A Growing Problem

Joe Beaudoin illustrates the land he would lose if the city moves forward with plans to widen N.E. 18th Street. Beaudoin moved onto the property in what is today east Vancouver in 1946. (Zachary Kaufman/The Columbian)

Joe’s Place Farms is a vestige of country life folded among apartment complexes, business parks and strip malls.

Joe Beaudoin started growing strawberries in what today is east Vancouver back in 1955 and began working as a full-time farmer in 1991.

Today, his business is a place where urbanites can pick strawberries, purchase farm-fresh produce, buy fudge made by Beaudoin’s wife, Gayle, and take their kids for a hayride.

But the Beaudoins believe their future is threatened by the city’s plans to widen Northeast 18th Street and build a nearby walking trail, which will consume portions of their patchwork collection of fields and orchards.

“It’s a great deal of our income because that’s where all the U-pick takes place,” Gayle Beaudoin said. “It could kill us. It could be an end.”

Joe Beaudoin looks the part of the old-time farmer, from his plaid shirt to his soiled boots, but this Joe the Farmer is a natural entrepreneur who is politically and media savvy. Last month, Beaudoin placed signs in his fields south of 18th Street, including “Can’t eat black top,” as a way to stir up support from loyal customers and sympathetic residents.

His fight is more than the proverbial little guy standing up to city hall. It’s about a loss of lifestyle, a piece of our history in the middle of what is Washington’s fourth-biggest city, and whether a remnant from Vancouver’s agrarian past has a future in tomorrow’s city.

Officials want to meet the transportation needs of a growing city without hurting a business that connects Vancouver to its past and provides some of the city’s touted livability.

“Definitely the city doesn’t want to put Joe out of business,” said Chris Malone, a Vancouver senior civil engineer who is the city’s 18th Street project manager. “We recognize the importance of Joe’s farm to the community.”

Vancouver already has made concessions, Malone said. It initially wanted to build a 15-foot wide trail separated from 18th Street by a 10-foot wide planter strip but has agreed to shave 3 feet from the trail’s width and cut the plant strip’s width in half.

“We also realigned the road to the north, away from Joe’s farm,” Malone said. “We are trying to do as much as we can to minimize impacts to Joe, but the bottom line is there will be impacts to the farm.”

For more than a decade, Vancouver has wanted to improve 18th Street to four lanes, from 87th Avenue east to 192nd Avenue, as a way to relieve chronic congestion on Mill Plain Boulevard. Vancouver already has upgraded the 18th Street-138th Avenue intersection, where large amounts of traffic funnel into Evergreen High School, Cascade Middle School and McKenzie Stadium.

The project’s first phase, the only segment the city has money for, would widen 18th Street from just west of 112th Avenue to almost 138th Avenue. Construction on the $23 million project is scheduled to begin in early 2010 and be wrapped up before the end of that year.

The project would tie into the state’s plans to complete a split-diamond interchange on Interstate 205 using Mill Plain Boulevard and 18th Streets, with frontage roads running between the two arterials. The state already has funding for the project and is scheduled to begin construction in 2014.

After 2010, city officials say they will have no budget to do any new road construction or improvements and will struggle just to maintain the current system. That means no one knows when other pieces of 18th Street would be built, if ever.

Malone said that financial uncertainty is no reason to abandon the project’s first phase.

“With the interchange coming on line, it’s very important to build the infrastructure near that interchange so traffic can move safely out there,” he said.

Vancouver often needs to acquire private property for road projects, either from willing sellers or through condemnation, where the court determines what is fair compensation. But the city typically doesn’t need land from an iconic farmer with a small legion of loyal customers.

In some ways, Malone and Beaudoin are like two prizefighters training for a big match, each wary of revealing too much strategy.

Malone said he doesn’t want to publicly discuss private property negotiations, while Beaudoin makes vague references to bringing in political, business or community heavyweights to buttress his position.

Beaudoin, after considerable prodding, said he wants the city to replace any land he loses, land that either can easily connect to his irrigation system or has its own water wells.

