Neighborhood Matching Fund has changed Seattle's face

A decade ago, members of the local Filipino community held their events in a former bowling alley in Rainier Valley that had stuffy rooms, dim lighting and a leaky roof.

Today, visitors to the community center encounter a classy ballroom, a brand-new wing and a sparkling exterior — a $2 million makeover that got a small but important infusion from the city's Neighborhood Matching Fund.

The center, which recently celebrated its grand reopening, is one of more than 3,000 projects the nationally lauded matching fund has supported since it began 20 years ago.

The fund, whose anniversary is being marked the next five Saturdays across the city, has given entrepreneurial individuals and groups as little as $100 and as much as $300,000 for neighborhood projects — whether they're beautifying streets and parks or completing an oral history.

Some projects have become local landmarks — such as the Fremont Troll, the Alki Statue of Liberty and the two-mile corridor of murals on Fifth Avenue South in Sodo.

For the $42 million the city has awarded since 1988, grant recipients have contributed more than $65 million in matching cash, in-kind services and volunteer hours.

"It creates, builds and supports good, strong communities, as opposed to people in government talking down to people, saying, 'You have to do this,' " said Terry Walsh of Broadview, the force behind another matching fund success story — Carkeek Park's salmon-themed playground.

In 1991 the Ford Foundation and Harvard's Kennedy School of Government named the matching fund one of the 10 most innovative local-government programs in the nation.

The man who started it, Jim Diers, has gone on to help other cities, such as Dublin and Sydney, launch similar funds.

"Its greatest contribution is the way it newly involved tens of thousands of people in community life," Diers said.

That said, the program is not without critics.

Some question why neighbors, instead of the city, have to raise money to get a sidewalk or park improved.

Others say finished projects, such as a mural or playground, become neglected years after their founders have moved on.

"The heart that everyone put into it is still there," Walsh said. "But it needs to be maintained."

Carkeek Park

In the early 1990s, Walsh wanted a fun and safe playground for her little boy and didn't like what nearby Carkeek Park's play area offered — an overused seesaw, a mini-boat with a steering wheel and a metal slide she considered dangerous.

In 1993, she watched salmon returning to Pipers Creek for the first time in decades — a victory for the environmental groups that had made the habitat healthy again.

"I was just in awe of what people can create working together," said Walsh, a schoolteacher. "I wondered, 'What can I do to help out?' "

When she went to a meeting of the Carkeek Park Advisory Council to ask about improving the playground, she quickly found herself put in charge of a new playground committee.

She spent the next two years leading a group that would produce a playground anchored by a 19-foot-long slide shaped like a salmon. Kids enter at the mouth and slide out the tail.

As is typically done, the Carkeek group applied for money in two phases: first for a small grant to engage the community on a playground design, then for a larger grant — nearly $100,000 — to build it.

Making the vision a reality brought more than 100 people together. Some solicited donations while others did landscaping, painted tiles or built trails.

Said Walsh: "They each get to participate in ways that show their gifts."

Filipino center

Beware of government workers bearing gifts.

That's essentially what Bert Caoili, a retired Boeing worker, was up against as he tried to persuade the elders of the Filipino community to accept grants from the city, county and state to help them renovate their center.

"They thought once there is government money, the government will have control," recalled Caoili, president of the Filipino Community of Seattle.

But in 1998, the Filipino community was jolted into action when Sound Transit revealed that its light-rail route would require demolishing the community's clubhouse, the former Empire Lanes bowling alley, which the elders bought in 1965 for about $80,000.

Sound Transit would later shift its proposed route a few feet, saving the community center.

But Caoili and others nonetheless undertook a capital campaign to renovate the building, which, on top of its other problems, had become too small for the growing community.

Recently the center hosted a program for immigrant teenagers — a group Caoili worries may be tempted to shoplift or join gangs.

"Other kids have cars and brand-name clothing, and the newly arrived immigrants don't have that kind of luxury," Caoili said. "It creates a sense of jealousy. We want to let parents know what the kids are doing, and that there's a community willing to help out."

Evolution of fund

While the fund draws broad support, it hasn't escaped critics.

There is less money for awards than there was in 2001, its peak year, when more than 200 projects received a total of about $3.8 million. In the past three years, the city has awarded an average of $2.5 million a year for about 140 projects.

And there are more parameters now on how the funds are used: The City Council has capped large project awards at $100,000 and earmarked chunks of the budget for certain green programs and youth programs in the Central Area and Rainier Beach.

And often, once a beautification project has been unveiled, momentum is hard to sustain. That has led to disagreements over who is responsible for keeping, say, sculptures and murals in good condition.

Community groups now must submit a maintenance plan when they apply for funds. Typically, playgrounds are the purview of the parks department, while projects like traffic circles fall on the shoulders of the sponsoring neighbors.

It's not a perfect system.

Steve Badanes, the architect who designed the Fremont Troll, said the Fremont Arts Council has a tough job maintaining that attraction.

"It'd be nice if the city took care of it," he said. "It's the most loved and most vandalized place in Seattle."

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com