A brief timeline of the Wedgwood Community Club and Wedgwood Community Council, borrowing heavily from Wedgwood Historian Valarie Bunn’s newsletter articles:
- 1946: The Wedgwood Community Club is established, a product of the bustling new Wedgwood housing development. Wedgwood is still outside the city limits, and young couples organize to petition the city for street improvements and mail delivery.
- 1950s and 60s: In the early years, three area community clubs, operating in separately developed sections of the Wedgwood area, merge. Eastwood Community Club (75th to 85th on the east side of 35th Avenue NE) and later Wedgewood Rock Community Club (25th to 30th Avenues south of 75th Street) joins with the Wedgwood Community Club (30th to 35th Avenues, 80th to 85th Streets). The 50s and 60s are a heyday for the WCC, with full-fledged community newspapers, Miss Wedgwood contests, and other annual traditions. There are controversies too, not the least of which was the “matter of the Shearwater Housing project.”
- Early 1970s: Community involvement wanes with an established business area and a nearly filled residential area. Fewer issues attract community concern and the club finally ceases functioning.
- 1980s: Frank and Dorothy Brancato notice changes in the neighborhood, including subdivided lots and “skinny” houses. Dorothy observes the award-winning Maple Leaf Community Council in action and works to re-establish a similar organization in Wedgwood. Community response is enthusiastic and the current incarnation of the Wedgwood Community Council is born in 1985, with Frank Brancato as its first president and Dororthy serving as newsletter editor.
- Late 1990s: The Matthews Red Apple controversy! A beloved local grocery, Matthews Red Apple Market, loses its lease and is to be replaced by QFC. Hundreds rally to try to keep their store and a core group forms the Wedgwood Community Advocacy Association (WCAC) to assert their positions. Ultimately, QFC moves in, changing their remodel plans and hours of operation in response to community concerns voiced through the Wedgwood Community Council. The WCAC soon merges with the WCC, and one of its leaders, Brian Swanson, becomes WCC president and remains so for six years.
- 2000s: The WCC establishes a new tradition, the Wedgwood Annual Outdoor Cinema, attended by hundreds one night each summer at the Thornton Creek School playground. The annual Business Trick-or-Treat continues, as do WCC community meetings every other month and regular engagement in advocacy for street and other neighborhood improvements. The WCC serves as an important center point for a community response to a mini crime wave and an extension of the Block Watch program. The Wedgwood Echo newsletter soldiers on as community papers fold around it.
- Late 2000s: A large condo development proposed for the former Jewish Community Center on 35th Ave NE between NE 86th and NE 87th Streets re-energizes the community around land use issues. The WCC’s Wedgwood Vision Project engages the community in producing the Wedgwood Vision Plan.
- 2010: One of the first major efforts to emerge from the Vision Plan is pursuit of a new park in Wedgwood to serve as a gathering space near the retail core as well as park for portions of Wedgwood currently underserved by area parks.