“Replace the land I’m losing, with water,” he said. “Even if they do that, it’s going to be a big loss.”

Malone, choosing his words carefully, didn’t reject that request as unreasonable but didn’t provide many details, either.

“I would say there are options for that to happen,” he said. “Now will it happen? I can’t say yes or no to that. … I don’t think the city owns land that could be transferred, so there would be a third party involved.”

Malone said the city expects to make an offer to Beaudoin sometime in December or January, which likely would be followed by back-and-forth negotiations.

For now, the dispute is more shadow boxing than fighting, but both sides know the gloves could come off, with Beaudoin hiring an attorney or the city initiating condemnation proceedings.

“The city does not want to have to go to condemnation with anybody,” Malone said.

Beaudoin didn’t pull any punches in a Sept. 22 letter to Mayor Royce Pollard and other city council members.

“I assume that you have to be aware of the freeway-sized bicycle and walking trail that will be destroying my fields and farm along Northeast 18th Street,” he wrote. ”This is the widest trail I have ever seen in the city or the county, and it goes from nowhere to nowhere.”

That “path to nowhere” is part of the city’s adopted regional trail plans that envision a trans-Vancouver path connecting Vancouver Lake to Lacamas Lake. A stretch of trail along Burnt Bridge Creek in west Vancouver already has been built, but it currently ends near 92nd Avenue, where a spur trail branches north to Burton Road.

Malone said the city must build sidewalks or a trail on both sides of 18th Street to satisfy requirements of state grants worth $3.7 million. And failing to build a south sidewalk or path could jeopardize $4.35 million in federal funds devoted to the project.

Malone said the city would need about 3 acres of land that Beaudoin either owns or has an easement or lease to farm. Beaudoin said the city’s road and trail project would take 5 acres out of production because he needs roughly 25 feet along the edge to turn around tractors.

Still, with close to 85 total acres, the city’s plan doesn’t seem like it would take a huge bite out of his business.

Not so, Beaudoin said. Improving 18th Street would take his most productive land, where he has spent years nurturing and improving the soil. A walking trail would require a fence to deter passers-by from “sampling” his crops and to create a barrier when the fields are sprayed.

But a fence also would eliminate what Beaudoin considers to be his natural marketing asset: highly visible U-pick fields where drivers can pull onto the shoulder for easy parking and access.

“We’re losing our best ground and our best marketing tool,” Beaudoin said.

Malone said he understands that 18th Street has been a showcase for Beaudoin’s U-pick fields, but people aren’t supposed to be parking along an arterial street, even if the city has been lax in enforcing that prohibition.

Malone said the city will continue to look for a “win-win” solution, but Beaudoin is skeptical.

“I want to know what some of this win-win is,” he said. “All I’ve heard so far is lose-lose-lose.”

Like Evergreen Airport , only a mile away, Joe’s Place Farms could be a casualty of progress as the city grows and slowly forces out activities that predated subdivisions.

“We can do everything we can to slow down the progress,” Beaudoin said. “I always felt quality of life was important, and they don’t take that into account.”

Beaudoin said his father worked in Vancouver’s Kaiser Shipyard during World War II. Housing was so scarce that the family lived in a tent for a short time, he said.

“And then we moved into a woodshed,” he said.

The family moved onto the property that later became Joe’s Place Farms in 1946, the day before Beaudoin entered the first grade. Back then, the area was little more than trees and fields. Slowly the area has developed, creating a mix of homes adjacent to fields.

“We can’t have the pumpkin shooter without knocking windows out of the neighbors’ houses,” Beaudoin said.

He built a home on the property in 1973 and started selling produce out of his garage, but he didn’t become a full-time farmer until leaving a sales manager job at Sparks Home Furnishings in 1991.

Beaudoin believes he might be the last full-time farmer inside the city limits. And at age 68, he shows no signs of slowing down.

“Farmers never quit,” he said. “They just plow us under.”

Jeffrey Mize: 360-735-4542 or jeff.mize@columbian.com.