Tom Graff, our Bell Award winner for July, has been instrumental in the creation of Belltown's commercial renaissance while simultaneously volunteering to a variety of worthy neighborhood projects and initiatives. Graff is President and manager of the commercial office of Ewing and Clark-a 107-year-old Seattle real estate company (located for 30 years in Belltown) where he does "brokerage work, primarily storefront leasing and land/building sales." He has been working in Belltown since 1988.

His wife is a Superior Court Commissioner in Snohomish County, and he has two children in college. He is also a Captain in the U.S. Naval Reserves.

He now takes the commuter train to work most days from his home in Edmonds, and "wishes that we got our stop at the Sculpture Park. That would be ideal." Tom has been president of the Denny Hill Association, "which morphed into the neighborhood planning committee." He has been a board member of the Belltown Business Association for ten years, and on the leadership committee for the Olympic Sculpture Park, a board member for Allied Arts of Seattle since 1990, and a past President of the Downtown District Council.

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-Tell me a bit about the history of Belltown's transition from gritty industrial area to modern urban center.

There were a few buildings prior to 1920 that were not destroyed in the regrading and those are primarily on First Avenue from Lenora to Wall. We have the Austin A. Bell, Oregon, A-1 Laundry, OddFellows, New Pacific Building, etc. Belltown at the turn of the century was an outer suburb of the historic center of town - Pioneer Square.

photo by Alex

From the turn of the century to 1920, Denny Hill was regraded. Unfortunately for Belltown, the invention of the elevator meant that downtown grew without needing to expand north to Belltown: the buildings downtown just grew taller. So the buildings built in the regraded Denny Hill were much more modest than the city planners had hoped. These include the Stonecliff, the Watermarke, Dean's Transmission, the Marshall Building, and Fourth and Cedar. After World War II and into the '60s we did get some iconic modern buildings, including the Wall Street Tower and the old P-I building, but the growth continued to be spotty.

In the 1970s Martin Selig built three office buildings on Fourth Avenue and some condo towers started popping up, the Royal Crest and the Grandview. Then another pause.

Finally, the growth boomlet our regrade forefathers were expecting in the '20s and '30s for old Denny Hill began with Arbor Place in 1988. We have had a steady flow of new projects ever since.

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-From the beginning, you advocated for a strong retail presence in the new buildings.

The Cyclops and Queen City Grill were the two restaurants down here in late '80s and early '90s. I also believed we could build on the trailblazing that Jim Egbert and Neso Muscatel (Continental Furniture) forged in furniture. Belltown Court was the first project where retail was truly thought of as more than an afterthought. I helped Belltown Court with their retail and heavily pursued Scott Carsberg (future owner of Lampreia) for the corner. He introduced me to Leslie Mackie of Macrina. The developer, Intracorp's predessesor Intrawest, saw the value in these two retailers and took a chance with them. I also wanted to bring in fashion and called Kiko (Kiko House of Couture). I told him we would make him his dress shop and he took the leap. Other Seattle neighborhoods have their retail strips, but in Belltown I did not want to see just another single commercial arterial street. I wanted retail (or at least ground-floor commercial uses) on all the avenues from Western to Fifth, to make the neighborhood truly pedestrian friendly. I became even more committed once Fountain Court was built, which turned its back on the neighborhood. The problem is that, as a Seattle neighborhood of 15,000 residents, we cannot support that amount of retail on our own. We must draw customers from all over the region. The 80 great restaurants in Belltown begin to do just that.

Another category of the retail that pulls them in is our small fashion boutiques. Kuhlman, Dannenberg, ModaXPress, J. Gilbert, Endless Knot and lots more. Belltown really has created a niche for small owner-operated fashion boutiques. I've also pursued art-oriented smaller industrial designers, and helped Cliff Goodman of Seattle Glassblowing Studios come into the neighborhood and ultimately buy his building. These businesses help define Belltown in the same way the buildings do.

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-What would you say to someone who sees Belltown as wealthy enclave of homogeneous condo dwellers?

There has always been a large concentration of low-income residents in Belltown. We generally don't notice them. And the low-income providers continue to build, including the latest with Plymouth Housing Group's project on Third Avenue. These projects are being built along with market-rate housing (Moda on Third) and luxury housing (Gallery on Second). We have a great mix of residences that contribute to the diversity of the neighborhood.

