By CLAYTON PARK

When he ran for City Council in 1997, Peter Steinbrueck let it be known that he was a North Seattle resident -- and proud of it.

But if you were to have asked him at the time to tell you which North Seattle neighborhood he lived in, you might have gotten one of three answers:

A.) Lake City, as he told a meeting of the Lake City Chamber of Commerce.

B.) Maple Leaf, as he told people at a candidates' forum held there.

C.) Haller Lake, as he told people at a meeting of the Haller Lake Community Club.

The correct answer: C.

Steinbrueck, by the way, won his bid for City Council and is now running for reelection this fall to a full four-year term.

But let's give Steinbrueck some slack. For the record, Steinbrueck and his family (wife Marilyn and sons Mason, 5, and Benjamin, 3) live in east Haller Lake, which was separated from the rest of the community when I-5 was built in the '60s.

That's why, when the Steinbruecks bought their home in 1989, they had no idea they actually lived in Haller Lake.

Steinbrueck recently commented: "For me, it doesn't matter what the artificial boundaries are. What matters to me is what neighborhoods I have an affinity for. My sister, Lisa Steinbrueck, is owner of the Snowgoose Gallery in Maple Leaf, so I have an affinity with the Maple Leaf neighborhood ... Likewise, Lake City is our closest large neighborhood shopping area."

Steinbrueck is best known for his ties to the Pike Place Market. His father, the late Victor Steinbrueck, led the successful citizens' campaign to save the Market from the wrecking ball in the late '60s.

Twenty years later, Peter helped lead a similar fight to save the Market -- thwarting a hostile takeover attempt by a group of New York investors.

Since joining the City Council, Steinbrueck has continued to make a name for himself. As chair of the Council's housing committee, he successfully lobbied for another $1 million to be added to the City's budget to be spent on low-income housing. He also persuaded the City to extend its homeless shelter program.

While he, like his dad, is an architect by trade, Steinbrueck says human services, not mortar and bricks, are now his No. 1 priority.

He credits this outlook to his father, who taught him as a child to place human values over material values. "Our quality of life is not measured solely by economic prosperity," he says. "While Seattle is on an enormous prosperity trend, more and more people are being driven out of the city" because of rising costs.

Steinbrueck, 41, speaks from personal experience, having grown up in the Denny-Blaine district "when it was a middle-class neighborhood," only to find as a grownup that he couldn't afford a house there on a beginning architect's salary.

The house in Haller Lake that he and his wife settled on was, in his words, "a real dump." He has spent the past decade renovating it. Shortly after winning election to the Council, he commented that maybe now he could finally afford to hire somebody else to finish the job -- but so far he has gotten around to it yet.

Steinbrueck says he's also an advocate for small business, noting that "everyone in my family runs a small business."

As one of only two Council members from North Seattle (Sue Donaldson of Laurelhurst is the other), Steinbruek says: "I definitely have a familiarity with the North End. I am trying my darndest to be knowledgeable about key North End issues."

On Feb. 17, Steinbrueck and County Council member Maggi Fimia co-hosted a public forum on Northwest Hospital's controversial plan to resume use of its medical waste incinerator in the Haller Lake area. While Steinbreuck has publicly voiced his dislike of incinerators, in a show of sympathy for local residents who have held vigils in front of the hospital calling for permanently shutting down the incinerator, he says the City essentially has its hands tied without proof that the incinerator poses a significant health hazard. "Legally, the City has a risk of being sued for damages" if it were to step in prematurely, he says. "It's not as easy as you think."

Likewise regarding Northgate Mall's plans to build a mega-mixed use project on its south parking lot, says Steinbreuck. A number of local citizens are currently urging the City to require the mall's owner to adhere to the guidelines in the Northgate Comprehensive Plan, a document drafted by local citizens and approved by the City in the early '90s calling for more pedestrian-oriented development. "I'm committed to the Northgate Plan," says Steinbrueck, while adding that any action the City takes "needs to be legally sound. ... There are some limits to what the City can compel the Mall to do."

So what does it mean for Steinbrueck to be a North Seattleite serving on the City Council? "Being a Council member at-large, I view myself as a North End steward," he says, "but at the same time I feel an obligation to represent the whole city."