Cooperation pays off in historic Fairhaven
Next chapter: more condos, urban feel
by Marina Parr

It wasn’t so long ago when Bellingham’s Fairhaven area was a boarded up ghost town of a place.
At least that’s how Village Books owner Chuck Robinson remembers the historic area where he and his wife, Dee, decided to open their landmark bookstore in 1980.
The couple, a pair of Midwestern educators with big dreams and literary tastes, looked past Fairhaven’s frayed edges. What they saw was a historic place in need of a bit of polishing but with plenty of character.
“It was our opinion,” said Robinson, “that we could run a mom-and-pop bookstore. Even if the area didn’t change that much we would still have a reasonable sort of place to operate a bookstore.”
These days, of course, Fairhaven is one of the hippest, most coveted areas around. Although there are no clear boundaries for Fairhaven’s business district, most people agree that the historic area, which used to be its own city, generally extends west from 13th Street to the water.
Its northern boundary sits at about Taylor Avenue and runs south toward the Old Fairhaven Parkway, which eventually hooks into Interstate 5.

Cooperation spurs success
But Fairhaven’s bustling, booming cachet wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Indeed, business owners in other areas in Whatcom, Skagit, Island and San Juan counties might benefit from studying what has made Fairhaven such a success.
One smart move was the formation of a solid community association, with business people working in tandem with those concerned about historic preservation and beautification. Both business people and historic enthusiasts support one another as part of the Fairhaven Association.
Robinson, for his part, is the current chair of the association’s merchant committee.
The association supports a comprehensive Web site, located at www.Fairhaven.com.
In Fairhaven, business people and residents must adhere to historic design standards when building or remodeling. Many of Fairhaven’s elegant brick buildings have been restored and any new ones must be designed to fit in with the existing streetscape.
Vicki Rogers, who owns several businesses in Bellingham, including kitchenware store Pacific Chef in the heart of Fairhaven, likes this unified identity -- and she thinks her customers do, too.
She remembers some visitors from New York who were unable to tell the difference in age between a brand-new building from one that sits across the street and was built in 1858.
“It’s just neat to see the old mixed with the new,” she said.

Fairhaven Association builds bridges
Rogers also credits the Fairhaven Association for drawing on the strengths of merchants, while tapping the interests of those involved in historic preservation.
“First off, it causes everyone to communicate,” she said.
That wasn’t always the case.
Rogers remembers 15 years ago when the Bellingham Chamber of Commerce asked her to help host a meeting at the Bellingham Cruise Terminal as a way to bridge business interests and historic interests. Rogers owns a gift shop, Inside Passage, at the terminal.
“There was a line down the middle,” said Rogers, between the merchants and the historic group. “The two didn’t necessarily mesh very well.”
It was around this time, in the early 1990s, that Rogers and others began to work on blending the two.
These days, nearly everyone who sits on the Fairhaven board is either a business owner or property owner.
Members of the Fairhaven Association’s merchant committee help communicate with other members of the business community about everything from shoplifting to vagrants to bad checks.
They also work on collective promotions, from summer sidewalk sales to art walks to seasonal lighting.
“It’s an information-sharing committee for the businesses down here,” said merchant committee chairman Robinson.

Association taps money
Rogers said the Fairhaven Association has become adept at tapping grant money offered by the city of Bellingham to fund community improvement projects. The group also works with volunteer organizations, such as the Lions Club, whose members help out by watering the hanging baskets that line Fairhaven.
She said businesspeople in other areas around northwest Washington would be wise to form a tight-knit group, and work together when possible.
Rogers said it’s also smart to look around at what’s going on in the region. For instance, Fairhaven’s merchants are already thinking about the 2010 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Whistler, B.C.
“It’s so important to keep your eyes wide open and look around to see what’s happening in your county, or the next county,” Rogers said.

