Most citizen groups don’t start with a mission as ambitious as changing the name of an area of town.
But that is exactly how the Uptown Alliance got its start back in 1999. The organization was founded by a group of local citizens concerned about the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood and one of the first things the group did was start calling the area Uptown.
"We had all been participating in neighborhood planning (with the city). We all lived here or at least had a stake in Uptown,” Jean Sundborg, one of the founding members of the Uptown Alliance, remembered recently. “Our mission was (and is) to help Uptown grow more diverse and yet stay sustainable,” Sundborg said.
The city’s aforementioned neighborhood plans which first engaged the citizens and precipitated the founding of the Uptown Alliance, covered the years 2000 to 2020.
And the Alliance, in which founding members Sundborg and John Coney are still very active, is still going strong, meeting monthly to discuss the neighborhood.
The Alliance also has projects and events, most recently a three-day rummage sale in late February. The charity sale was held in the empty building just south of Mercer Street on First Avenue which is currently being torn down as a prelude to a huge condo-apartment project slated to be finished sometime in 2012.
When asked if the Uptown neighborhood was changing drastically in any significant way Sundborg reflexively said she thought the neighborhood was “about the same.”
But she quickly amended her response.
“We’re aging. We (the Alliance) are 10 years older and yet the neighborhood is not growing older. That didn’t use to be true,” she said, agreeing that a decade ago there were many more seniors on the streets, residing in small apartments. The seniors are mostly gone and many of the small apartments have been replaced by condos, with younger residents and different concerns.
But none of those changes are stopping the Uptown Alliance, or Sundborg.
“I see the need (for the Alliance) every day when I walk through the neighborhood. I am one of those individuals who cannot just walk by a problem. And the Alliance has high credibility with the city and with the residents,” she said.
The Alliance has noted and is trying to address the hopefully temporary problem of storefront vacancies. Blockbuster is recently gone from Queen Anne Avenue and right across the street sits the sadly empty former Uptown cinema. On the positive side a dress shop, Le Peridot has recently opened in the old Underdawg site, just south of Pagliacci Pizza on Queen Anne Avenue.
“One thing that would be nice would be art in the windows of the vacant buildings. They do that downtown and it helps,” Sundborg noted.
Another issue Sundborg and the Alliance would like to see addressed is the increasing number of transients who, as the weather breaks, are becoming very noticeable on Uptown’s sidewalks. And older, local residents too.
“We don’t have any place where people, residents and transients, can greet and meet. What I would like to do is use vacant spaces as they become available and pick up and move when the space gets rented,” Sundborg said.
Sundborg’s dream is a place, staffed by volunteers and at least at the start only open a couple hours in midday, where people can drop in for coffee, pastries and conversation. She noted that older residents who live alone have often mentioned there is no such place for them.
“We’re trying to meet with city officials to iron out all the liability and security issues. And we want to try and involve the Department of neighborhoods too,” she said.
The city recently closed the lower Queen Anne Department of Neighborhoods office on Roy Street. The office was a victim of the budget cuts sweeping city, county and state governments.
Sundborg also noted that the Alliance via co-president John Coney, was contacted by Larry Pomada of Sacred heart Church, who alerted the Alliance to Morning Watch, a partnership between Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission and the Metropolitan Improvement District which tries to help residents sleeping on the sidewalks by offering them a warm breakfast.
“This started out downtown but could be expanded into Belltown and Uptown,” Sundborg noted.
For more information on the myriad of projects Uptown Alliance is involved in, or for information about May’s meeting, contact may be made by googling uptown alliance, lower Queen Anne or emailing John Coney at djohnconey@aol.com.
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