'Most everyone in a neighborhood that includes the Seattle Center has heard of the Queen Anne Community Council (QACC), and the organization has weighed in on numerous, sometimes-contentious issues over the years.
But does the QACC really make a difference? Board member Jim Smith - who has served on the council for around 35 years - thinks so. "When they get their act together, they're fairly influential," he said.
For example, Smith added, the council - in conjunction with the Magnolia Community Club - successfully torpedoed a Port of Seattle proposal several years ago to set up a container-handling facility at Terminals 90 and 91.
Over the years, the QACC has also been able to temper Seattle Pacific University's urge to grow its campus in Queen Anne, he said of another example.
However, there are limits to the community council's influence, he conceded. That's not uncommon, according to Smith. "Probably most community organizations will feel their leverage with the city isn't what it should be."
The leverage also depends on the political climate at City Hall. "Some administrations within the city are more sympathetic to community groups than others," he said. Mayor Greg Nickels' administration, for example, gets poor marks in that department, according to Smith and many other citizen activists.
QACC board member John Coney agrees. "I don't think there's much rapport [with Nickels], and vice versa," he said. Furthermore, the community council these days rarely hears from the heads of different city departments, he said. "It didn't use to be that way."
The Seattle City Council, by contrast, is more willing to listen to community concerns, according to Coney, who has been a QACC board member for around nine years. "For a community council, that's probably a more stra-tegic place to target your influence."
Indeed, city council member Tom Rasmussen - a former QACC board member himself - credits the neighborhood council members with rallying against an unsuccessful city proposal to build a new skateboard park on the site of the DuPen Fountain in the Seattle Center.
In the early 1990s, the QACC also had to deal with the city's Comprehensive Plan, which was designed to focus growth in a series of so-called Urban Villages, such as the area around upper Queen Anne Avenue, and in Urban Centers, such as the one in Lower Queen Anne.
In exchange for taking on more density, neighborhoods were supposed to receive amenities such as more open space. "Now they're kind of going back and revisiting that whole thing," Smith said of the city.
Not everyone thought Urban Villages were such a great idea, he added, mentioning a group calling themselves the Friends of Queen Anne as an example. The organization warned that the Comprehensive Plan spelled doom for entire single-family neighborhoods. "I kind of came down in their corner," Smith said.
The Comprehensive Plan also sparked the formation of another neigh-borhood group, the Uptown Alliance, which renamed the Urban Center at the bottom of Queen Anne Hill Uptown.
Smith isn't surprised. "There's a difference between the two neighborhoods," he said of Upper and Lower Queen Anne. "There's more potential for density at the bottom of the Hill."
Coney, who is also on the board of the Uptown Alliance, points out another difference. "I think the Uptown Alliance pays more attention to parochial issues in the Urban Center," is how he put it. "And the community council has concentrated more on those things at the top of the Hill." Coney mentioned maintaining view slopes as one example.
A relatively new player in the neigh-borhood is the Queen Anne Neighbors for Responsible Growth, which used e-mail to rally neighborhood residents against the proposal to replace the Metropolitan Market on Upper Queen Anne with a new QFC and residential units. But the Neighbors group has broadened its focus to include, among other issues, the Queen Anne Farmers Market. And many in the Neighbors group are now affiliated with the community council, Coney noted. "I think it's a pattern," he said of a process that provides a "new generation of leadership" to the council.
The QACC includes numerous committees, and with the exception of the board-appointed Land Use Review Committee (LURC), any Queen Anne resident can come to committee meetings and vote on issues if they wish, Coney said.
The latest hot thing at the council level is developing design guidelines for future growth in Queen Anne. Incorporating streetscape ideas developed by the Picture Perfect Queen Anne group, the design guidelines are meant to make sure new construction is compatible with its surroundings, according to a recent op-ed piece LURC chair Craig Hanway submitted to the News.
"I think that's a very significant development," Coney said of the effort. Elections for board members on the QACC are coming up in September, and while it has been a bit of a struggle to fill the slots in the last couple of years, Coney doesn't think it will be a problem this time. "I would expect to see a lot of fresh faces run," he said.
It would be worth the effort according to council veteran Smith. "I don't know of a more credible voice on the Hill," he said.
Staff reporter Russ Zabel can be reached at rzabel@nwlink.com or 461-1309.
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