In re: "Mall shouldn't squander chance to restore creek" (Jet City Maven, December 1998), Northgate was the first modern shopping mall in the nation, and from Northgate the shopping mall concept spread itself everywhere, often gobbling up wetlands upon the outskirts of urban centers. I saw this happen in 1979 in Alexandria, Minn., with Viking Plaza.

At the time, a shopping mall was something exciting and new. I remember my parents saying what a BIG store they were building, whatever could BE so big? A local somebody "in the know" explained the shopping mall concept to my mother, and she explained it to us. Not just one store, but MANY, all under one roof.

Would there be a TOY store? we asked. Would there be a CANDY store and a PET store?

Oh, yes! All of that and more!

The mall was indeed wonderful, as promised. Why, the dumpster diving behind the B. Dalton bookstore alone was worth the whole mall. (See my book, "The Art and Science of Dumpster Diving," where I fondly recall my first "solo" dive at that shopping mall. Don't buy it, get it at a library.)

Back then, hardly anybody noticed that a whole wetland had been sacrificed, and continued to be sacrificed as more and more businesses sprang up around the mall.

Northgate shopping mall started this whole mall thing, and now it would be good karma for Northgate to give some of the ecosystem BACK. For Northgate to ignore this tremendous historical ecological opportunity would be a bad thing, cosmically bad, really bad luck bad. I mean, why would a mall display totem poles out front but then simply ignore the spirit of the Northwest, which is so tied in to the water and the salmon? Nordstrom's recently built a super store, but in so doing has created a legacy of ill will that may never go away and constantly surfaces in the press. Northgate should learn from that lesson, and respect the wishes of the community to "daylight" Thornton Creek or, by god, I for one would strong consider no longer shopping at Northgate and would, perhaps, even help organize boycotts and noisy, colorful, quite disruptive (but completely legal) protests.

But there should be no need for that. If these businesspeople can't figure out a way to make a buck off a resource in their very lap like a "daylighted" Thornton Creek, then they just wouldn't be very good businesspeople. I'm sure if we all put our heads together that this concept can work and would be good for everybody. In 100 years our children's children will look back and say that, at this point in the road, somebody - the people who run the first shopping mall in America - did the right thing.

-JOHN HOFFMAN

University District