Local Performing Arts Center Planning to Switch to Non-profit

The Firehouse Performing Arts Center at 1314 Harris Avenue is planning to file for non-profit status in hopes of keeping the center open for the southern Bellingham community.

Converted from a mission-style firehouse built in the 1920s, the property was remodeled and reopened in 2004 thanks to investments in time and money from South Hill resident Bob Christman and his son Matt Christman.

“I’m an idea guy,” Matt Christman said. “I saw an ad for the space and approached the city with an idea [for the Firehouse Performing Arts Center].” They won the bid in 2002 and went to work remodeling the center to include two other businesses, the Firehouse Café and Theron Eirish Massage.

After owning and operating the center for the better part of the past six years, Christman says he wants to file for non-profit status and select a board to take over. Rather than selling the space to earn back the money he and his father invested, he said he wants to keep it around and feels the best way to preserve it is through becoming a non-profit.

Should the center become a non-profit, this means the people who currently rent out space to teach classes, hold performances or screen films will have another alternative outside of using a space downtown, a benefit for people who live in Fairhaven and the other neighborhoods in the south side of Bellingham.

An Oral History of the Firehouse Performing Arts Center

The Firehouse Performing Arts Center opened its doors in 2004 as a place where people could rent out space for a reasonable price. Christman said the space can be rented for $25 an hour without seating and $55 with the theater seating.

“I designed it with the mission to make a reasonable space to produce art in Bellingham,” he said. “The businesses are there to generate more money and to bring in the public.”

Along with the Firehouse Café and Theron Eirish Massage, the center also has a small studio that can be rented by artists and a park out back for the neighborhood to use.

One interesting thing about the center is the roof. During the remodel, Christman said he wanted to put in the tile roof the firehouse never had. At the same time, Miller Hall, on the Western Washington University campus, was removing the tile roof. He took the opportunity and was able to get 40 palettes of tiles to use for the Firehouse Performing Arts Center’s roof.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about the center is the performance space itself. The theater seating for the space hangs from the ceiling and moves down and up as needed.

“I designed the theater seating mechanism myself,” Christman said. “I’m in the process of getting it patented right now.”

This helps make the transition quick if the schedule for the space is tight. This also adds to the overall feeling of the space.

Pam Kuntz has been using the center since 2004 for her dance classes and performances.

“It is the best dance space,” she said. “There is not a bad seat in the house. It’s aesthetically beautiful and the owners are kind and generous. The feeling they have created is amazing.”

Providing a Performance Space for a Reasonable Price

One of the things its patrons like best about the Firehouse Performing Arts Center is how affordable it is to rent the space compared to other spaces like the Mt. Baker Theater downtown.

“We want to provide reasonably priced access to not only local performances, but the occasional regional or national performance,” Christman said. “We want to help local artists by providing them a creative outlet.”

With the prices as low as they are, patrons see the strength of the center.

“Affordability is important, and the Christman’s have made it so anyone can use it,” Mark Kuntz, Pam Kuntz’ husband and a director of theatrical productions and occasional lighting designer, said. “It’s a super intimate space.”

So intimate, he related it to the bar in the late 1980s television show Cheers. “It feels a lot like family. You walk in and there are a lot of familiar faces.”

Kuntz appreciates that the space allows a community of artists in Fairhaven and the surrounding neighborhoods to just walk in and do whatever.

Becoming a Non-profit as a Form of Preservation

Christman hopes that all of his family’s hard work will remain behind when the center switches to a non-profit. He is still in the planning phase, hoping to either find a non-profit or create one himself to take over and transition away from becoming a business and keep the atmosphere more like a family.

“The [Firehouse Performing Arts Center] is currently operating in the black, covering all its costs and making money,” he said. “I think this is a good time to try and switch to a non-profit. We just want it to always be there for the community.”

Mark Kuntz sees things in a similar way.

“I think [Matt’s] strategy is to keep it from becoming like a business,” Kuntz said. “As a non-profit, it would be owned by the community. This would keep it from being purchased and turned into a restaurant or something.”

With any luck, Christman said he hopes to get the paperwork in and find a board to run the non-profit by the end of the year, ensuring that the only space for local artists to produce their work in the southern part of Bellingham remains available to them for many years to come.

