Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 2, February 2004

Copyright 2004 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

Developer, church team up

on Maple Leaf School site

By JAMES BUSH

Just outside his office window at Maple Leaf Lutheran Church, Community Outreach Director Terry Vogel can see the former site of Maple Leaf Elementary School at NE 100th Street and 32nd Avenue NE. For many years, the church, which owns a grand total of six parking spaces, has had its eye on acquiring a chunk of the former school property across the street for a parking lot.

Home builder Steve Williams, a lifelong Northeast Seattle resident, has also been keeping an eye on the site. A large, level property in a secluded neighborhood like this is a rarity in this otherwise-developed urban area.

Williams admits that, when driving by in the past, he's announced to his companions that he would someday develop that parcel.

He was right. According to Seattle School District spokeswoman Patti Spencer, Steve Williams Custom Homes outbid seven other interested parties with an offer of $2,832,000 for the site, which includes almost three acres of undeveloped land. The Seattle School Board approved the sale on Dec. 10; the deadline for completing the deal is Feb. 26.

Williams has offered to sell roughly one-third of the property to the church, which is gearing up for a major capital campaign to fund the project, says Vogel. The church's ultimate goal is to raise $1.5 million, two-thirds for the property acquisition and the rest to fund construction of a 100-space parking lot. But a more pressing initial challenge is to raise enough money to put a down payment on the parcel.

What's the first step in raising $1.5 million? "Pray," said Vogel.

They're not relying on prayer alone: Lee Foster has been appointed campaign director and Carole Fredrickson as publicity director, and the church is working with a professional fundraiser. Still, Vogel says of the challenge faced by the church, "it's huge by any standard for anybody."

The church and the former elementary school had a long history together. Formed in 1946 as "Evangelical Lutheran Church at Maple Leaf School," the church's first services were held in the school gym. The church eventually took the name Maple Leaf Lutheran. (The neighborhood where it is located later changed its name from Maple Leaf to Meadowbrook. )

Over the years, the church also relied on the school site for parking, said Vogel. Now, about 40 to 50 cars are squeezed onto the shoulder of 32nd Avenue NE during services, with other cars distributed around the neighborhood.

If the property were developed without church participation, these spaces would be lost, creating a "parking crisis," said Vogel. "We don't want a crisis: we want to be good neighbors."

Williams, owner of Steve Williams Custom Homes, said the site is a special property. "It's an unusual sized vacant property in the city of Seattle, period," he said. "I believe it's the second largest tract available in the last ten years."

Not surprisingly, there was a tremendous amount of interest in the property, so Williams is pleased to have won the bidding war and the opportunity to partner with the church. "It was the proper thing to do in a community sense, to get together with them and help create a deal so they could pursue the property for their needs," he said. "And the whole neighborhood gets better because the [church] parking issues go away."

While there hasn't been neighborhood agreement on what to do with the former Maple Leaf School site (the school was closed in 1979; the building was demolished in 1990), things could have been worse.

Four years ago, the U.S. Postal Service was eying the property as the site for a new, full-service branch post office. An effort to preserve the site as a park floundered in the face of some neighborhood opposition and general city disinterest.

The Seattle School District has long retained its closed schools and other properties, but has put several school sites on the market during the past few months, due to financial pressures. Like the Maple Leaf Elementary School site, most have been sold at prices above their appraised value.

Williams has submitted a short-plat application to the city to divide his portion of the property into 12 building lots. Eight of the new houses would be two story homes of about 3,000 square feet; the other four would be larger with three stories and about 4,000 square feet. The four larger homes will have curb cuts on NE 100th Street, the other eight will be accessed via a private road, he adds. "We hope to start construction in the summer of 2004."