It's a shore thing: Area rich in its past and people

By LYNN STEINBERG
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Patricia Frank has lived in Leschi nearly all her 64 years. She can tell you about the cable cars that carted passengers from Pioneer Square to the shores of Lake Washington, about the boats that ferried people across the lake to Mercer Island, about the old Lacey V. Murrow Bridge that made the ferry obsolete.

"I watched 'em build that bridge," Frank says of the original Interstate 90, "and I watched it sink."

When it reopened in 1993, the bridge no longer had an off-ramp at Leschi, and some say that gave this residential community a more secluded feel.

But Leschi is not an exclusive enclave for the rich, despite its million-dollar lakefront homes. Rising from the shores of Lake Washington between Mount Baker and Madrona, and stretching west to Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Leschi is home to a racially and economically diverse group of people.

Its narrow streets, shaded by big-leaf maples, mix stately turn-of-the century houses with far more modest homes.

Long a neighborhood of working-class residents, housing prices in Leschi -- like in much of Seattle -- have rocketed out of sight. The median cost of a home is $312,000.

Though Leschi is a community rich in park land, the lakefront -- with its spectacular vistas of the Cascade Mountains and Mount Rainier -- is its crown jewel. And access to it has been one of Leschi's most contentious issues.

Several years ago, neighborhood activists working through the Leschi Community Council sought to create four small public viewing areas where city streets end at the shoreline.

Though the street-ends are public property, the city rarely maintained them. So adjacent property owners planted or built on them, and over the years came to view the property as their own, often blocking public access.

The community council's "String of Pearls" project sought to change that -- and in doing so set a precedent for the city's other 150 unused street-ends. Not surprisingly, lakeside property owners objected to the pocket parks and the case wound up in court.

After a two-year legal battle, the community council prevailed, and 18 months ago, the four street-ends -- King, Dearborn, Norman and Charles -- were opened to the public. Small "public shore" signs were posted along Lakeside Avenue, the street that runs parallel to the shore. Tall hedges and other shrubbery were removed and benches were installed at each location.

Today, the little pocket parks offer a quiet refuge from the stresses of daily life. Sitting on a solitary bench at the end of Charles Street, hearing the lake lap at the shore and seeing the afternoon sun shimmer on the water, there is a sense of peace and tranquility. It masks the bitterness some waterfront residents still harbor over the dispute.

"They royally screwed us," says Vic Warren, president of the Lakeside Avenue South Association, which represented shore dwellers in the battle.

"There's a sign outside my house that says, 'Welcome to Leschi' and it irritates me every time I see it."

In fact, Warren and other residents of Lakeside Avenue consider themselves not part of Leschi but part of a sub-community called Lakeside.

Continued:

• Community stands firm on quality of life
• People, not places, give area its distinct flavor