Boulevard Hosts 20th Annual Auto Show

Hundreds of people attended the Antique Automobile Restorers Club of Bellingham’s 20th annual Boulevard Park Antique Car Show, braving the threat of rain.

“We would have done the show anyway,” Jer’e Edwards, a volunteer at the auto show said. “We just would have had less people come visit. It’s always the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.”

More than 180 automobiles covered the park from the children’s play area north to the stage, showcasing automobiles from the last 105 years.

Awards were given at the end of the day to a car from each decade up to the 1970s, as well as awards for certain models like Mustangs, Corvettes and Hot rods, with a “Best of…” and Honorable Mention award in each category.

The Boulevard Park Antique Car Show takes place annually and is one of many events that take place the day of the annual Ski to Sea Festival.

Below is a slideshow video of some photos taken at the car show.

Missy Ferguson is Coming to Lowell

Missy Ferguson is moving from her position as the principal at Columbia Elementary School to become the principal of Lowell Elementary School when it reopens this fall—and she couldn’t be more excited.

“I guess I’m a risk taker in some ways,” Ferguson said with a chuckle. “I don’t know what I’m in for.” But she is prepared for the challenge.

A teacher since 1973, she had been in the Bellingham School District working as a teacher until she was hired to become the principal at Columbia in 2004 after obtaining her Master’s degree in Administration and Curriculum.

Surely she can be expected to bring to Lowell the ideals she has used to enhance the quality of education at Columbia. Bill Palmer, a 4th and 5th Grade teacher at Columbia, said he has seen the school go from receiving poor student assessments to being recognized within the district as a school whose students progressively perform better year after year.

“[Missy] instills a work ethic for both the kids and the teachers that allows the students to take pride in their work,” he said.

Working together with parents, teachers and students alike has helped Columbia come together as a community school, something she says was important for the school and will also be important for Lowell.

Don’t Just Take Her Word For It


Working closely with Ferguson for the past two years, Columbia PTA president Erin McEachern has only good things to say about Lowell’s new principal.

“Missy is one of a kind,” she said. “She is very involved with the students in all aspects. She’s patient, hands-on, personable and dedicated.”

Not to mention she has a sense of humor. McEachern said one year she dressed up as Cupid on Valentines Day for the kids. But this sense of humor should not take away from the fact she is very professional about her job.

“She has the ability to put forth a vision and enable everyone to make it happen,” Palmer said. “She sets high expectations for herself—she is often at the school late after hours and on weekends.”

But the environment she helps create is what he sees as a key to her success as a principal, he said. “When kids enter a secure, clean, child-friendly environment, they want to be there; and she creates that environment.”

Reflecting on his 38-year teaching career, Palmer does not think he has worked for a better principal.

“She pushed me to try new things at the end of my career. It would have been just as easy for me to continue doing what I was before [she came to Columbia].”

Opening Lowell Will Be a Challenge She Says

Ferguson said she believes it takes time to build community in schools. She believes it took until her fourth year at Columbia before things seemed aligned. This alignment is going to be one of her biggest challenges restarting as principal at Lowell. Another challenge facing her now is time.

“It is a challenge getting things open and prepared [for fall] and finding a vision for the first year,” she said. “There are a lot of things that were put in storage from when the school was open before, and some of those have to be thrown out.” She also does not have a complete staff for the fall. “About six teachers are returning, but there are still several positions in the school still open.”

One of the themes she is pushing for Lowell next year is Leadership.

“I’ve been reading a book called The Leader in Me by Stephen Covey,” she said. “It has provided me with some great advice as a principal, so I gave a copy to all the teachers and the PTA.” The book offers tips for encouraging leadership in teachers to help students learn more efficiently.

She wants parents and South Hill community members to be aware that she is not going to turn Lowell into another Columbia. She said some ideas will inherently carry over, such as when she moved to Columbia from Happy Valley Elementary School in 2004, but she wants to work with parents and teachers to create new ideas and put them at ease.

“I learned a lot from my time at Columbia,” she said. “I will constantly be in classrooms [at Lowell] for the first year getting to know the kids. I sort of fell into the principal position, but I love it. I wouldn’t be doing this job if I didn’t love it.”

South Hill Neighborhood Association Getting Neighborhood Signs

After gaining historic district status, association planning signs to mark neighborhood.

The South Hill Neighborhood Association is working on a plan to create wooden signs to mark the historic neighborhood, similar to signs for the Happy Valley and Sehome neighborhoods.

