'Mixed use' doesn't begin to describe eclectic area

By TERESA TALERICO
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

South Lake Union is about more than just water. The neighborhood, according to city maps, stretches south from the shoreline to Denny Way, is bordered on the east by Eastlake Avenue and on the west by Aurora Avenue.

Business owners are partial to the phrase "mixed use" when describing the neighborhood's commercial-residential-industrial symbiosis.

That may be an understatement. The eclectic neighbors in the South Lake Union include Hooters restaurant; Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; a Marriott Residence Inn that charges up to $200 a night; a night life known among young professionals; an Eastern Orthodox cathedral; a private elementary school where students discovered pollutants in the lake after conducting water tests for a science project; and a Naval Reserve Center, which is shutting down in September. The five-acre site has been used since 1940 for Navy reservist training. Parks planners are considering using its buildings for maritime museums, which would be included in an extension of South Lake Union Park.

Also found along the shore is a sprinkling of adventurous houseboaters, mostly empty-nesters looking for a new lifestyle.

"It's one of the wonders of this place," says Dick Wagner, director of the Center for Wooden Boats, "that people can live in a small area with restaurants, marinas, shipyards, research bases. There are lakes in the middle of cities everywhere. But this is the most diverse by far."

Plans to make it even more diverse fell flat two years ago. The Seattle Commons -- a 42-acre urban park that would have linked downtown and South Lake Union -- was voted down in 1996. But the debate over the Commons both united and polarized lake neighbors.

"The Commons brought us together," says Mike Foley, an owner of Westlake Properties. "We created a posse down there."

The posse has stayed active. A Neighborhood Planning Association -- composed mostly of area business owners -- meets regularly to discuss South Lake Union's future.

With the Commons defeated, they have turned their attention to issues such as expanding the small and underused South Lake Union Park and improving public transportation. Tracy Overby, a Metro community relations planner, says the county is considering providing additional bus service in the South Lake Union area.

Wagner says neighbors also want to bridge the gap between the affluent shoreline and its modest neighbors south of Mercer Street.