As we reported last night, the recast Alki Statue of Liberty will debut at the beach next Tuesday night, and city leaders say they’re bringing word of more $ for a new plaza to surround the statue — but the Alki couple that surfaced the latest plaza plan this summer, Paul and Libby Carr, say their group is in what we might describe as Liberty limbo.
In the comment thread following last night’s post, we wondered aloud why the Carr group hadn’t even updated its relatively new sealady.org website with developments such as the 9/11 event announcement. Paul Carr e-mailed us late today to explain:
Thanks for your (comment) inquiring about why we haven’t been updating our website. Short answer: we were waiting to announce our 501(c)(3) affiliation, which we kept thinking was going to be happening in the very near future. That event, in turn, would allow us finally to officially start the fund raising process and accept the numerous offers of money we’ve had from people wanting to complete this project. Additionally, we could then start promoting the many fundraising events our Committee has been developing and be a long ways down the road in funding and finishing the plaza and new pedestal.
Unfortunately, as it turns out we are going to have to wait some more! Back in June ’07, when Libby Carr started trying to put this project back on track, she spoke with the Parks Dept. project manager in charge of this project. She (the manager) stated she felt badly the Statue had been away for several months and that the project had been delayed. Her solution was to put it on the old base and be done with the project.
Libby said she’d never heard that idea mentioned before in the many public meetings the community had already had in 2006 with the design team, the Parks Department, and others, and thought that it would be problematic to throw out the new plans for several reasons, i.e. what about the vandalism issue, and what about the 400 + bricks that had already been purchased as part of the new plaza design, and what about the public process that had already happened on which the new plaza design was based?
Regardless of all this effort from the past, this project manager decided to promote this idea anyway thus creating dissent where there was none before. The City now wants to have a series of meetings, starting Sept. 13 at the Bathhouse, to “make sure all the citizens are being heardâ€Â. Because of this “controversyâ€Â, the non-profit organization under which we are hoping to solicit money naturally wants to await the outcome of those meetings. The result: we can’t yet take any money!
For us, it’s a Catch-22. As long as this person in the Parks Department continues to say, “There’s a controversy†(even though she created it), we have to keep playing this game. If we don’t, she winsâ€â€if we do, she stalls and wins anyway, because we can’t raise money until this contrived controversy is settled.
There are two things you can do, and we would like you to do both of them. First, be at the Mayor’s “welcome home†party for the statue at The Bathhouse on Sept. 11 at 6 PM. We all want to see her, no matter what the circumstances. Second, come to the community meeting on Sept. 13 at 7 PM, also at The Bathhouse, and let the City know, in no uncertain terms, what you think about this situation.
We are relying, as we have from the beginning, on the fact that virtually everyone wants what the community always said it wantedâ€â€a new statue surrounded by the bricks they bought in their new plaza. Let’s break this bureaucratic logjam now so we can get on with the business at hand.
To be fair, we should note sealady.org isn’t the only website running behind on the Statue of Liberty developments. We still can’t find official announcements of the 9/11 statue return OR the 9/13 public meeting (which has been in the works since a month and a half ago) on the City of Seattle website.
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