The sign would be the first of several the association hopes to place in the neighborhood over the next few years.

“We hope to have a plan or design for the next [neighborhood association] meeting on June 2,” Ray Ballweg, vice president of the neighborhood association and one of the planners of the signs, said. “We are still three or four months out and need to raise some more money.” He said the sign should cost approximately $1,500.

After finalizing a design, the neighborhood association will have to select a place to create the sign. They are considering Bellingham business Signs Plus, among others.

Ballweg said some possible locations for the first sign included the corners of Highland Drive and Knox Avenue, Knox Avenue and 14th Street, Boulevard and 14th Streets or Cedar and North Garden Streets.

**Update 6/3/2010**
The designs for the first sign are nearing completion. At last night's South Hill Neighborhood Association meeting Ballweg said the sign should cost $1,700 including the fees they have to pay the city. The committee has also prioritized locations, with 14th and State Street as the first location they will try and secure.

Boulevard Reconstructed

City plans to replace the aging Pattle Point Trestle at the end of summer.

The trestle at Boulevard Park will be replaced after Labor Day in order to make the walkway connecting the park with Taylor dock more accessible to the community. Along with the trestle renovations, the Department of Ecology will begin sampling the ground and water on the north side of the park this July for the contaminants left behind by the defunct South State Street Manufactured Gas Plant site.

After a two-year study of the structure, the City of Bellingham has determined the trestle needs to be replaced to better suit the public.

“There is not an immediate hazard to the public,” Project Engineer Gina Austin said. “The current trestle is not going to collapse [at any given moment] or anything.”

The project will involve tearing down the existing trestle in order to replace it. The removal of the trestle will block off the main thoroughfare between Boulevard and Taylor dock for several months in the fall while a new trestle is built.

The sampling of the ground and water for toxic contaminants by the Department of Ecology will also impact the park. The Department of Ecology expects there will be noise, trail interruptions and most likely some partial closures within the park for sampling.

Boulevard Park is one of the most popular parks in Bellingham, especially when the weather is nice. The new trestle should help more people enjoy both the park and the boardwalk by easing traffic between the two, Austin said. The testing may cause minor disruptions in the flow within the park itself as well, but in the long run it will make the land Boulevard Park is on safer.

New trestle to be more accessible, safe

Currently, the Pattle Point Trestle is perhaps the most traveled way in and out of Boulevard Park for people on foot or bicycle, Austin said. It spans 8 feet wide and two ways of traffic have to navigate it carefully.

“The trestle has been on borrowed time for a while now,” Austin said. Aside from the width issue, both the concrete abutments and the cross pilings are failing.

Plans posted on the City of Bellingham website show the difference between the old and new trestles.

The new trestle will be 4 feet wider, bringing the total width to 12 feet. The sitting nooks on the east side of the current trestle will be moved to the west side of the new one. The pilings will be replaced with new, stronger wooden pilings that will give the trestle more stability. The uneven wood boards that serve as the deck of the current trestle will be replaced with both a solid concrete deck and a grated deck. The grating will provide sunlight to the eelgrass in the water below the trestle, a major environmental factor that went into the planning of the project.

The new, wider trestle will also conform to the standards set by the Americans With Disabilities Act, allowing better access to those who use wheelchairs and lessening the stress of the two-way traffic by providing more space for bikers, walkers and joggers.

The sampling by the Department of Ecology is checking for chemicals, left over from the South State Street Manufactured Gas Plant, found in the early stages of their Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study, which studies what contaminants are at a site and need to be removed.

“Preliminary sampling turned up several chemicals, including petroleum hydrocarbons,” the agency said. These chemicals are derived from oil, which the State Street plant provided Bellingham homes with for cooking and heating. While they had practical benefits, they are also carcinogenic and potentially dangerous. “The term is coal gasification. It is the same type of contaminants that were found down at the site of Gasworks Park in Seattle.”

After finding these chemicals, the Department of Ecology decided they needed to be dealt with while they plan work for the waterfront redevelopment.

Work will impact everyday travels in park

Preliminary stages of the work will take place over the summer, but the trestle will not be closed until after the busy summer holiday season comes to a close on Labor Day. Once it closes, the route will be in accessible for four to six months depending on weather and working conditions, Austin said.

