Last week's lead story, "More family business leaves area," prompted several comments on our Web site, emails and few calls to our office. Some of those comments came from a few new, family owned Ballard businesses.

They called or wrote to say that we had forgotten an important point to the story. While some family businesses are leaving, new ones are taking their place in some instances.

Skarbos, a family-owned furniture store that's been in the Seattle area more than 45 years, is one example. Ron Skarbo, owner, called us personally. They've leased the space on Ballard Avenue that was long occupied by Olsen Furniture. The Olsen's retired earlier this year after 73 years here.

But Skarbo wanted to remind the News-Tribune to recognize that while Ballard is changing, it's also creating new roots and that it's not necessarily a bad thing.

We acknowledge that not every old business that leaves is replaced with a corporate store or chain of some kind. Some of these new businesses will also grow roots here, be active and contribute to the community. Or at least we hope so.

Some said stop the pity party and stop blaming developers. Change is inevitable and cyclical.

Others can't let go of Old Ballard, grasping at preserving a feeling and a comfortable, familiar way of life as the New Ballard takes shape,

Like we've said before, much of this stems from a sense of feeling out of control, a gnawing sense that voices of concern aren't being heard, and when they are, just recorded and filed away. People feel like things are in fast forward and the remote is lost between the cushions.

And there are real concerns with the rows of cookie cutter town homes and eight story condominiums. There are real consequences to popularity. People, average people, can no longer able to afford to live and work here.

Will Ballard, the blue-collar, working man and woman's community, fall to gentrification?

A 2001 study from the Brookings Institute, "Dealing with neighborhood change: A primer on gentrification and policy choices," states that as property values and rents rise without strategies and allies, those at the lower end of the income scale suffer.

The researchers argue that "city officials, developers, policymakers, advocates, business owners and residents should support the goal of 'equitable development.'"

They define that to mean: "the creation and maintenance of economically and socially diverse communities that are stable over the long term, through means that generate a minimum of transition costs that fall unfairly on lower income residents."

They say that without that kind of equitable growth, the long-term prospects of a neighborhood, or the metropolitan area in which it is set, can "dim."

"Equitable development is something that should be planned for and facilitated whether gentrification pressures exist or not."