What seems like decades, but was actually only five years ago, I wrote a column about meeting a local developer for coffee at Java Bean. I was only months into this column and not yet a veteran of neighborhood district council, design review and Seattle City Council meetings. I’ve logged many bureaucratic hours since that innocent time.

At the long ago meeting I sat down with Nebil Dikmen to discuss his proposed residential building at the NW 58th & 24th NW corner where there had been a link iron fence around a vacant house for several years and a tendency for trash to bank against the metal. I remember that he had exquisite manners, perfectly manicured fingers and seemed very sincere when he told me he wanted to create something high quality.

He built the Danielle building that is just south of the alley between NW 58th & 59th. For the last year I’ve thought about our meeting as his landscape choices have matured and complemented the facade. I’ve wanted to tell Nebil Dikmen. You did make good choices, you did enhance that block.

That sit-down also came to mind while attending two recent public meetings hosted by developer Bill Parks and Johnston Architects to discuss pre-design plans for the site on 32nd NW that currently houses Sunset Hill Green Market. At the first meeting on January 11th there was distinct audience bluster; a spoken and unspoken “How can you do this to us?”

People wanted to know what was going to happen to the Green Market, lamented the parking situation as already challenging, asked Bill Parks, “Why do you want to build this?”

He replied honestly, “Because I’m a builder.”

At the second meeting, also held on the second floor of the Sunset Hill Community Association, the mood was different. Residents had learned about the market’s change of ownership; been assured of its continuity. The shock over three possible design scenarios, including one that would be 15’ higher than the existing structure, had passed. The community members who returned to meet again even offered their own services for the mutual good of project + neighborhood.

Almost everyone in the audience had moved to the next stage: acceptance. The site sold in 2007. There will be a new commercial development that extends to the alley. People raised their hands to ask the team, so why not make it exceptional?

Despite a desire to be anywhere else I felt I needed to be at the public meeting. I live in the neighborhood so to me it’s like voting. How can I complain about results if I wasn’t even willing to be part of the process? A developer actually gives the public the opportunity to voice their opinions…anyone who keeps silent will never know whether their ideas had influence. Likewise the proposed park on 14th NW; if you aren’t interested in participating in its planning, please don’t complain later that you didn’t have the opportunity.

So I went to the meeting tired but determined to be present, but I left unexpectedly energized. Instead of pettiness I had seen grace as residents offered constructive advice, a mechanical engineer offering his services, a local businessman expressing interest in future office space, an architect offering her take on what would gain community support. Instead of a community at odds, I saw community.

A neighbor and I walked home together in the rain, at first accompanied by Nicolas Morin, from Barker Landscape Architects, asked to join the design team to address stormwater runoff and streetscape. Morin just happened to coach my daughter’s high school soccer team when his wife was a teacher at her school. Then we encountered Ballardite Jay Sasnett in his driveway near the clubhouse. Even if you don’t know him by name, you have seen this man in Ballard: red Volkswagen van, trademark white hat, and too often, Spandex leggings. The retired middle school teacher was just returning at 9:30 p.m. from, what else, a day spent teaching middle school students how to teach their peers on the slopes.

As we first left the meeting I complimented Nic on his image choices for potential streetscape. He’d showed images of businesses along Ballard Avenue, as well as from Capitol Hill and Barcelona. Too often in the City of Seattle’s Department of Planning & Development review process the architects show photos of surrounding buildings as though they are the highest common denominator, when sometimes they are the lowest.

“We used to live by the Goodwill,” Morin explained to my neighbor, “We were desperate for places to walk and then one time we discovered there was an ice cream counter next to the video store. My father was from a small village in France,” he added as if this made perfect sense as to why he and his family would stroll the mile-and-a-half to Sunset Hill in the evenings. And to me it did.

During the meeting Architect Ray Johnston assured the audience over and over that whatever they design will not create a “destination.” Perhaps what they don’t understand is that Sunset Hill is already a destination and no one wants a building to disrupt rather than enhance that sense of community. It’s why we live in Ballard.