The secret to unlocking & unleashing the untapped potential of civic pride.
Story by Zoe Sayler, Photos by Chona Kasinger, Illustration by Jordan Kay
At every Kenmore city council meeting, as a matter of agenda, Mayor Nigel Herbig asks City Manager Rob Karlinsey, “Where’s the fun?” Inspired by Peter Kageyama’s For the Love of Cities: The Love Affair Between People and Their Places, it’s a playful-yet-serious question, to which Karlinsey often responds, “Hank Heron,” referring to a municipal mascot dreamt up by Senior Civil Engineer and cartoonist Kent Vaughan.
Kenmore Mayor Nigel Herbig on the steps of city hall, which recently were painted a rainbow hue in support of the city’s LGBTQIA+ community. (Photo by Chona Kasinger)
It’s something of an understatement to say that the public loves Hank Heron. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Kenmore’s incorporation last summer, the local historical society raised $15,000 to purchase a custom, cobalt blue Hank Heron mascot costume, complete with long, yellow legs and a 1000-watt smile. The familiar visage adorns internal and external city communications. A recently poured section of downtown sidewalk bears the webbed footprints of Hank, which were stamped into the concrete before it cured. A bronze statue of Hank sits, relaxed and cross-legged, in a place of honor on a bench near city hall, and visitors and locals often join him to embrace a social media moment. “Kenmore, you’ve done it again,” Stoup Brewing Kenmore posted on its Instagram feed with a photo of two employees posing with the bronze shortly after its installation. “Bringing Hank Heron into our lives was exactly what we needed.”
“I think it’s a lot easier to say no to stuff than to say yes. And in this place, we have tried to make it as easy as possible to get to yes.”
– Kenmore Mayor Nigel Herbig
More than a symbol of Kenmore’s proximity to North America’s largest blue heron nesting site, the esoteric branding campaign represents a calculated effort to capture and celebrate the city’s bubbly civic personality. “We’re not a battleship gray city,” Karlinsey says. “We’re always trying to add fun flair to the things we build and create.”
Kenmore Mayor Nigel Herbig with a bronze sculpture of Kenmore's mascot, Hank Heron. (Photo by Chona Kasinger)
For Kenmore, it all began in 2015, when the city hired Peter Kageyama as a consultant to help create what officials call a “Culture of Yes” in council chambers and beyond. “Government employees—I’m one of them, bless our hearts—we always can find 1,000 reasons to say no to something,” says Mayor Herbig. “I think it’s a lot easier to say no to stuff than it is to say yes. And in this place, we have tried to make it as easy as possible to get to yes.”
For the love of cities
Since its publication in 2011, Kageyama’s For the Love of Cities has become a must-read for local electeds nationwide, and the urbanist author has become a sought-after speaker at events like AWC’s 2024 Annual Conference in Vancouver, where Kageyama delivered the keynote address. Public servants often return home from Kageyama’s speeches waving a signed book in the air and proselytizing his ideas around city hall. Enthusiastically explained to colleagues by the water cooler, Kageyama’s musings strike an aspirational tone: “Instead of merely livable, I think we need to start thinking about how we make our cities more lovable,” writes Kageyama, who believes that cities should shift their focus from purely practical priorities toward “elements that often don’t find their way into discourse about city building such as fun, playfulness, sentimentality, improvisation, curiosity, and discovery.” In other words, cities should go beyond providing their constituents with the basics and move toward building an enriched, emotional connection with them. “When we love something, we cherish it; we protect it; we do extraordinary things for it,” Kageyama writes. “This mutual love affair between people and their place is one of the most powerful influences in our lives.”
“When we love something, we cherish it; we protect it; we do extraordinary things for it. This mutual love affair between people and their place is on of the most powerful influences in our lives.”
– Peter Kageyama
For those steeped in the mundanity of a city’s everyday needs, though, accomplishing extraordinary things can feel unrealistic at best. Ordinary duties abound. Shouldn’t those take precedence? It’s a tension Kageyama fully appreciates. “No one wants to vote for arts programs when we have streets that need fixing, sewers that need cleaning, and parking decks that need to be built,” he writes. Funding the fire department and fixing potholes are central roles of the municipal government. But residents expect functional streets, so cities don’t get points for fixing them.
