Village Theater is cornerstore of growing cultural scene

By DON CARTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

One of Front Street's great successes is the Village Theater, which started in 1979 and now has two theaters and a lot of sold-out performances.

Friends of Montana actor Carl Darchuk had persuaded him to try starting a new company in a 222-seat former vaudeville and movie theater that had gone dark years before.

"In a way it started like the Empty Space (Theater)," says executive producer Robb Hunt. "Together, we dreamed the impossible dream, and nobody got paid for the first three years."

The company built a 488-seat theater in 1994 and now uses the old theater for children's productions and "Village Originals" performances of new plays.

Many Issaquah residents are philosophical about the area's growth, which along with the traffic has brought new customers to the Village Theater and an expanding menu of cultural and recreational experiences.

Jean Sillers, a recreation coordinator who works for the city, said she and her husband moved here in 1987 because Issaquah "offered the small-town sense of connectedness." She sees the current traffic problems as the city "being loved to death" by new residents.

The city's new post office opened last January and already Sillers thinks "the lines are already longer than they were in the old post office."

On the other hand, growth helped the city build the new community center and add new programs. For example, parents of children with special needs no longer have to drive to Bellevue for recreation programs.

Eric Erickson, an Issaquah native whose grandfather and great-grandfather immigrated from Sweden, is not pleased by "the rapid replacement of our old farmlands with strip malls, the rapid development of housing on the plateau," and the resulting traffic.

But Erickson concedes that development and new people have brought some new life and a strong economy to the area.

Erickson, who is president of the Issaquah Historical Society, says he's thankful that Issaquah's old downtown has been preserved. "There are 9,000 more people here than when I was a boy, but the old downtown has basically stayed the same," he says.

In 1940, when he was 4 years, Erickson witnessed one of the pivotal events affecting Issaquah's development: "We got in the car, and Dad drove us across the (then newly opened Lake Washington Floating) Bridge." Completion of the second floating bridge in the early 1990s fueled the most recent wave of growth.

Continued:

• Friendly folks enjoy rural atmosphere
• Recreation and improving life is a high priority
• Traffic is region's problem, not just town's, says mayor