“Obviously it can’t be walked on,” she said. A detour has been planned for while the trestle is closed—people can walk up Bayview Road and down 10th Street to get to Taylor dock. “We want to encourage people to stay off the railroad. This [project] will have a huge impact on the people who use the park.”

The sampling by the Department of Ecology will only affect small portions of the park and vary by day, the agency said. The first samples are tentatively planned to take place in July, with more testing and sampling to follow in the future.

But one thing that needs to be asked is how these projects might affect business in the park, particularly at the Woods Coffee in Boulevard. According to one employee, it should not be too much.

“It’s hard to say,” barista Amanda Dubeau said with uncertainty. “We schedule based on the weather forecast—when the weather is nicer we have more business. It will probably impact all the walkers and joggers who come by in the mornings.”

But there are other ways into the park, and the projects appear to be happening one and then the other, with the sampling complete by the time the trestle closes, allowing Bellingham citizens to take full advantage of the park.

South Hill Home Tour to Help Make Lowell Greener

This summer’s Home Tour showcases historic homes and helps raise money to update the playgrounds at Lowell School.


The South Hill Neighborhood Association is putting together a tour of historic homes for July 24 to increase awareness of the historic past of the neighborhood and raise money for Lowell School.

The money will be raised to aid in the Green Grass Campaign, initiated by the Lowell Parent Teacher Association from last year, aiming to build new and improved playgrounds at the school.

South Hill is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Bellingham, with 82 percent of the residential homes built before 1945. According to the nomination report for the neighborhood to become registered as a national historic district submitted by Albany, Ore. firm Historic Preservation Northwest, the first home was built in South Hill in 1886.

“The homes we select have to be at least 50 years old,” Anita Ballweg, neighborhood association secretary and co-chair of the committee overseeing the Home Tour, said. “We want to promote historic preservation [in South Hill].”

Historic preservation is important to the neighborhood and the Home Tour is a way for the history to shine through while supporting the community. Only homes that still retain some of their historic exterior traits meeting the age requirement are being considered.

Repeat of the Past with Different Motives

This year’s tour is not the first tour the neighborhood association has put on—a similar tour was done in 2007. However, this tour is different by its donation to Lowell of 100 percent of the proceeds.

“We are donating to Lowell because it needs our support to keep it here and open,” South Hill Neighborhood Association president Cathy Cameron said. “It’s important to keep neighborhood schools open and there are a lot of teachers in the neighborhood.” Having Lowell and other neighborhood schools allows students to walk to school, easing parent worries, she said. “Neighborhoods are much tighter and neighbors get to know each other [through neighborhood schools].”

Another difference between this year’s tour and the one from 2007 is the way the tour is funded. The previous tour was put on through the federal Preserve America grant from the city of Bellingham, which also helped begin the research into the York, Lettered Streets and South Hill neighborhoods. But this summer’s tour is running on a donation/volunteer basis. Tickets will need to be purchased to view the homes and are predicted to cost $10.

Breathing a Little Easier

Undertaking a project like a Home Tour that focuses on historic homes requires a lot of work, particularly research, Ballweg said. This is the main reason why the South Hill Neighborhood Association only done one other tour since its formation nearly a decade ago.

However, since the last tour the city of Bellingham has been pushing to get part of the South Hill neighborhood on the national historic district registry. The city enlisted the help of Historic Preservation Northwest, who also did the same service for both York and Lettered Streets neighborhoods at the same time.

In their nomination reports they submitted detailed reports on the neighborhoods, including maps and photos, chronicling the history of the neighborhood as a whole and individual structures within the historic sections.

“There was a lot less research this time because the history of some homes were already taken care of for the first tour,” Ballweg said. The reports by Historic Preservation Northwest provided all the research the neighborhood association needed for the rest of the neighborhood.

Working to Make Lowell Greener for Students

The proceeds from the Home Tour will be donated in full to the Lowell PTA for their Green Grass Campaign.

The campaign is a PTA effort to build new and improved playgrounds at the school. Currently the upper playground is a blacktop kickball field with basketball hoops. The Green Grass Campaign calls for the removal of the blacktop and the installation of grass on the upper field to make it into a soccer field.

Other portions of the campaign include purchasing new playground equipment, constructing an outdoor amphitheater and, in the future, constructing a covered play area. The estimated costs for the campaign, minus the covered play area, were projected at $148,000 with the future covered play area adding another $150,000.

