Young city has many faces

By DON CARTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Shoreline has a curious assortment of housing and neighborhoods. In its southeast corner is The Highlands, a gated waterfront-golf course community that since the turn of the century has been home to some of Seattle's wealthiest families.

North of that is the upscale Innis Arden area, then the Richmond Beach area, where one-time summer cabins have been expanded into pricey view homes.

More affordable homes are found in the broad area between Aurora Avenue North and Interstate 5. In that area are homes from the 1920s and 1930s, and from the boom years of World War II tract expansion. Many of the homes have been lovingly maintained or restored. Others have not, with heavy layers of moss tending to collect on the roofs and heavy layers of old cars in the yards.

Mickie Gau and her late husband moved to Richmond Beach 50 years ago, attracted by affordable housing. They'd been living in a Seattle apartment, "and the man upstairs was bowling with beer bottles," Gau recalls.

They found a cabin with a view for $3,600. Expanded many times, it is still Gau's home.

Home prices in Gau's neighborhood have appreciated mightily since she moved in, but Shoreline still has some affordable housing.

The new city has no discernible downtown. Aurora Avenue North is the main shopping drag, with the Sears store at North 155th Street, the Fred Meyer and QFC at North 185th Street, and the Home Depot and Costco at North 205th Street anchoring the main retail areas. There's a smaller retail area in North City near the intersection of 15th Avenue Northeast and Northeast 175th Street.

Aurora Avenue North began growing up with the automobile, and continues to serve it. Along the way there are vestiges of the old roadhouses and auto courts that served motorists of the 1920s and 1930s. Today, Shoreline's section of Aurora is where motorists from throughout the region go to buy trailer hitches, recreational vehicle parts, pickup canopies, transmissions and new and used cars.

Along the way there are a few exotics, such as Seattle's Finest Exotic Meats, 17532 Aurora Ave. N., which deals in alligator, cobra, kangaroo and other meats. A block east of Aurora, at 1206 N. 155 St., Angus' Meat Pies sells bangers and other British goodies.

A good percentage of the businesses along Aurora are now owned by Korean Americans, and offer a magnet for Korean Americans from around the region who come to buy ethnic groceries, gifts, baked goods, traditional costumes, videotapes and books.

About 9 percent of Shoreline's population was of Asian descent when the 1990 census taken, and according to some estimates that percentage now is about 12 percent.

City Councilwoman Cheryl Lee, who is Korean American, said her parents moved their family to Shoreline 21 years ago, when she and her brothers were still in school. "Their No. 1 reason for moving here was the outstanding education," she says.

Lee, now 30 and an account manager at Boeing, says she continues to live there because of the schools. "Even as a high school student, I felt the support," she says. "The community really got behind things."

A University of Washington graduate student now is researching Shoreline's Korean American heritage to help the Shoreline Historical Museum open a special exhibit May 15. Museum Director Vicki Stiles says the idea is to preserve Shoreline's contemporary history. "If you don't get it when it's fresh, you lose it," she says.

Stiles says she is certain immigrants of other races and ethnic groups were involved in Shoreline's early history, but since the history was recorded by descendants of white settlers there is no record of others' involvement.

The community's current diversity is apparent at Shoreline Community College, where there are clubs for Russians, Vietnamese and many other ethnic groups, including an Arab Glee Club. The college is opening a new Multicultural/Diversity Education Center to try to encourage the ethnic groups to do more things with each other, says college spokeswoman Donna Myers.

First page:

• Fine schools draw many to community; political know-how keeps it vibrant