As a self-described "aspiring policy wonk," Abby Rubinson wasn't looking for a job in historic preservation.

The 24 year-old Duke graduate majored in political science, not architecture or urban planning. She moved to Seattle after graduation looking for advocacy and research jobs, with no idea that these interests would eventually lead her to wrestle with the complex political and economic issues involved in sustaining an historic district.

Abby got her first policy job in April of 2002 when she became the Fund Development and Policy Coordinator for the Pioneer Square Community Association (PSCA).

In many ways, her job as a neighborhood advocate plays to her interests and background in public policy.

But Pioneer Square isn't just any neighborhood. As the birthplace of Seattle and the city's first historic district, Pioneer Square is a neighborhood whose issues are necessarily tied to historic preservation and historic legacies, even when the connection isn't obvious or explicit.

The diverse group of stakeholders who seek to create community in Pioneer Square aren't just wrestling with downtown Seattle's economics, its culture, or its politics. They're also wrestling with how to build and sustain a vibrant historic district.

The city of Seattle's Department of Neighborhood's Urban Conservation Office coordinates and oversees the Pioneer Square Preservation District Board, whose mandate is to steer land use applications into compliance with the regulations that govern the historic district.

But the Preservation Board is a reactive agency that responds to developer applications rather than generating them.

It's the PSCA, as the umbrella organization for a diverse group of Pioneer Square interests, that shapes the direction and implementation of the neighborhood plan, that creates a vision for what a healthy historic district would look like, that promotes the neighborhood and organizes the people and money needed to keep it going.

As the PSCA's advocate on all these issues, Abby has found an unconventional starter job for young people passionate not just about the design issues of historic preservation, but the community building issues that give the design meaning.

Stakeholder Soup

Abby can explain the mission of the PSCA easily. "Our mission is to improve the social, economic, and physical condition of Pioneer Square through projects and programs, partnerships and advocacy," she says.

Explaining the structure and history of the PSCA is a little more complicated, and a telling indicator of the challenges and rewards involved in neighborhood organizing.

The PSCA, Abby says, "merged from the Pioneer Square Business Improvement Area (a business coalition); the Pioneer Square Community Development Organization (a coalition of affordable housing developers); and the Pioneer Square Community Council (which represented residents, workers, and interested parties from all over the city)."

Having three different organizations all advocating separately around Pioneer Square issues was difficult, Abby says. "Each of those organizations were competing for the same resources and trying to represent themselves as the voice of Pioneer Square. It made more sense to consolidate, especially because it is one small neighborhood and you can get stuff done more effectively when you pool your resources together."

Including diverse neighborhood viewpoints while presenting a unified voice to the rest of the city is complicated, however.

The PSCA's all-volunteer Board of Advisors consists of two representatives from each of 14 different neighborhood stakeholder groups: arts, social services, residents, night clubs, restaurants, commercial property owners, retail, historic preservation, professional services, large employers, employees, stadiums, and at-large.

The Board has 28 members. From that group of 28, 9 are chosen to serve on the PSCA's Board of Directors, the group governs the PSCA's 3 staff members- its Executive Director, Craig Montgomery, Benjamin Nichols, Project Manager and Director of Community Affairs and Abby, its advocate and fund-raiser. In addition, the Board of Directors brings together 5 standing committees that also break into subcommittees or informal working groups from time to time.

Can such a complicated structure effectively unify Pioneer Square?

Abby says the organization's structure actually makes her job easier, and not harder. "I can do my job with a good conscience knowing that we represent this group of 14 stakeholder groups. If something happens, I feel that at least these people are at the table and it's their job to speak up if something affects them."

It's also a structure that offers Abby a surprising amount of freedom. "I'm just a staff person and my job is to do what the Board directs me to do. But with the Board composed of volunteers, they rely on the staff to keep their eyes and ears open. It enables me to take the lead on certain things."

For someone her age, such freedom is especially nice. "I didn't know that I would be trusted with that much responsibility at this stage," she says. "It's kind of nice. I'm a pretty fortunate youth in that I don't get stuck going to the post office to get stamps all the time, or just answering the phones."

Finding Consensus

Transportation issues are extremely relevant advocacy concerns right now at the PSCA; these include monorail route and station planning, and the long-term plan to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

But another issue that has loomed large in the past is likely to get a lot of citywide attention for much of the rest of the year. The city's first Alcohol Impact Area (AIA), which bans the sale of fortified wines and malt liquor, goes into effect in Pioneer Square on September 15. Capitol Hill is already considering its own AIA, and speculation about whether it will reduce public drinking or simply drive it to other neighborhoods is rampant.

In addition to these big issues, smaller ones are a constant, and sometimes even more contentious.

Abby says that Pioneer Square is a "pretty politically charged neighborhood. There are lots of issues. There're a lot of clubs down here and a lot of residents, so late at night when clubs are playing music loudly it might anger some of the residents. The fact that there's an historic district but that there's a lot of development going on everywhere, that's going to be an obvious place where you're going to find conflict."

But, she adds, contention isn't always predictable. "It's really hard to gauge what's going to be the big issue. The community had a consensus (on replacing the viaduct with a tunnel) and it showed me that even though there're so many different options, at least our little community can overcome its differences sometimes. But since then, you get other issues that come up and just to get people to agree on what the neighborhood map should look like, which is pretty much the same every year, you'll get people bickering over that."

A Step Up

Such complicated and unpredictable politics, Abby says, have actually been assets for her growth as an advocate. And though she doubts she'll move into preservation advocacy in the future, she sees her experience at PSCA as invaluable.

"I am very happy with this job because I feel like it's enabled me despite my young age and lack of years and years of experience to come in and get involved. I'm sure that whatever I end up doing, years down the road, I'll be able to trace back to stuff I got from this job."

View last month's Young Voices article

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