Pomegranate Center: Seeds Of Inspiration In Issaquah

"Issaquah is a cultural wetland," the director of Pomegranate Center says. "Everything is on display here, everything that holds us together or divides us, it's all here."

Issaquah has never struck me as a metaphor for Western Civilization, but under the spell of Milenko Matanovic, things like that begin to take shape in one's mind, connections between Costcos and cathedrals, or between authentic towns and the make-believe ones that are called suburbs.

Matanovic is a fixture in Issaquah. His inspiration is Pomegranate Center, a combination think tank and community-action headquarters for the public good. In another century, Pomegranate's mission might have been called spiritual, but in this, the Golden Age of Consultancy, the Center is a community facilitator. It encourages communities to find a common path.

After nearly 10 years of operation, people still ask: "What is Pomegranate Center?" But its tendrils into communities that spread along the alpine cordillera of Western Washington are getting noticed. Pomegranate is helping to put some juice into downtown Renton with the Piazza Renton project, a plan for a central community open-space based on citizen participation. In the Skagit Valley, Matanovic helped environmental activists redirect their efforts toward meeting their community rather than confronting it.

And in Grand Ridge, that great spawn of all that's both right and wrong with bountiful growth, Pomegranate Center helped convert the developer's plans from intense private space to more community space.

Matanovic has worked in Chattanooga, Tenn., a city he points to as a model for other communities. But it's obvious his heart belongs to Issaquah, which he sees as both a nice town and a lab experiment.

"Issaquah is a collection of strangers," he says. We are sitting in a room that is a cache of artwork - bright sunlight splashing across the warm wood floors of Pomegranate's offices. Outside is a large gravel parking lot and a drive-through latte shop. Quaint the street is not, but parts of Issaquah veered away from quaint some time ago.

Matanovic begins with a favorite theme, his belief that people are congregating both mentally and physically in affinity groups rather than community groups. "In communities, we tolerate differences; in affinity groups, people share the same beliefs and assumptions and don't tolerate others. Affinity groups can never create the larger community," he said.

Matanovic got some national attention a few years ago by offering his famous example of an idea that went wrong: gated communities. He thinks they wreck the idea of community and that behind them live affinity groups increasingly disinterested in the outside, breeding a community-killing selfishness.

"Let's assume that for a long time what we called the `standard of living' was equal in our minds to `quality of life.' The better our personal standard of living, the better the quality of our lives. But that's not always true; the two are no longer equal in everyone's minds. A simpler standard of living can produce a better quality of life, here in Issaquah and everywhere."

Pomegranate Center's successes at bringing communities together could be ranked as both real and, so far, unrealized. Matanovic inspired Issaquah to make a list of its treasured assets, something he urges other communities to do. By listing what a town or city has that makes it worthwhile and unique, a place begins to understand its values.

Pickering Barn is also a success. A restored 108-year old barn and nine acres became a centerpiece for community involvement. This winter, a community effort for a "Starlight Celebration" was damped a bit by cloud cover, but the idea, to form a highlight in the sky from six searchlights in different parts of town, illustrates the mix of touchy-feely pragmatism that is Pomegranate Center. As with Piazza Renton, Matanovic is inventing traditions for cities without them.

Ouside, Issaquah is rushing through its day in parallel universes. The Issaquah of the big-box stores, Costco and Eagle just across the freeway, doesn't seem like the same place as the salmon hatchery and the pinafore lanes of Gilman Village. Gritty, downtown Renton is more authentic than parts of gentrified Issaquah, or the next Issaquah up the hill at Grand Ridge where 18,000 people will live.

Matanovic nods his head up toward Grand Ridge when I ask him where Issaquah's center will be in a few years. "It think it may have several centers," he says. "That's why we need something to hold everything together."

That something for him is Education, capital E. Chattanooga redefined itself as a pillar of environmental sustainability. Issaquah could, in Matanovic's infinite optimism, become a community dedicated to the finest public education system in the country, renown for the interlocking zipper that matches schools to the central identity of the community.

About five years ago, there was some talk in Issaquah about becoming the "Trailhead City," where tourists would begin their exploration of the Washington alps. Only a few years ago, and yet that idea seems as out of touch with today's Issaquah as kitschy Leavenworth is to today's Redmond. Yet, they are the same as each place tries to define itself. Themes are our dreams. We are the stuff that themes are made of.

James Vesely's column focusing on Eastside issues appears Mondays on editorial pages of The Times.