The Architect Page 6

  "We were discussing where to go for lunch," the Chamber of Commerce representative said.

  "Isn't that the architect, what's-his-name?" the city councilmember asked the architecture dean sitting next to her.

  The dean adjusted his glasses and peered out at the small audience. Jones waved.

  "Yes, it is," the dean said, and waved back.

  The city council representative asked Jones if he would like to speak. Jones put his newspaper down on the seat next to him, stood up, and began, "Ladies and Gentle—"

  "Please come up to the microphone," the city councilmember said.

  Jones shrugged and proceeded to the microphone at the front of the room. "Ladies and gentlemen of the Planning Committee, I come before you today to announce that what our city needs is not just a new convention center, but rather a new vision. I have spent much of the past week reimagining downtown. Just a moment." He returned to his seat and retrieved a set of papers which he distributed to the members of the committee. "You will see that I have opened up the city, given it a wide boulevard, places for people to congregate, everything we need to be not just first class but world class!"

  The members of the committee looked at the papers Jones had handed them. They depicted a six-lane boulevard from Lake Union to downtown with turnouts marked for pocket parks, cafes, and lawn bowling. “The new convention center could be at either end, though I prefer it nearer the lake,” he said.

  "Who wants to respond?" asked the city councilmember.

  They all began to speak. It was the secretary who called them to order because she could not take notes if they all talked at the same time.

  "This is very ambitious," the representative from the Arts Committee said as she waved Jones' sketch in the air.

  "A little too ambitious if you ask me," said the Chamber of Commerce delegate. "Our assignment was to decide if we need a new convention center."

  The dean of the school of architecture said, "I thought that was already decided and our task was to choose a design."

  The city councilmember said they could still recommend renovating the old convention center.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," Jones shouted, "illustrious members of the Planning Committee, could we discuss my proposal?"

  "I don't like your tone," said the chamber of commerce representative, but the representative from the Arts Committee moved to ask the city council for permission to broaden their mandate to include reconfiguring the boulevard from Lake Union to downtown Seattle. After some discussion the city councilmember called the question. The result was a tie. All four members turned to the secretary.

  "Don't look at me," she said.

  In the end they flipped a coin. The city council member called heads, and heads it was. The matter was referred to the City Council.

  21

  Jones was putting the finishing touches on a drawing of the museum he envisaged for his new park when he heard the front door open. A man was talking to Marge, but Jones could not make out what was being said. Suddenly the secretary was speaking in an unusually loud voice, telling the man that Jones was not there. He maneuvered around his desk and quietly pulled down the shade over his office door window, and then peeked under it just getting a glimpse of a scruffy looking man wearing an overcoat.

  "Who was that?" he heard the visitor say.

  Marge, in an even louder voice, replied, "That was Mr. Abernathy, Mr. Jones' assistant."

  They spoke some more, but Jones could not make out what they were saying. When he heard the front door open and close again he held his breath until the door opened and closed once more before he left his own office.

  "Who was that, Marge?"

  "He wouldn't say, but my guess is he was here to serve a subpoena."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Who else wears an overcoat in Seattle? Is a client suing you?"

  "No, my wife is divorcing me."

  "I didn't know you were married."

  He told her about Sarah, how he first saw her at a poetry reading and could not stay away from her until they were married and then could not live with her because he felt confined.

  "Some people think of it as sharing," Marge said.

  "Yes, I was never very good at that."

  Jones went home early, but he saw the man in the overcoat looking at the resident directory, so he went to Arlene's place instead. When he rang her apartment she sounded as if he woke her up.

  "Who is it?"

  "Me."

  "Me who?"

  "Oh, come on, Arlene. Me, Templeton."

  "I don't know any Templeton." She hung up without buzzing him in.

  Now what? Jones wondered. He went over in his mind the last time he saw Arlene. As far as he could remember they did not have a fight. He was about to leave when her voice came over the wall speaker again.

  "Come on up" she said.

  The door buzzed and he went in, wondering how she knew he was still there. When he got to her apartment he knocked on the door.

  "It's not locked," she said.

  He entered and found Arlene in her bathrobe. She opened it.

  "Is this what you wanted?"

  "No."

  He closed her bathrobe and gently tied the sash. Then he wiped the tears from her cheeks. Arlene pushed him away.

  "I've been waiting and waiting for you to ask me to dance."

  "I'm sorry," Jones said. "I have been working on a big project. That's what I came to tell you about."

  He described his plan to remake the city, telling her he would do for Seattle what Baron Haussmann did for Paris. The more he talked about it the more excited he got, filling in details with descriptions of the kinds of stores and cafes that would line his boulevard, and what kinds of trees there would be in the little park. When he was finished and asked her what she thought, she kissed him.

  "Good," he said. "Now, let's dance."

  He went to her record player and put a Tony Bennett disc on. Arlene said she would get dressed.

  "No, don't," he said.

