Curvaceous city is at peace with the world

By KIMBERLY A.C. WILSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Ladies in shimmering, jewel-toned cocktail dresses and gents in dark suits sway to a Johann Strauss waltz performed by a 65-piece orchestra. Just outside the ballroom, tribes of chattering crickets drown out the last cries of a crow and the dusk rattle of kingfishers.

Music director Anthony Spain nervously straightens his tuxedo as the earliest guests begin to arrive for a night of Austrian waltzes performed by his Northwest Symphony Orchestra.

Ladies in shimmering, jewel-toned cocktail dresses and gents in dark suits sway to a Johann Strauss waltz performed by a 65-piece orchestra. Just outside the ballroom, tribes of chattering crickets drown out the last cries of a crow and the dusk rattle of kingfishers.

Music director Anthony Spain nervously straightens his tuxedo as the earliest guests begin to arrive for a night of Austrian waltzes performed by his Northwest Symphony Orchestra.

The setting is The Cove, a community center set back a few hundred yards from the beach.

For the last three of its 12 years, NWSO has performed here each spring.

Word has spread among neighbors and the crowds of nostalgic couples have grown steadily.

This night in mid-May they pour out of arriving sedans.

A flowering tree scents the air.

Spain, whose orchestra has performed 50 compositions by Northwest composers, extends a hand to a lady of a certain age who has walked the gravel drive toward the community center.

"Isn't this very unique?" he murmurs before offering the woman his arm.

The scene smacks of a stylish Jazz Age soiree in New Orleans or Savannah.

In reality, it is a recent Saturday night in Normandy Park, a city that embodies the myth of a slower time and pace.

"This is a very special place," says local historian Helen Kludt, who marvels at the baby steps time seems to have taken in the 46 years since she and her husband, a pilot, moved to the neighborhood.

Here, amblers outnumber morning joggers. Cars coast along meandering lanes in observance of a city-wide 25 mph speed limit. Canopies of towering cedars, fir and madrona trees exude a shroud of leisure and serenity.

Timelessness is a hallmark of this sheltered Puget Sound city wedged between Burien and Des Moines about 20 miles south of downtown Seattle.

Shaped like a crude shiv whose hilt marks the cove where Mosquito Fleet steamers once took on passengers, the City of Normandy Park was incorporated a century after the first white homesteaders settled there.

At last count, 7,135 people lived in Normandy Park, enjoying both the quaintness of a rural seaside community and benefits of urban life.

The urban attributes include a well-equipped police force; well-maintained parks and recreation facilities.

Its suburban features include a low rate of violent crime and an acclaimed elementary school, Marvista, which boasts small class sizes and high parent involvement.

But nowhere is the dichotomy of quaint and urban more apparent than at City Hall.

Like the Bellevue City Hall, the municipal building in Normandy Park is home to both the police department and the City Council chambers.

However, Normandy Park City Hall is housed in a former grade school: the council meets in a low-ceilinged room that resembles a cafeteria, and the police holding cell was formerly a children's cloak room.

"The Park" -- as it's referred to in the shorthand of longtime residents -- "is just a sliver of a city. It is a small community in so many ways," says Mayor John Wiltse.