While condominiums and townhouses pop up in the heart of downtown Ballard, another part of the area - a stretch of Northwest 65th St. in the shadow of Phinney Ridge - is celebrating being the antithesis of the current condo development trend and remaining a street filled with independent businesses.

On September 28-30, some of the businesses hosted an event called Celebrate the Spirit of 65th. It was a block party of sorts, featuring live music at The Sneakery, an art opening at BaBaLouise, free blueberry pancakes outside Caf/ Bambino, special deals, and more.

For Drea Berthold, owner of The Sneakery, the event served as the shoe store's one-year anniversary party, and as a way to give people who hadn't previously checked out the street a chance to see something a little different.

"When you go downtown Ballard you kinda know what you're getting - there's a bunch of stuff there," she said. "So here, it's just kinda more random, you know, hair salon, bar, tattoo parlor, shoe shop. It doesn't have something to tie it all together."

But what does tie it together is the sense of community. Talk to some of the business owners and you'll hear about a neighborhood of locally-owned businesses, where people are on a first-name basis, workers will walk up to the independent coffee shop for their coffee, and where a shoe store owner is willing to lend a hammer to another fellow business owner.

This neighborhood atmosphere is what drew Lara Davis and Cindy Belic of BabaLouise to the area. They formerly operated their salon on near the fire station on Northwest Market St. but moved to their current location almost two years ago.

"All of a sudden everything around us started getting torn down and it's just like big business, big business, huge corporations all around us," Davis said of their former location on Market Street. "And so, we're like, we wanna be in a neighborhood."

Davis and Belic decided to participate in the event by hosting an art opening for local artist Shannon Mcconnell, who is now displaying his paintings in the salon. It also provided them with an opportunity to unite with the other businesses on the block.

Davis said they are lucky that there are no banks or big-name coffee shops in the neighborhood. While some of the local business owners like it that way, they believe change is inevitable.

One of the areas of uncertainty is located in a vacant area on the other side of the street. Belic said she's pushing for it to be converted into a neighborhood market like the Phinney Market.

Jim Mates of Custom Boot Services, who offered free shoe fitting evaluations during the event, said he would like to see something like a bookstore or art gallery come in. But he'd personally rather not see condos.

Berthold at The Sneakery gave a similar opinion, and said the business owners have a bad, foreboding feeling that condos will be built there.

"I would be thrilled and surprised if it were... anything other than a three-story condo with retail on the bottom, 'cause it seems like it's always a cell phone store, a tanning salon and a nail place," she said, adding, "with Starbucks."

"We wanna keep a more independent feel to this neighborhood and not have everything be really cookie cutter."

65th Street has a history of being independent, if not a little rough around the edges. According to Gretchen Kudla, who owns Caf/ Bambino and All Aboard with her husband, Andhi Spath, described the street as having a past dotted with drunken sailors and drug abuse.

But in the years since Kudla started working at Caf/ Bambino, she said she's watched the street improve a little each year because of the independent businesspeople. She said the businesses keep the area looking nice by painting, planting flowers, and keeping up their storefronts. But it's a bittersweet scenario for independent businesses, she said, because once a neighborhood changes and people discover it, eventually the small businesses get pushed out.

Angela Rae, a friend of Drea's who came to The Sneakery on Friday the 28th to support Drea, thinks Ballard's growth is positive. Despite her store, Kick It Boots & Stompwear, being located even closer to the concentration of new condos in Downtown Ballard, Rae has a more optimistic attitude about the realities of the changes taking place.

"As a business owner I welcome all the new feet in town," she said. "I don't think of it as 2,000 condos. I think of it as 4,000 new feet."

Rae doesn't think the development will decrease Ballard's character. She said the homes, people, and the shops all have character, and if anything, a lot of new people will add to the energy rather than take away from it.

Whatever the future does hold for 65th street, in the meantime, the businesses on 65th are enjoying their street's present reality.

For Berthold, the event was a way of "getting everybody involved before the neighborhood really changes dramatically." The event was a great success, she said, and it helped make September the best month of sales in The Sneakery's history. She said there will probably be a similar event next year, and she hopes to have even more of the local businesses involved.

Daytona Strong is a Ballard freelance writer and may be reached via bnteditor@robinsonnews.com