Georgetown’s Finest

If a recent shake-up in Seattle’s most prominent neighborhood group
is any indication, the NIMBY reign of terror in Seattle may be over. On
November 24, the City Neighborhood Council (CNC), a group that advises
the Seattle City Council on neighborhood planning and budgeting, voted
in Kathy Nyland—chair of the Georgetown Merchants Association and
owner of the George gift shop in Georgetown—as the group’s new
chair. Nyland will replace anti-everything NIMBY and thorn in the city
council’s side Chris Leman as the face of the neighborhood movement in
Seattle.

Leman’s departure could signal a major shift in how the CNC deals
with neighborhood issues, the mayor, and the city council.

In the last few years, as condos, townhouses, and retail
developments have popped up across Seattle, activists like
Leman—NIMBY stands for “Not In My Back Yard”—have filed
endless appeals and decried the city’s process in the hope of delaying
the inevitable. It hasn’t worked. Instead, the city has been saddled
with ugly developments because cranky neighbors decided to fight losing
battles instead of working with developers to make their projects fit
into neighborhoods.

Nyland represents a new approach. In the last three years, she’s
been on the right side of a number of big neighborhood issues. She
opposed Mayor Greg Nickels’s push for a red-light district south of
downtown, preferring a strategy to distribute clubs throughout the
city; battled to limit the presence of big-box stores in Seattle’s
industrial areas; and fought to keep the city from dumping a new dump
in Georgetown.

Nyland isn’t reflexively opposed to development. In 2007, she
reached out to developer the Sabey Corporation, which had just
announced plans for a massive new project at the site of the former
Rainier Brewery in Georgetown. Thanks to her efforts, the neighborhood
became part of the development process, instead of an
obstacle—changing the project’s design from a modern
steel-and-glass building to one retaining
elements of the Rainier
Brewery.

“We want to keep the character of Georgetown without driving out the
characters of Georgetown,” Nyland says.

Nyland is well liked at both city hall and in the world of
neighborhood activism, both because she’s willing to see both sides of
an issue and because of her upbeat personality. (In interviews, Nyland
punctuates her sentences with giggles.) “I think [Nyland] brings a
pragmatism [to the CNC],” says city council member Sally Clark, who
heads up the council’s neighborhoods committee. “I think Kathy has a
slightly shorter patience for process.”

Leman, in contrast, hasn’t done much to endear himself to the city’s
powers that be. He’s notorious for showing up to city council meetings
with interminably long lists of gripes; is known for filing
public-records requests city staffers consider excessively broad; and
has argued that city council aides should have to register as
lobbyists.

“I’m rarely pleased when I hear he’s on the phone,” one city hall
staffer says of Leman. “How can someone be so obsessed about this kind
of minutiae day after day after day?”

“Everybody has a different style,” Leman responds, when asked about
his often-tense relationship with city hall. “If there’s any sense
[that the vote] is a repudiation of me, I can tell you I’m Kathy’s
strongest advocate.”

Leman’s departure from his CNC leadership position (he’ll still be a
member of the council) comes at an opportune time for the organization:
Next year, the CNC will start providing input to the city about what
areas like Northgate, south downtown, and South Lake Union will look
like when they’re redeveloped. The CNC will also provide input on the
city’s comprehensive growth-management plan.

Nyland, who has been deeply involved in neighborhood politics for
the last few years, considered running for Seattle City Council, where
as many as four seats are expected to open in 2009.

Instead, she settled on a time-consuming volunteer role as the new
CNC chair—a decision she says she stumbled into almost by

accident. At an October CNC meeting to nominate the next chair,
Nyland says, no one stepped up to take on the leadership role. “A
couple of people [were] pointing at me, and the room was spinning,”
Nyland jokes. “I don’t know what happened.”

Nyland clearly wants to mend fences at the city. “We want to have a
better working relationship with the executive and the council,” Nyland
says. “[With] Chris… the working relationship was kind of put on the
back burner.”