Despite whole lot of wrangling, hole continues to plague station

Originally published Saturday, October 3, 1998

By JON HAHN  
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Most folks who drive at the legal speed through very-speed-conscious Lake Forest Park on Ballinger Way Northeast -- which is just about the only route through that city -- know about "The Hole."

About the size of a boxcar, the hole looms large, right in front of the Ballinger Automotive Shell station at Northeast 185th Street.

And it's been that way for going on two years now, since Christmas week storms in 1996, when Lyon Creek sluiced away ground beneath the Shell station's gas pump islands.

"We Are Still Open" is the rather ironic sign, somewhat faded now, on the chain-link security fence around the still-very-open hole now filled with purple-blossoming butterfly bush, scrub alder and other local flora.

"Folks stop by or call and comment about my new landscaping design, and I tell them that's what you get for $325,000 these days!" quipped station owner Ron Ricker, who figures that's how much business he's lost since the hole swallowed his gas pumps.

And it ain't gonna get better anytime soon. While Ricker and Lake Forest Park officials and their respective advisers and insurance lawyers kick this thing around, the creek once again has become out-of-bounds for any construction because of state monitoring of vital salmon spawning runs. Next June probably would be the earliest date for any corrective construction, estimated Lake Forest Park city administrator Doug Jacobsen.

In the years since the creek first was channeled through a culvert, water flow has increased substantially, bringing with it more flood debris and related problems. During the Christmas-week storms, the city was notified that downstream blockages of the stream were creating flooding, but no crews responded, according to Ricker. "The water eventually backed up and pressurized the culvert, and it washed away the soil beneath the pumps," he said.

Early last year, when I first wrote about the sinkhole, there were hopes that construction could begin soon on a gravel-bottom culvert that would allow Lyon Creek to flow freely down to join McAleer Creek and eventually run into Lake Washington -- without taking any more of the Shell station with it. A three-sided, gravel-bottom culvert also would provide spawning fish with a more natural stream bed as they move upstream.

Ricker says the hang-up seems to be not only price of the repair and his lost income, but also city plans to change the zoning and to take some of his land for sidewalks as part of a new traffic light project already scheduled.

The city sees neither the intersection signal and improvement project nor the proposed zoning classification change as a detriment to the business, although it would seem that the culvert would have to be repaired, along with the service station's adjacent sidewalks and driveways, before the traffic signal and related improvements could be completed.

In the meantime, Brian Smith, Ricker's son-in-law, and a second mechanic have continued to do auto repair work in service bays reached from a back drive off Northeast 185th Street.

"The majority of our repair customers have been with us for a long time," said Smith on a recent workday, "but all the new faces have come strictly through customer referrals. Obviously, no one's going to stop in if they drive by and see the front.

"Almost every day we're here, though, someone comes in and asks us: 'What's going on with The Big Hole?'"

Some folks have just now noticed the caved-in station-roof edge and think the building has taken more hits, he said. "But that happened when the hole opened up and the pump canopy collapsed onto the building."

Lyon Creek continues to meander through its original culvert at the bottom of the hole. And the No. 340 Metro bus still stops just outside the chain-link fence. The stubbed-out ends of the station's underground gas tank lines hang out into the hole.

And folks continue to drive by -- at the legal speed limit -- and wonder why in the world that Big Hole is still there.