One man with a vision
Developer Ken Imus knows all about keeping a lookout for opportunities.
The 78-year-old Bellingham native moved to California in 1949 in search of ways to make a decent living.
He owned a number of Ford dealerships and began developing real estate in the 1950s, largely in Texas and California.
But his heart was always in Bellingham, and over the years he made several investments in Fairhaven that helped transform it into what it is today.
In the early 1970s, Imus recalls, “it was considered the worst section of Bellingham … Anything we did had to look good, anything we did was an improvement.”
The first building Imus purchased was Sycamore Square, a place that Imus named The Marketplace and operated as a four-story vertical shopping center for 22 years.
These days, it’s more of an office building, with retail stores on the ground floor.
Imus and his two sons purchased other properties over the years.
And in 1997, Imus moved back to Bellingham full time and lived for a while in a condo in the Fairhaven district, before building a house four years ago.
Most agree that it was Imus who played perhaps the most significant role in reshaping an area once referred to derisively as the “Haight Ashbury of the North,” named after an infamous section of 1960s San Francisco, because of its boarded up windows, dogs and hippies.

Setting a new tone
Imus said he made sure new tenants had a clear-eyed vision for the future and that other less successful tenants, or those that ran seedy bars and other low-brow establishments, were escorted to the door.
“We evicted one and wouldn’t renew the lease on the other,” Imus said. “We started cleaning it up and would not lease to undesirable tenants. That was our theory. We wanted to clean things up.”
He said he’s sorry to see that things aren’t nearly so nice in other parts of Bellingham, particularly a stretch of road between Railroad Avenue and Cornwall.
“I was hit up three times in a row for handouts. That’s OK for me but not for some nice old lady with her grandkids in tow,” he said.
Downtown business districts, Imus said, need to be friendly and accessible to draw customers. Those that allow themselves to become rundown may find themselves spiraling to the bottom as shoppers search out nicer, more picturesque, places to spend their money.

New business owners welcomed
Of course, these days, Fairhaven is riding high, and boasts a funky blend of art galleries, restaurants, coffee shops and retail stores.
Jody Finnegan bought 12th Street Shoes a little over a year ago from a friend who was about to have a baby.
Finnegan, who moved to Bellingham about 10 years ago, remembers when a bar used to sit where her shoe store is located.
A former Boeing engineer who tired of daily commutes to Everett, Finnegan, 35, said she quit her job before jumping into owning a shoe store.
“Being an engineer on the shop floor, I had two pairs of shoes,” she said with a laugh. “I didn’t have a purse. Now I have 30 pairs of shoes and five purses!”
Although Finnegan is new to the Fairhaven business community, she says fellow business owners have reached out and welcomed her.
She praised the Fairhaven Association’s sophisticated marketing and business plans.
“We get together to sell the area,” Finnegan said. “For instance, the merchants got together to put up Christmas lights, so the whole Fairhaven area is lit up with white lights. It’s a neat sense of community even on a merchant level.”

Condos come to Fairhaven
Some fear that Fairhaven may have become too successful, however.
A growing number of condominiums is ushering in the next chapter in the life of this historic district and will likely lend it a more urban, cosmopolitan feel.
Developer Troy Muljat, who is in the midst of finishing up Harris Square, an 88-unit condo project that also includes 20,000 square feet of retail and office space, is sensitive to these concerns.
But he says some people have become so anti-growth that it is causing unnecessary friction. Some objected to Harris Square, arguing against the project because it was five stories high, among other reasons.
Muljat points out that the site’s zoning regulations didn’t impose height restrictions and other projects could have taken up far more space.
Despite this backlash, several condominium projects are being built in Fairhaven as people increasingly seek out urban, pedestrian-friendly settings.
“The demand for condominium and rental units is high,” Muljat said. “We’re just doing what we can to meet that need.”
Which brings us back to Chuck Robinson, owner of Village Books.
Robinson, who opened up his successful bookstore 25 years ago in Fairhaven and in October re-opened in an expanded, gleaming, 10,000-square-foot space, likes the idea of Fairhaven moving forward into a more cosmopolitan future.
“I’m very much opposed to urban sprawl and very much in favor of in-fill,” said Robinson, 57, who has already moved into a condo with his wife, Dee.
He anticipates walking the streets of Fairhaven, shopping for groceries in the business district or ambling along its trails -- all in a place where he not only grew a popular bookstore but a strong bond to his community.
Robinson said he was surprised, and touched, when a huge crowd showed up as he prepared to move his business to its new location over one October weekend.
“We had 150 volunteers to help us move,” said Robinson. “It was amazing to us. And nearly as amazing were the people who wandered in to apologize for not helping us move. Someone told me ‘Chuck, it’s no longer your bookstore, it’s the community’s bookstore.’”
It’s that fierce sense of community that is sure to help Fairhaven remain a treasured place over the years to come.