The money from the tour will be beneficial to the school and the PTA to accomplish their goals to get these changes to the playground done.



The Home Tour aims to remind Bellingham of its extensive history in the area and brings to light the prevalence of historic homes in many of the old neighborhoods, all while supporting one of the city’s oldest school’s continued fight to remain open.

Comcast Cares About Lowell School

Comcast Cares Day brings South Hill neighborhood together to restore Lowell School.


Approximately 228 Comcast and community volunteers came together Sat, April 24, at Lowell School in the South Hill neighborhood in an effort to restore the school grounds in preparation for the reopening of the school this fall.

Organized by Comcast, Comcast Cares Day brings together Comcast employees and volunteers to tackle projects nationwide. Lowell School was selected for the Northwest region of Washington, which includes Burlington and Oak Harbor along with Bellingham and the remainder of Whatcom and surrounding counties. Volunteers spent the day weeding, painting and cleaning up the grounds. Missy Ferguson, principal of Lowell when it reopens, was impressed with how much the project did for the school.

“It was an incredible community effort,” she said. “We got so much accomplished and Comcast did so much extra. I came to the school a couple weeks ago and wondered ‘How is [Lowell] going to be ready for fall?’ We had such a huge turnout from the South Hill community to help bring the school back to life.”

Whatcom Middle School, which suffered heavy fire damage earlier this school year, was the first project idea Comcast came up with for Comcast Cares Day. However, the site was not safe enough for the project and a new selection had to be made. Anita Ewald, Comcast HR Generalist and Project leader, said the wife of a Comcast employee she works with suggested to her husband to nominate Lowell School for the project this year.

Lowell School has been closed for the past two school years for seismic retrofitting and budget concerns for the Bellingham School District. Since it has been closed, there has been no grounds maintenance on the site in two years, turning the kickball field into a blacktop surrounded by a jungle of weeds and turning the basketball hoops rusty and tattered.




Bringing Together The Community

“This year Comcast chose to support schools [in Washington],” Ewald said. She is the HR Generalist for Bellingham, Oak Harbor and Bellingham, and this was her seventh year heading the event in the region.

Ewald met with Ferguson and PTA president Wendy Jones and together they worked out a game plan for the site before the event, even doing some “pre-work” the weekend prior to the event.

Most of the materials for Comcast Cares Day were donated to the corporation by local businesses including machinery from Birch Equipment and paint from Stockton’s Paint in Bellingham, and lumber from Oso Lumber in Ferndale among others.



Volunteers brought family members with them of all ages. Children of Comcast employees ran around with future Lowell students, swinging buckets, shoveling dirt and helping paint both the climbing dome and the playhouse on the playground outside the front of the school. Some South Hill neighbors came to volunteer at the school -- several elderly residents of the neighborhood worked alongside parents and children preparing snacks and delegating tasks.

“People live in the [South Hill] neighborhood for a long time,” Jones said. “Some of these people don’t even have children in school anymore, but they used to and that brings them down to help and makes this an intergenerational event.”



Jobs around the school included weeding, painting, repairing the basketball hoops and the PTA donated playhouse. New grass and soil were donated for the front entrance to the school and volunteers cleared out bushes on the hill behind the school. A DJ supplied music for the volunteers in an effort to keep them motivated. Jennifer Dixey, parent of a future Lowell second-grader, walked around the school filming the project with a Flip video camera, asking volunteers questions and recording the group effort.

As the day progressed, the weather moved from cloudy and wet to bright and sunny, uplifting the mood of the workers. The children enjoyed being a part of Comcast Cares Day as well, Jones said.

“They felt like they were helping as much as their parents.”



Project Does Not Stop With Clean-up

At the end of the day, all of the repairs and fixings had been completed.

But the clean up was only a part of Comcast Cares Day. In the coming weeks, the Comcast Foundation will evaluate the national volunteer project and make money donations to each project based on volunteer turnout. Last year’s donations averaged between $25-30 per volunteer, Ewald said. The actual amount of the donation will be unclear for several weeks, but she said it could be as much as $4,000 or more.

With the grounds restored and a donation forthcoming from Comcast, Lowell School can open this fall to a new bunch of South Hill neighborhood children with a fresh face.