In the wealthy lakeside neighborhood of Laurelhurst, residents are
launching an insurgence against the Laurelhurst Community Club (LCC),
the primary organization representing neighborhood residents. Neighbors
are retaliating against the LCC after the group filed an appeal with
the city seeking to stunt the growth of Seattle Children’s
Hospital.
According to Ruth Benfield, vice president for Facilities and
Psycho-Social Services at Children’s Hospital, the hospital foresees an
influx of sick kids over the next 20 years that will require 350 new
hospital beds. In December, the city gave the hospital preliminary
approval to expand. The hospital agreed to reduce the maximum building
height from 240 to 150 feet. But the compromises weren’t enough for the
LCC.
“It would pretty much destroy the character of the surrounding
communities with a Bellevue Square–type development,” says LCC
president Jeannie Hale. The group has asked a city hearing examiner to
deny the hospital’s permit, arguing that Children’s overestimated the
future demand for new beds and underestimated the adverse impacts of
auto traffic on the neighborhood. “They consistently refused to
compromise on the proposal to add 1.5 million square feet in a
low-density, family area,” says Hale.
In its appeal, the LCC claims it “represents the interests of the
community’s 2,800 households and businesses.”
In response, Dixie Wilson, who moved to the neighborhood in 1998,
filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court on February 24 demanding
that the LCC divulge details of its finances and records. The suit also
seeks to determine if the group has been “polling the members before
speaking publicly as though they represent the members” and to
“understand how funds are collected and how they are spent.”
Wilson, who also served as a cochair for Friends of Children’s
Hospital, a group that supports the hospital’s expansion, believes
LCC’s financial records will show the group is using member dues to
fund its legal efforts against the hospital. According to Hale, the
group has spent $34,900 in the last two years on lawyers’ fees. The
group also paid an unspecified amount to analysts who determined the
hospital didn’t really need to expand.
“They make decisions and spend money—my money—on
something that I don’t agree with,” says Wilson, who has paid $40 to
$50 in dues every year for the last decade.
Wilson’s suit alleges that the LCC’s lawyer initially stymied her
attempts to obtain financial records, which, according to the state law
governing nonprofits, are supposed to be “open at any time to
inspection by any member of more than three-months standing.”
“We are doing our best to represent the views of our community and
the majority of our members,” says Hale. She says that only a “handful”
of residents came to public LCC board meetings to support the
hospital’s growth plan.
However, residents contacted by The Stranger were
enthusiastically in favor of the larger hospital and appalled by the
LCC’s opposition.
“Nobody I know in the neighborhood has ever been asked or polled by
the Laurelhurst Community Club about any of these issues,” Wilson says.
“I thought, ‘I just can’t stand back and let these people stand for us
publicly and take legal action on issues I so greatly disagree
with.'”
Peggy Coats, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 20
years, plans to speak at a separate procedural hearing on the hospital
expansion before a city hearing examiner in March. “I plan to make it
known that [the LCC’s leaders] are not speaking for the 2,800
households of Laurelhurst.”
“Most of the people who I have talked to are sort of flabbergasted
that anyone would be opposed to the expansion,” says Kevin Barrett, who
has lived in the neighborhood for 10 years.
Ingrid Savage, who has lived in Laurelhurst for 37 years, says,
“These people have been whining about every single thing the hospital
does… for years.” She adds: “I’m embarrassed to say I live in
Laurelhurst.” For example, Savage cites the community club’s successful
efforts to reduce medevac helicopter trips to and from Children’s
Hospital. (Hale says the helipad at Children’s is half a block from an
elementary school and “landing causes big gusts of wind and endangers
the kids on the playfield.”)
Meghan Quint, executive director of Northeast Seattle Cares, a group
that supports the expansion, held a meeting attended by about 40
Laurelhurst residents last week. “People became very angry that the
community club had taken their money to pay lawyers and filed an appeal
with their money without asking their opinion,” she says. Several other
residents concurred.
Considering the hospital’s expansion has undergone years of
review—both by the city and a citizens advisory
committee—the LCC’s appeal is unlikely to stop the construction.
But Wilson’s suit, and other residents’ opposition to the group, could
permanently weaken the organization’s claim to represent the
neighborhood.
“I’d love to see new leadership in the Laurelhurst Community Club,”
says Wilson. “I think many of us would.” 
I am so glad someone finally said something. I live on the Hawthorne Hills side, which does get the traffic, and I am tired of all the Laurelhurst NIMBY whining. Children’s Hospital is a great organization and does a lot of excellent work.
If you don’t like living next to a hospital then MOVE. It’s like the same people who live next to the airport and complain all the time.
Dominic, I think you’ve perfected the art of letting your commenters write the article for you.
As a North Seattle resident, closely following this process – and fed up with Jeannie Hales hysterics about Magnuson Park – I applaud Dixie Wilson for standing-up to confront LCC for their deceit and hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy you say?
After 25+ community meetings, the CAC’s report for Children’s plan is OVERWHELMING. But, the report provides an opportunity for dissenting opinion, penned by Miriam Muller, LCC’s nominee to the CAC:
Chief among her complaints is that the diversity of opinions weren’t heard and that discussion was stifled by a prevailing view. “It was very apparent that minority views were not welcome.”
Muller goes on the state that she was frustrated by the groups “failure to provide reports and materials in a timely manner.”
(One really has to wonder where these people lost their sense of irony!)
How were opposing views accommodated in LCC’s processes? How delinquent has LCC been in providing information to the members in purports to represent? (Please.)
Listen: This is all becoming pretty simple now. We’re all smart people and we know where we stand. Jeannie and LCC aren’t pleased with the outcome of a healthy process, so they will inject it with appeals and litigation in a vain attempt to kill it. Theirs is a position which is not on the right side of community, healthcare, social justice — or simple human decency.
