“Can you look at this house for me?” My sister usually ramble when she calls, but this time, she’s all business. “It’s a block up from the harbor, I think it would be just perfect.”
“Are you moving? What this all about?” She’s lived in Cardiff-by-the-Sea, North County San Diego, for 36 years, in same house most of that time. The one our father helped her buy so he and Ida would have a warm place to escape Colorado’s 6-month long winters.
“No, we just want to be closer to you, and the kids. And Shirley and Lyle. I miss you guys sometimes.”
She and Craig had sold their telescope and camera business, and were feeling restless. “No, we’ll never leave Cardiff. But wouldn’t it be great if we had a place to stay when we did visit. This one seems perfect. Can you go there, show us the rooms and kitchen on Facetime? It’s only about $800.” Six months into the pandemic, the stock market had inexplicably started rising, and with interest rates near zero, everyone had dreams of becoming a real estate mogul.
“Can you afford it?” I asked.
“Craig says we can. I’m a little scared, but…”
“He knows business – look what he did with that old Bank of America building you bought for OPT.” Oceanside Photo and Telescope got its start selling cameras and amateur astronomy gear to the Marines at Camp Pendleton. Craig learned the arts of business bumming around Alaska and Hawaii in the ‘70s. He never over-extended himself, and when the internet opened up in the mid-90s, one of his employees understood its power to being the entire planet to their front door. By the turn of the century, he’d become the largest online dealer for a major telescope company in the US. He moved up the street from his cramped mini-mall quarters, purchasing a recently abandoned bank branch building just a block from the final major intersection off I-5 before it entered the Marine base. A couple of decades of California real estate appreciation, and they’d become millionaires.
After 15 years living in a trailer in near the ski resort of Sun Valley, Leigh spent a year in Gig Harbor with us, so she knew what the winters are like – damp, grey, short days. In October of the pandemic year, she and Craig rented a place overlooking the water, and felt the connection to friends and family was worth giving up, for a few weeks at a time, the ever-spring of south California. Why not invest in a house they could rent out for a few weeks at a time, and have as their own part-time?
The place she’d found was well-located a short walk from our quaint ex-fishing village. The online listing boasted a generous yard for her dog, and enjoying the occasional bout of sunshine. But, when we measured the entry into the kitchen, it was too tight a squeeze for Craig and his walker to easily come and go. Reluctantly, they gave up on their dream of a Northwest getaway.
A few weeks later, on Super Bowl Saturday, Cody sent a text urging us all to look at a real estate listing in West Seattle. “Condo Over The Water!” read the headline. Exciting views of the Olympics and Puget Sound in a complex built on pilings. Excitement coursed through our frantic messages, until the downsides crept in. Leigh noted getting to the unit on the second floor would be difficult for Craig. Cheryl worried the place, while attractive now, was at risk for washing out to sea if the pier it rested on should fail. Another dream shattered, until Cody came back with another listing.
“This one is special,” he wrote. “I’ve been watching listings in Alki for a long time now, and a one-bedroom condo on the water has only been offered once before in the last two years.”
A three-story, five-unit building set directly over the water had a ground floor unit for sale for at $575,000. “It just came on the market today, just in the last hour or two,” Cody noted.
February 2021, in retrospect, was the start of a year-long meteoric rise in Seattle home prices. Stories emerged of bidding wars, 5, 10, even 20% over asking price, cash only. The condo’s view in the online ad featured a tranquil, sun-drenched Puget Sound with the Olympic Mountains rising in the distance. It seemed a dream come true for all of us. Located eight minutes from Shaine’s West Seattle home and fifteen from Cody and Abby in Rainier Beach, it offered to opportunity to visit them without intruding.
“Haven’t I always said we should end up in West Seattle, someplace near the kids with a great view?” I asked Cheryl. “This is a dream come true.”
“Maybe,” she hesitated. “Can we really afford it?”
As we talked it through, it seemed more and more to be a frivolous luxury, and I went to bed having given up on taking the plunge. Besides, the open house the next day would probably be crowded with buyers, tech bros dripping crisp $100 bills from their pockets.
Super Bowl Sunday dawned warm and sunny, a rarity for Seattle in early February. I snuck back online, and saw that no one had signed up yet for an open house appointment, which would start at 1 PM. I told Cheryl, “Maybe we should just go up there and take a look? It’s a nice day, and we can at least see the kids.”