  22

  At the office of the Cascade Development Corporation, Jonathan Goldwanger called up his managing partner.

  "Steve, what do you know about some guy wanting to build a boulevard from the lake to downtown?"

  "He's an architect named Jones. I hear he was one of the architects invited to compete to design a new convention center, but he got carried away and now wants to build a boulevard from Lake Union to downtown."

  "What do you think of his chances?"

  "Forget it."

  Goldwanger studied a map of the South Lake Union neighborhood.

  "It's a nice idea," he said. "Do we own any property around there?"

  "I'll have to check, but I wouldn't waste my time thinking about it. About twenty years ago there was a proposal to remake that area and the people voted it down."

  Goldwanger hung up the phone and went back to studying the map. He remembered the proposal for a Seattle Commons, and he liked the idea at the time. He also knew that there had been other such ideas. Back around 1910 or so a city planner named Bogue proposed a magnificent boulevard culminating in a grand civic center. That was voted down too. Perhaps the third time would be the proverbial charm.

  The phone rang. A reporter was doing a background article on the South Lake Union area and wondered if Cascade had any plans to build there.

  "South Lake Union?" Goldwanger said. "Why would we want to build there? Didn't the city vote against a big development there a few years ago?"

  Jonathan Goldwanger was a tall thin man who was used to looking down on people. He played guard on his college basketball team, but he envied the center. Finally, he knew he was not good enough for the NBA, so when his father was killed in an automobile accident he dropped out of school in his junior year to take over his father's insurance brokerage business. Now fifty years old, he compensated for the u-turn his brown hair made on his head by growing a beard which grew in an odd reddish color. He started
in the development business by asking discreet questions of his insurance customers and he now owned a shopping mall in one of the city's suburbs, a private yacht harbor, and two of the tallest office buildings in downtown Seattle. He was married and had just one child, a young man, because he did not want to have to divide his holdings, or see his offspring squabbling over it. South Lake Union would be a challenge.

  Goldwanger called his driver and asked him to get the car ready.

  "Where are we going?" the driver asked.

  "Oh, just for a ride."

  The Lincoln Town car looked out of place as it glided between rows of warehouses, car dealerships, and taverns. Goldwanger peered out the car window and made notes as they drove. When they got near the lake he got out and walked to the shore. There was a small park, some large building that belonged to the Navy and could probably be declared surplus. In the water was a wooden boat and some yachts. He walked around to the avenue that ran from the lake to downtown and tried to imagine what Jones saw there. Then he took out his cell phone and called his assistant.

  "Start researching ownership titles to property in the South Lake Union area."

  23

  When Jones opened the copy of Real Change, the newspaper sold by homeless people in Seattle, he was surprised to find an envelope in it. He assumed at first that it was an appeal for money but quickly realized that its contents were too thick for that. The man who sold him the paper was running away. Jones realized that he was now divorced.

  I will miss her, he thought. Images of Sarah came to mind. He remembered her in front of bookstore audiences, reciting her poems, and the jealousy he felt afterwards as people crowded around her, praising her work and asking for her autograph. He tried writing poems himself, but he never showed them to her, knowing they weren't very good. It was Sarah who urged him to open his own office and get away from designing shopping malls. He studied the legal papers, and then tossed them into the nearest trash basket. Some day, he thought, I will have to go back to the east coast and see how she is getting along.

  When he entered his office Marge said she was glad to see him because reporters had been calling all morning wanting to know about his plans to rebuild the city. He went to the window and stared down at the Square near where the city was born. If only we could really start over, he thought.

  Marge was speaking. "The man from the Times wanted to know if it was a joke."

  Why stop with a new boulevard?, he thought. A fire once destroyed much of early Seattle and they rebuilt with stone and brick, creating much more interesting and useful buildings. What would it take to remake the city, section by section? Perhaps a flood, like the one that hit New Orleans. A tsunami would give people enough warning to evacuate and then…

  "What did you say? A joke?" Too ambitious. The city is not ready for it. "Announce a press conference," he told his secretary. "Wednesday at three o'clock in Pioneer Square I will present my plan for a new, grand boulevard."

  Two days later he stood on a bench in Pioneer Square. A small cadre of journalists, photographers, and homeless people gathered around. Although it was a warm, sunny day, Jones was dressed in his best blue suit with a red tie against a white shirt.

  "I have called you here," he said in a voice that reverberated around the park, "to make a major architectural announcement." He paused while photographers snapped pictures and journalists readied pencils over their note pads. "I have proposed to the Planning Committee a widening and beautification of Westlake and Fifth Avenues. It will look like this." At that, he unfurled a three foot by five foot canvas on which he had pictured his vision of the new street. He went on to describe its features and then invited questions.

  A reporter for one of the dailies asked what reaction he received from the committee. Just then, a policeman pushed his way through the crowd.

  "Sir," he said, "you will have to get down off that bench."

  "I'll be finished soon," Jones said pleasantly. "I'm just taking questions."

