

Were it not for the former people of the park still congregating outside that fence, I wouldn't have written the article. But they are still there, while the occasional dog playfully frolics in the 13,000 square-foot area inside the fence. I find the whole thing very sad. People really did used to play basketball there every day. I remember. And they weren't crack addicts, they were black. And lest we forget, Seattle really was once an NBA champion (1979). I don't know of any major city with as few outside basketball courts in its downtown area.

Downtown, specifically Belltown, is and has always been a thriving den of inequity. I'm not sure this is so bad for Seattle. A place needs its dark, dirty, dingy area. It fodders new life. In the early '80s, because of the low rents and tolerance and, well, obvious criminal activity, it was as close to a red-light district as Seattle could get. As horrible as this was, the people knew each other and watched out for each other and it was a thriving artist/musician community with small businesses, music venues, art galleries, and cafes some of which remain today. Grunge was born (at least partly) here, because of the tolerance, and comradery and cheap live music venues of the Belltown area.

Then everybody wanted to live downtown to get the "thriving pulse" or something like that. But this meant destroying the charming, grungy, low-rise brick buildings and replacing them with high-rise condos. In my opinion it isn't progress at all. I don't think higher property values are really that great. I don't think a whitewashed city without poor people or hoops is really progress. Some wonderful music venues, arguably the birthplaces of grunge, have been forced to other areas due to noise complaints and rising rents. Chicago or New Orleans wouldn't have done this to their jazz quarters.

If we keep this up, I can only imagine what down town will look like in 20 years. Will it be wall-to-wall high-rise condos with expensive street-level shops, off-leash parks, clean faced smiling yuppies as depicted on those Twilight Zone-type billboards which advertise condos? This isn't a better Seattle, this is Alphaville. I'm a Seattleite and I want a red light district, or even a venerated and nostalgic "grunge music" area. "Cleaning up" the city shouldn't involve getting rid of all of it's local flavor. And getting rid of the homeless shouldn't involve ignoring them.

I feel this on a very visceral level. By taking a park from the poor people, you haven't solved homelessness, criminal activity or crack addiction; you've just served yourself to a 13,000-square-foot area of public land.