In fact, diversity and eclectic is what I think of when I think of Belltown. We have buildings from every decade from 1890 to the present in the neighborhood. And we have income levels from the very high to the very low and everything in between. We have Fortune 500 companies (Real Networks, Phillips) and small emerging companies. We have top-tier restaurants known throughout the U.S. and abroad, as well as great cheap eats too.

If you want a rarified, strained piece of the wealthy lifestyle, you can go to Kirkland or Madison Park. Belltown mixes with a much more diverse population base and one of the most historically rich sets of buildings in the entire state. On top of that urban fabric, we layer an incredible restaurant scene, completely unique fashion boutiques, and a wonderful variety of home furnishings.

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-Can you have a vital urban center with fewer cars?

Open surface parking lots are killers to a lively pedestrian scene. However, I recognize that for Belltown retail to survive, we need to find a way for folks driving in to enjoy our retail to find a place to park. I pushed for parking meters throughout our district. We can also use our existing parking more efficiently by allowing nighttime/weekend customers from outside of downtown to park in office buildings to relieve our nighttime/weekend parking crunch. The residents and office employees also, in practice, don't need as much parking as they think they will need when they move into the district. The neighborhood is intentionally pedestrian-friendly and, frankly, it is not worth the hassle to drive from one end of Belltown to the other. I think we all end up walking, carpooling, or taking the bus. I walk to almost all my appointments-it's a great way to catch up my clients, because they invariably are out and about also. Surface parking lots and stand-alone parking garages should not be encouraged.

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-Do you have any regrets about any Belltown projects that didn't work out?

I wish the Vine Street Green Street project had been fully built. I love the limited pieces on that project built between Elliott and First; but I imagine the whole thing done between the waterfront and Denny and it would have been magical. Perhaps it will still happen.

I also wish some of the public spaces around the office developments had been designed with better outdoor areas. Fisher Plaza is an example of a nice, privately owned space open to the public, but the Fourth and Blanchard Building (the "Darth Vader" building) does not have a friendly pedestrian connection to the neighborhood (although I do like Martin Selig's latest sculpture addition on the corner of this building!).

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-What about Belltown's lack of parks?

The Sculpture Park helps open up Myrtle Edwards Park to the neighborhood in a way that is simply incredible. I love that park. If I were to press for another great space, I would simply push to incorporate the full block of the P-Patch for a full-city-block park. Most of the other obvious locations have major buildings or housing for a full city block and the City of Seattle Parks Department has had a history of dismally maintaining urban pocket parks.

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-How about Belltown Nightclubs?

I see a value in nightlife. It's all part of the urban mix. I recognize that is it hard to balance the nightclubs with the housing. I refuse to believe it is all or nothing. Some clubs will not be welcomed and some residents will move on since the noise will be too much.

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-Viaduct thoughts?

I was originally a proponent of the tunnel. Clearly, the money is not there for a tunnel option unless the deep bore tunnel can be priced under $2 billion. The only other solution is a sane surface street/transit option. I truly admire Cary Moon for her tenacious work for the surface/transit solution. Let's make sure the above-ground viaduct from Lenora to Bell also gets removed in any solution.

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The publishers of The Belltown Messenger, inspired by longtime Belltowner Carole Jordan, are proud to announce the formation of a new monthly award for honoring outstanding members of our community: the Belltown Exceptional Local Luminary - or BELL - awards.

Every month we will profile an exceptional local luminary and designate that worthy our BELL winner for that month. At the end of each year we'll stage a presentation event and party, the BELL Awards Gala, during which we will elect a Belltowner of the Year from amongst our monthly winners.

Our intent is to recognize and celebrate the talented, compassionate, civic-minded people who make Belltown such a great neighborhood.

Nominations need not be limited to residents of Belltown: we are looking to honor those who have acted in ways that benefit our neighborhood. Businesspeople, civic activists, philanthropists, artists, you name it. Aside from the profile in The Messenger, each monthly winner will receive a framable certificate of merit, nice gifts from our sponsors, and a one-year voting membership on our board.

Needless to say, nominees cannot be employees or relatives of employees (or contributors) of the Belltown Messenger or of the founding board.

We need your nominations for our Belltown Exceptional Local Luminary for July: please send them to bellawards@belltownmessenger.com, or to our "virtual office" care of P.O. Box 61370, Seattle, WA 98141.

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