With pride in its past, city links up to the future

Originally published Saturday, April 4, 1998

By JACK HOPKINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Burien's brand-new community computer center is just a block and a half down the street from the town's old-time feed store. But the two ventures are worlds apart.

Kirk's Feed Store -- which still sells baby chicks and ducks, hay and other country goods in the old section of town -- is a link with the city's past.

The Burien Community Computer Center -- which gives local residents access to modern technology even if they don't have their own computers -- is one of city's more prominent links with the future.

The unlikely neighbors are symbolic of Burien residents' attempts to maintain strong ties to the past as they move into the future as one of the state's newest cities.

"You still get the feeling of a small community here," says Sheila Hatch, who has lived in Burien for nearly 40 years and has co-owned a gift shop in town since 1992 -- the year before Burien stopped being a state of mind and became an incorporated city.

"With people's busy lifestyles and being tugged in every direction, it's hard," Hatch said. "But people here are trying to concentrate on children and the schools."

It's not as if folks don't have other things to think about.

Burien residents have grappled with difficult problems, and they face plenty of future challenges. But that hasn't stopped them from looking ahead with a strong spirit of optimism.

Gaining cityhood, they say, was merely the first step in what will be a long fight to make the city more livable and ensure that growth and economic development come without diminishing the existing quality of life.

Mayor Kitty Milne says the push for cityhood came when residents got tired of everybody dumping their problems on the once-rural community that enjoys magnificent views of Mount Rainier and Puget Sound.

"Burien was a thriving area back in the 1960s," Milne says. "It had lots of shops and stores. It had one of the biggest school districts in the country. And it was pretty much the center of the Highline area.

"Then in the 1970s some really bad things began to happen."

Bad from Burien's point of view.

"There was development of the Southcenter area and that drew business away from here," Milne says. Burien's downtown area still has many vacant storefronts.

Then came major highway construction, airport expansion and a shift in housing trends.

"Highways 509 and 518 just literally sliced through the community, and then the second runway was built at Sea-Tac Airport," says the mayor. "The community began to have a slow decline."

Then county officials began approving numerous apartment buildings and establishing low-income subsidized housing in the community, she says.

The final straw: plans for a third airport runway.

Residents voted to incorporate in hopes of having a greater say about their future. Opponents of cityhood contended before the vote that cityhood would be too expensive.

But Deputy Mayor Shirley Basarab says those fears were unfounded. "We have been able to put away some money every year," she says. "We're comfortable."

The new city has managed to do that by contracting out many of its services. The King County Sheriff's Department provides its police coverage.

City officials have spent much of the past five years preparing a comprehensive plan for the community and fighting the third runway.

"If that runway is built, there is going to be a 15-story-high wall of dirt sloping down a block from the high school," Milne says of the port's plans to haul in huge volumes of fill to support the new runway. "That's what we are looking at. And it's right in the middle of our city."

Milne thinks the third runway plan eventually will die of its own financial weight. "Our job is to keep them in court long enough to make that happen," she says.

Next page:

• Positive signs point to a brighter tomorrow