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Heather,

Personal integrity and strength of character of our city officials is being tested and demonstrated during the struggle to contain the Winslow Hotel Project from the insatiable appetites of development.  

The thoughtful and expensive analysis of this project by our community has prompted a cry for remedy and containment for this project. 

The planning commissioners have delivered the rejection of the proposed Winslow Hotel based on their fair and rightful findings that:

• The hotel is too big and its use is too intense for the downtown core

• The hotel is not consistent with the city's Comprehensive Plan and Winslow Master Plan

• The hotel has not adequately addressed impact on surrounding properties

• No amount of "conditions" can be applied to the hotel that would make it meet the criteria for approval

We do not want our island to become Bellevue. We cherish our hometown feel. We covet the concern and love we have for our neighbors. These pillars make it the refuge that it is.  

Madison Avenue Development with its dark determination and repeated declarations, despite public outcry that, “The project will move forward.” uncovers insidious motivations.  

I urge you to be a hero of the people in your determination, an ancestor in your decisions, not a ghost in our shared history who stood with the darkest side of business at a critical juncture.  

Think of the lasting effects of precedent with your determination. 

“When an organization is willing to trample over thousands of people to achieve their goal, its business. When a government ignores its own concerned citizens, its business.

We have come to a critical juncture as a species. All of us need to take stock and  decide where we stand. Business has no end to its appetite. Business will take every tree and every drop of water. Business will destroy every landscape to extract what lies beneath it. Business puts a price on everything, including children. Business tells us that if we stop business, we will all die a terrible death in chaos and misery.

The truth is, business must begin to take no for an answer. Some things are not for sale. Some things are not for development or financial gain, human entertainment or other marketable agendas. Some things are for watersheds, for beauty, for biological diversity, for habitat, for prayer or wonder." -Amiria Hina

Be brave Heather and we will stand with you. Help Madison Avenue Development understand, "No."

 - Cynthia Bellas

Published in the Bainbridge Island Review, October 11, 2019.