  "I said, get down off that bench. Do you have a permit to hold a rally?"

  A reporter said, "This isn't a rally. It's a press—"

  "I wasn't talking to you," the cop said. He turned back to Jones and began to pull at his leg."

  "Stop," Jones said. "You're pulling my leg."

  The laughter from the crowd seemed to irritate the cop. He waved his club threateningly at Jones and again demanded that Jones get down. Jones showed him the canvas with the drawing of his new boulevard.

  "See here," he said. "I'm going to change the face of Seattle."

  "I'm going to change your face if you don't get down now!"

  The crowd grew as more people came to see what was happening. When the cop reached for Jones again, someone—one newspaper the next day reported that it was one of the homeless people who frequent the park while the other wrote that it was a teenager wearing an Occupy Seattle t-shirt—said, "Leave him alone." The cop turned to see who was telling him what to do, but in doing so his club hit Linda Lacey, a reporter for a local TV station. She slapped the cop with her note book, an action caught by her cameraman. It made the eleven o'clock news. Then everyone started yelling at once and people in the back began pushing their way in to see what was causing the commotion. The cop blew his whistle for help. When shoves turned to punches and more people joined the melee, Jones decided it was time to go. He quietly stepped down from the end of the bench and headed to his office. As he was leaving the park, he heard the police siren.

  24

  The papers the next day reported that six people had been arrested, but all except Linda Lacey had been released. She was charged with assaulting an officer. Jones was more interested in an article by Millicent Mondelay:

  Architect would remake city

  East coast architect Templeton Jones was not in Seattle long

  before he announced plans to radically change a large part of

  the city. Jones, whose Belissimo condominiums were panned by

  the Seattle Weekender, presented the Planning Committee with a

  bizarre proposal to rip up most of the area from Lake Union to

  downtown.

  The article went on to say that the scheme would cost billions of dollars and disrupt business in the neighborhood for years. Jones crumpled up the newspaper and started to throw it away, but then flattened it out, cut out the article, and asked Marge to have it framed.

  That's probably the end of my big idea, Jones thought, but the next day he received a call from a local developer who was organizing a Committee for a New Seattle to promote Jones' plan. He wanted Jones to chair the committee.

  The first meeting took place in the conference room of the developer's office. When Jones entered the room he saw five people arguing over a slogan for the committee. The developer welcomed Jones at which everyone stopped shouting and stood up. They introduced themselves. Besides the developer, there was a professor of urban design at the university, the owner of a coffee shop on Fifth Avenue, a real estate broker, and a retired woman who proudly announced that she was a veteran of two anti-war protests. Jones motioned for them to sit.

  They all sat except the coffee shop owner who went up to Jones, grabbed his hand, and pumped it as if he was expecting water to gush from the architect's mouth. Jones disengaged himself and stepped back.

  "At last," the coffee shop proprietor said, "a man of vision." He turned to the rest of the committee and nominated Jones for chairman.

  Jones thanked them all, and declined, protesting that he was entirely too busy. After much beseeching, he agreed to be honorary chair, and the committee got down to work.

  They elected the real estate broker chair and he said the first item of business was to raise money. There was a general murmur of assent and then the coffee shop proprietor was elected treasurer. The professor said he thought he could get some students from the computer science department to create a website. “I have some ideas to contribute to the basic design,” he said, looking straig
ht at Jones. When Jones did not respond, the professor added: “Landscaping, for instance.” Jones nodded, but said nothing.

  "We're rolling now," the real estate broker said. He looked at the retired woman and asked, "And what will you do?"

  She looked around and when it was inescapable that he was speaking to her, she offered to organize a rally. They were debating a slogan when Jones quietly slipped out the back. On his way he heard: "Seattle Makeover," "Super Seattle," and "Make Seattle the Paris of the Northwest."

  25

  Millicent Mondelay started working the phones. First she called Syd Snyder, the amateur historian who was head of the city's Association of Historical Preservationists, to warn him that a house near Lake Union that was once home to one of the original Klondike Gold Miners was being threatened by Jones' crackpot redevelopment idea. Snyder promised to alert his membership. Then she began calling businesses in the area and warned them that their livelihood was being threatened. This is going to be a great story, she was thinking, probably go national. I suppose I should interview Jones.

  One week later, the Committee to Save Seattle held a rally in the city's downtown park. The featured speaker was Syd Snyder,

  "People of Seattle, how many times will we let these modern day vandals destroy the rich heritage of our city for a few shekels of profit?" he asked the small crowd that had gathered. "They have already destroyed historic World War Two barracks at Fort Lawton, the splendid Music Hall Theater, and the Kingdome stadium where so much of our city's sports history took place. Soon they will demolish the Viaduct, the raised highway that gives drivers a spectacular view over Elliot Bay. Now they have their eye on a huge swatch of land between here and Lake Union. In that land is a house that once housed a Klondike Gold Miner. I have researchers right now poring over records to find his name.