Further litigation/action on LCC’s part won’t reveal any new information – it will simply further reveal their character. Unfortunately the cost of their exposition will be paid (ultimately) in the quality of lives for sick children. Imagine that. Shame on them.
This whole bunch deserves the scrutiny it is receiving. Our community is now in the final throes of planning for this hospital, (and it certainly will be built), so the LCC Trustees will now have to reflect on how continued opposition leaves their personal standing in this community.
I am sure that Seattle’s history will recall Jeannie Hale’s role in its own awful way. So I would put the question to the other Trustees, whose names deserve the light of day:
Liz Ogden
Stan Sorscher
Marian Joh
Cary Lassen
Brian McMullen
Leslie Wright
Emily Dexter
Mark Holden
Colleen McAleer
Heather Newman
Don Torrie
Mark Trumbauer
Maggie Weissman
How will Seattle remember you?
And Dixie — Congratulations for your selflessness, spirit and concern for our community. Laurelhurst needs people like you.
Thank you DC Miller for your insightful remarks and commentary.
Apparently Ms. Muller considers herself and Laurelhurst residents to be a “minority” even though 8 of the 17 members of CAC (including alternates) were from Laurelhurst and/or LCC board members.
I find that far from a “minority”
Wake up LCC, there was an extensive public process (one that you would strongly endorse had you prevailed) and the process voted against your self centered views.
Get over it and get back on the side of doing good for the community-you are a community club aren’t you?
The next LCC Board meeting is Monday, March 9, 2009 at 7 pm at St. Stephen’s Church, 4805 NE 45th St. Someone from the community will attend to raise the question of the club’s current financial accounts.
I am a Bryant neighhbor a two minute walk from the hospital. I have followed this process from the beginning. I oppose the expansion, mostly because it proposes to shoehorn a lot of square footage into a small site, and to funnel a lot of people and visitors in and out along a single arterial. Why not continue to develop the hospital in a part of the county that could really use it, jobs and health-care wise? I am all for taking care of sick children. What I don’t like is the corporate leadership of the hospital hiding behind those sick children and getting pretty much whatever it wants because of it.
Nothing is more sickening than over-privileged people filled with a sense of entitlement so vast that they would balk and whine about their neighborhood being made more tedious through the expansion of a charitable entity like Childrens. I say “bahh” to the city codes and zoning issues that the opposition cites. Childrens Hospital is one of the reasons Seattle is not just a city, but a world class city. I support them in their project!
Laurelhurst is now the most hated, despicable, loathed, selfish, reprehensible, spineless, insipid, worthless, craptastic, vile assemblage of turds that seattle has ever seen.
Rot in hell you selfish fucks.
this just reminds me of the “Lower Woodland Neighborhood Association” that at the last minute halted the construction of the skatepark that had been in planning for nearly a decade. as a lifelong resident (and someone who actually showed up to the design meetings and use it on nearly a daily basis) I was furious with a couple people trying to speak for an entire neighborhood. luckily they “lost” and now there will be plenty of kids to fill up all the new beds that will be available in Laurelhaurst.
View Ridge resident here:
Expand the hospital already. I’m so tired of these yuppie community clubs strangling our city’s development and progress.
Guess what? You bought a house next to a hospital, not a Native American seasonal campground (No, that’s just what your million dollar homes are sitting on.) Development was and is going to happen, whether you like it or not.
Look on the Laurelhurstcc.com website and you’ll see Mayor Nickels grinning with those smug, entitled bastards at the LCC. Can we just bulldoze Laurelhurst, Broadmoor, and the Sandpoint CC so we can move into the 21st century as a city?
I’m so glad I’m moving and won’t have to deal with you yuppie, eco-posers with your Obama stickers on your Porsche’s and BMW’s. NE Seattle make me want to vomit.
Ahh…The Stranger is gettin played. Dixie owns an event management firm, who’s biggest client is Children’s. I think the club is doing a great job because nobody see’s population spiking the way they say it will to support the beds they are asking for. Wake up Stranger and smell a bag of stinking you know what in this story……Do a little checking on whose paying Dixie’s legal fees… and see just how long she’s been a member of the club…(a month I bet…) So once again you are getting duped big time.
At what point do you say enough to Children’s! good greif. Hospitals are nothing BUT BIG BIG BIG BUSINESS…. you think they aren’t just sitting on a pile of cash? They are a non-profit but make hundreds of millions of dollars of profit. So if Children’s wanted 40 story sky scrapers these stupid idiots like Dixie Wilson would be saying “Oh goodie goodie this is great”… Dixie’s just doing what the Big time Children’s PR firm is telling her too…
We all agree that community councils can contribute to community-level cooperation and democracy. They can provide a forum for discussing the pros and cons of local issues, where there is bound to be a range of positions. If the neighborhood supports the community council with dues, they expect their donations to support community improvements–often in collaboration with Seattle Neighborhood grants–for local improvments relating to schools, traffic safety, parks and environmental improvments. A community club that misrepresents its membership, that refuses to reveal the sources of its revenues and the direction of its expenditures, that holds the substantive portion of its meetings in executive session, forcing observers to leave is, indeed, a rogue organization. The officers of LCC select potential Trustees and the Trustees elect the officers. The annual meeting is not a genuine meeting but a piece of theater. The Laurelhurst community has a range of folks just like any other city community, but it is hard to turn LCC’s efforts in a positive direction when they are opaque, highly-funded, and capable of using the community’s name to further the private interests of a few people.
Isn’t this Hale character an elected role? Isn’t just your own apathy and complacency to your own community club to blame? Give me a break.