West Seattle, while a neighborhood of the city, sits apart, separated from it by the Duwamish River. Giant cranes and stacked containers fill the Port which surrounds the river. Stadiums, railroad tracks, the major freeway of I-5, and Boeing Field airport all further contribute to the isolation of this quieter section of town. The northern section is a square jutting out into Puget Sound , the corners aimed towards the primary compass points. To the northeast, looking across Elliot Bay (into which the Duwamish empties), the Space Needle and an ever-growing number of high-rise offices and apartments dominate the view. Behind them, the suburban foothills east of Lake Washington, then the cascade mountains fill the horizon
Walking counter-clockwise along the sound, the view shifts to Bainbridge Island, several miles across the water. Massive ferries constantly cross, linking the islands and peninsulas on the west with downtown. Streams coursing down from the hills comprising central West Seattle carry silt into the bay, which favorable tides over the millennia have converted into a half-mile section of actual beach. Unlike the rocky shoals comprising the usual Puget Sound shoreline, this spot, known as Alki Beach, attracts crowds to its pale imitation of the warmer, sunnier resorts in Hawaii, Mexico, and southern California. Asphalt paths and grassy strips of parkland line the shore. Families cooking over beach fires, young people playing beach volleyball, older denizens walking dogs or riding scooters and bikes fill the space with a relaxing vibe. With its vibrant bars and casual eateries, it could almost be Hermosa or Lahaina.
At the end of this mile-long side of the square sits a Coast Guard lighthouse occupying Alki Point. The road makes another right angle, and has been blocked off here by the city to encourage walking, jogging, cycling, and general sightseeing. Look southwest now, the Sound broadens and, on a clear day, exposes the Olympic Mountains. Incongruously posing almost as an island, the glacier-covered peaks rise over 7,000 feet from the sea on the west, the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the north, and the Sound on the east. On the rare clear winter day, like this one, the low-angled sun splashing from the water to the snow is literally breath-taking.
Getting to West Seattle involves either a convoluted route from the freeway over and through hills and valleys, streets curving and stopping at random. Or going a bit further north, spending three minutes on the West Seattle Bridge, technically a city street, but with its six lanes, exit ramps and center median, looking for all the world like another freeway. It rises abruptly above the industrial wasteland, flying over the rail tracks leading from the Port, and easily leaping the Duwamish. So high it goes, another, lower bridge runs beneath it, close enough to the river to require a unique rotating bridge to let barge traffic through. Off the bridge, the hill in the center of the Alki square must be climbed, then descended, until we arrive at Beach Drive. We traverse a flat, curving road paralleling the water, with condos and houses, none more than three stories high, lining one side. Lower dwellings and a few “beach” parks separate us from the water on the other. One of those, 4119, is our destination.
We find a parking spot nearby, across from a tiny restaurant. A pocket park called “Weather Watch” frames the sparkling sound, the shining snow-filled Olympics hovering mysteriously above the forested hills of Bainbridge and the Kitsap Peninsula. 4119 is fronted by a six-space parking strip and a windowless wall faced with grey stucco. A folding sign next to the only visible entrance advertises the realty agency and today’s open house. We spy a short corridor through the door’s window, the only glazing on the building’s front. Finding the handle locked, we mill around and wait for the rest of our crew to arrive.
After Cody, Abby, and Shaine appear, a perky blond agent rushes up, apologizes for being late, and ushers us in. At the end of the corridor are two more doors. We push through the one on the right, and enter a compact, carpeted apartment. Immediately, I look left, taking in newly-cleaned windows to the north- and south-west. The low-angled afternoon sun has already splashes the white carpet with dapples of light. Nothing obscures the view to the water beyond, gently rocking with a light marine breeze and rollers from a giant container ship heading south towards Tacoma. A white ferry boat steams from the Fauntleroy docks 3 milers to the south, headed for Vashon Island. To the North, two more even larger ferries cross paths, one headed for downtown Seattle from Bremerton, the other aimed for Winslow on Bainbridge.
Outside the small, neatly staged living space sits a compact deck. Sliding its glass door open, the high tide laps against concrete bulkheads of this building and the one on the north. Immediately, I’m transported to Hawaii, specifically the condo building I’ve stayed in numerous times when I competed in the Hawaiian Ironman. That place is just as close to the water as the Hale Kona Kai which rests on lava at water’s edge, the waves below occasionally coming so close they fling yellow fish into small tidepools and spray the windows three stories above. I imagine where the sun might be setting, and note that it will be dropping directly in front of us at this time of year, farther north in spring and summer, just behind the Olympics.
“This is like Kona and Snowmass,” I murmur. “The mountains, they’re right there, like Garrett Peak. And we’re right over the water, the waves are so close, just like at Hale Kona Kai!”
“I told you you’d like it, Father,” Cody observes.
Our gang mills about, opening doors, flushing the toilet, primping in front of the mirrored doors filling one wall in the bedroom. A massive closet hides behind them, empty and ready for more clothes than anyone could cram into two suitcases. While everyone else talks about the quality of this, the possibilities of that, I have already decided that I must have this place. It’s time to bring together the threads of my life: starting a life with Cheryl on the beach in Venice, skiing and biking the mountains, racing at Kona when I could, and my family, two of whom each live only a few minutes from this place.
I imagine running and biking on the miles-long water front, connecting via ferry to cycle in Vashon and on to our home on Gig Harbor across the water. To the north, the diverse crowds of Alki await, a place where I would not be the only one running or biking. Paved trails north to downtown and south to the Green River and Auburn allow further venues for two-wheeled exploration. I’m ready to make an offer on the spot.