Hey Kemper… don’t let the door hit you on the way out…!
Kemper Freeman, a member of the Bellevue Downtown Association (BDA) for more than 30 years and whose father was one of the founders of the group, has quit the nonprofit, citing differences in opinion over the direction the agency is going, particularly over its endorsement of light rail.
Oh, boo-hoo.
What I find most irritating about Freeman isn’t his nostalgic, 1950’s-era vision of an automobile-centric America, or his personal campaign for a rail-free Puget Sound, or even his shameful family history. No, what really pisses me off is the way our media and political establishment continue to take him seriously.
I mean, let’s be honest: everybody knows that Freeman is a bit of an OCD, neo-Bircher nutcase with a Christ-like devotion to the automobile and a penchant for equating mass transit with communism (really), so isn’t it time that truly serious people started taking him and his anti-rail conspiracies at face value? I don’t mean to diminish Freeman’s standing as Bellevue’s racist classist, rich, crazy uncle, but is that really enough of a reason to give him a greater voice in our region’s transportation debate than folks who, you know, actually know what the fuck they’re talking about?
Light rail is popular with voters, and good for business. Even the Bellevue Downtown Association has taken to rolling their eyes at Freeman and his personal anti-rail crusade. So you gotta wonder when the rest of our region’s civic leaders will follow suit.
Try holiday shopping at Bellevue Square sometime, and you’ll experience Kemper Freeman’s idea of mobility firsthand.
The last of the self-appointed regional nobility to fall, huh?
You can dismiss him all you want, but he’s going to keep going. He’s got the money and the clout to throw a last minute monkey wrench into the works.
He’s 69 years old. I hope he lives long enough to see the first link trains come through his beloved Bellevue.
Out of respect for all the people living with mental illness, I object to calling him an “OCD neo-Bircher nutcase”. Modernity demands that we stop using mental illness terms to insult people. I’m cool with calling him a neo-Bircher though.
To Paraphrase HST:
Bellevue Square is where the whole hip world would shop if the nazi’s had won the war.
I used to work over in that area and we called it “the hot mommy mall.” Go there on a weekday and it is full of Mom’s pushing strollers and spending their husbands money.
About time he took his urban cyclist-subsidized car-addicted lifestyle and went back to Russia.
I had to go to Bellevue last year for the first time in a long time and I was shocked by it’s horribleness. Everything in that core was made on a grand scale, but only with non offensive blandness as a style guide. Grand bland. All facade, with no substance. All chain store. All completely lacking in soul with no inspiration. Even the real thing in SoCal at least is what it is, Bellevue is a cheap copy without even understanding where it came from.
Every Christmas, Bellevue Square’s garages are full of signs that proudly proclaim, “For your shopping convenience, we’ve forced all mall employees to park miles away and take a dinky shuttle bus to their crappy jobs.”
Seriously. Freeman’s people brag about their mistreatment of their employee-serfs. And Bellevue laps it up.
@7- I still work in that area. Yoga does wonders for a middle aged woman’s body.
@10- What percentage of the shopping does that make?
@11- This year they got to park in the parking lot of the old Safeway location. Thank goodness for abandoned buildings and the economic collapse that kept it from being developed.
@12 (myself cause I forgot to add this)- It’s too bad they look angry most of the time.
Maybe the Spokane Downtown Association will have him? If he’s 300 miles away maybe we won’t hear about him any more.
I used to work at an architecture firm where Freeman would visit on occasion. everyone would snicker “the king of bellevue is here!” ugh.
@12
They say Yoga, what they really mean is Lipo. They will do anything to get as much as they can before the hubby trades her in for a new model.
Uh, he’s not going anywhere soon. He still owns tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars worth of real estate in Bellevue.