WONDER WOMAN WRITTEN BY ALYSSA PITCHER
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xecutive director, business owner, pie baker, graphic designer, artist, and former model, Alice Clark wears many hats. Currently, she is running her business, Alice’s Pies, and working as the interim executive director at Downtown Bellingham Partnership (DBP). Born in Saint Louis, Clark describes herself as a “wild child,” growing up spending time outside camping and canoeing. After attending college briefly, she was recruited by a modeling agency and worked in New York and Paris. “That was a really formative time in my life,” Clark said. Once she was finished modeling, Clark got married and moved to Bellingham with her husband in 1980. She earned a degree in graphic design from Western Washington University and worked as a freelance designer which led her to the Pickford Film Center. Clark spent nearly 15 years working with the Pickford, starting as a volunteer graphic designer and becoming the executive director. It was there that she learned how to manage and run a business and found her passion for collaboration. “One thing that makes me happy is watching other people realize their own potential.” For her, the best part of being a manager is selecting the right people for the job and empowering them to be creative and experiment with new ideas. Clark began at DBP in January of this year and is helping to forge a great path for the Partnership and build a strategic plan. The goal of the Partnership is to bring the business and public community in Bellingham together to increase awareness, drive development, and combat deterioration in the downtown area. The main objective for DBP currently is to address the concerns of empty storefronts, the homeless, and limited parking. The idea is to create a safe, vibrant, and healthy downtown through community collaboration. Although the
New Library in Upper Skagit WRITTEN BY FRANCES BADGETT
Alice Clark
Partnership can’t solve the problems on its own, they can do their part to work towards solutions. “If I can help with community engagement on co-creating what we want downtown to become I would be happy,” Clark said. “I don’t think about it as what I’m going to do myself, more like if I can get other people to become engaged then I would feel like I’ve made success.” Another talent in which Clark finds great joy is in making pies. She started Alice’s Pies in 2013 after leaving the Pickford because she wanted to do something different. Baking pies is a meditative process for Clark and the end result is rewarding. She enjoys seeing people’s reactions when they taste her pie. One of her favorite customers is a cute older woman who tasted her pie and scolded her for making it so delicious. “A couple times I’ve been proposed to,” She said. “It’s just really funny.” One of Clark’s favorite pies to create is a fresh blueberry. “The reason it’s so great is because you can only make it in season,” Clark said. She uses locally grown blueberries. Clark enjoys bringing people together, whether it is at a community meeting with DBP, or over a freshly baked pie.
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he Upper Skagit Library Foundation has raised $600,000 for the construction of the new Upper Skagit Library in Concrete. Glacier Northwest has donated the land. The Upper Skagit librarians and friends of the Upper Skagit Library have requested a larger, more visible, more contemporary library. Construction is expected to begin in December 2017. The Upper Skagit Library Foundation hired HKP Architects of Mount Vernon and Seattle to design the new building. HKP designed the Orcas Library, the Museum of Northwest Art, the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center, and the Children’s Museum of Skagit County. HKP is known for their sensitivity both to the community and the environmental context of their buildings. Founder Henry Klein said in a speech to The International Union of Bricklayers and Craftsmen, “No building, however grandiose or stunning, can express its full potential until it has connected itself to its place and embraced it without reservation.” Concrete is looking forward to seeing how the new library will weave itself into the fabric of the close community of the Upper Skagit.
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