1986 Center Street contract rezone vote recalled by former town council member

It is hard to predict the future and often just as difficult to remember the distant past.

But Vince Sellen, a retired La Conner schools teacher and former town council member, has shown a command of both. That is fitting for the one-time finalist for appointment to the state legislature and someone whom a local public service scholarship is named.

Sellen, now an Anacortes resident, was among La Conner officials in the 1980s cautioning against over-development of vacant lots here, especially commercial encroachment into neighborhoods.

He can also recall many of the key land use issues of that era, most notably the 1986 bid by Gerald and Donna Blades to have their property behind what is now The Slider Café rezoned from residential to commercial use.

Sellen was on town council when it approved the contract rezone of the Blades’ property, with its provision of a thorough review process for future proposals as if the site was within La Conner’s Historic Preservation District as a condition of its new commercial designation.

Sellen was reluctant to endorse a straight rezone for the property due to fears of commercial creep into the adjoining residential area and told the Weekly News in a phone interview last Thursday he also based his stand on environmental factors.

“There was concern about fuel spillage back there,” Sellen remembered.

What prompted the unique bargain was, ironically, an initial mistaken belief that the backside of the property facing Center Street rested within the HPD. Similarly, it was first thought the lots behind the former blacksmithy, auto agency and service station were commercially zoned all along.

The property was zoned residential in 1969, according to information provided during the 1986 public debates over its status.

In the mid-1980s the property held a collection of old trucks and unused fuel tanks and reedy grass grew there.

The previous Chevron and later Exxon service station on the frontside facing Morris Street gradually evolved into restaurant and retail space. The Blades’ envisioned commercial expansion, possibly apartments, behind the main building.

An aging garage on the back lots, now removed, was

variously used as a polling place, storage shed and cabinet shop.

Thirty-seven years ago, few thought the property would ever be eyed for residential construction.

“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to build homes on those lots,” then-local realtor and former planning commission chair Doug Caldart said in 1986.

Fast forward to 2021 when present owners Kate and Dr. Brandon Atkinson proposed building a three-story, 20-unit condo complex there.

With the contract rezone stipulations long forgotten, only resurfacing via sleuthing of records by Center Street resident Linda Talman last spring, the Atkinsons’ application for a conditional use permit to build on the one-time residential site received approval.

Town planner Michael Davolio and Hearing Examiner David Lowell each approved the Atkinsons’ application, though the planning commission issued a negative recommendation, citing the project’s potential to unduly impact the neighborhood.

The application approval has been appealed upon discovery of the contract rezone, which for reasons unknown to all parties was never codified into ordinance form nor filed with the Skagit County auditor.

In keeping with his focus on environmental protection, Sellen in 1986 had proposed that the fuel tanks on the property be removed prior to any development there.

The fuel tanks eventually went away, but not before Donna Blades posed for a newspaper spoof photo depicting conversion of the tanks to high-rise condos should the rezone not be approved.

Nearly four decades later, those debating the future of the property have taken on a much more serious tone.