In 2015, the City of Kenmore hired urbanist/author Peter Kageyama as a consultant to help create a “Culture of Yes” in council chambers and beyond. (Photo courtesy Peter Kageyama)
Creating a city worth loving, on the other hand, fosters positive feelings from constituents. In 2014, responding to a steady rise in fatalities and serious injuries among pedestrians and bicyclists, Kenmore’s city council adopted Target Zero, a resolution aimed at improving non-motorized transportation safety. But, Herbig notes, implementation of the initiative, which included more than 90 infrastructure projects (traffic circles, pavement striping, “road diets,” and other traffic calming measures) required the development of an outreach campaign to rally public support around the new measures and the positive impact they would have on the community. Highlighting joy-inducing ways local government benefits the community can balance out some negative associations people might have with their local bureaucracy—as the source of all speeding tickets, say, or the reason parking costs have gone up in the downtown core. “It shows the government can be more than just a barrier, but instead can be a partner,” Herbig says.
For the love of Kenmore
Kenmore offers residents a straightforward path toward partnering with the city through its Love Notes campaign, a Kageyama concept predicated on the idea that in places, as in relationships, the little things matter most. “A love note is something that endears a place to its residents, something that makes them smile or feel at ease, something that provides them with an emotional connection to their place,” Kageyama writes. Empowering people to create love notes of their own has the added benefit of making the venture remarkably simple and affordable: As part of its Love Notes campaign, Kenmore offers to publicize projects on social media and provide a venue, if needed, so long as the idea is open to all and avoids politics and controversy. “Giving people that little bit of permission can then kind of snowball into more involvement and bigger things,” Herbig says.
The campaign inspired one aviation-obsessed high school student to invite experts from Boeing and Kenmore Air (a seaplane charter business) to speak at the local community center. Another avian-obsessed local built “duck boxes” for nesting at a waterfront park. Residents have taken it upon themselves to scrub benches clean of graffiti, craft Valentine’s Day cards for senior citizens, and even make a “Dog Library” stocked with sticks—all because the city made it clear that they could. When one artist volunteered to spruce up the city’s fire hydrants, Kenmore took care of the crucial back-and-forth with the fire department—not quite a big lift, but nonetheless critical in removing potential obstacles that might have impeded the effort.
Kenmore also takes care to recognize residents who already play an outsized role in making great things happen. Kageyama calls these uber-involved folks co-creators. “They are the ‘secret sauce’ or the ‘magic dust’ who make a significant difference in their communities,” he writes. When it comes to tracking them down, Karlinsey says, most city governments won’t have to look far: “You just know who they are.” When kicking off its work with Kageyama in 2015, the city invited co-creators to meet with the author. That group included members of the Arts Commission, the Kenmore Heritage Society, and even a Seahawks fan group playfully named the Kenmorons. “We just tried to instill this concept of Love Notes, and loving where you live, and that you can be a co-creator and the city will have your back,” Karlinsey says.
That initial meeting begat a larger, community wide “For the Love of Kenmore” brainstorming event. The city has held it every other year since and awards a $500 grant to the most popular Love Note idea, as voted on by attendees. “We have an ugly concrete plant right down our main drag,” Karlinsey says, and one group wanted to beautify it by hanging a banner from the massive silos. But it would take much more than the $500 grant to make it happen. They started a GoFundMe, held an art contest, and hung the winning entry for all to see: a great blue heron, silhouetted against the sunset.
Learning the ABCs of TLC
When Peter Kageyama recently took a stroll around downtown Sedro-Woolley after being hired as a consultant for the city, he noticed that several large murals and many chainsaw carvings—the community prides itself as the Chainsaw Carving Capital of Washington State—had fallen into disrepair. Historic scenes depicting the core of Sedro-Woolley’s civic identity, chainsaw carvings scattered around downtown, and artifacts from the city’s annual Loggerodeo event—installations that should provide charm and pride to the city, were in need of TLC, due to decades of exposure to the elements. Some had been tagged by vandals. “It’s sort of this obvious hole in the fabric of your community,” Kageyama says.
Mayor Julia Johnson with one of Sedro-Woolley’s recently restored murals. (Photo by Chona Kasinger)
Sedro-Woolley prides itself on its heritage. Every summer since the 1930s, the city has hosted Loggerodeo, an invitation-only chainsaw carving competition that draws carvers from all over the world. The event coincides each year with Sedro-Woolley’s other claim to fame: the longest-running Fourth of July celebration in the state. An authentic aura— some describe it as classic, small-town Americana—permeates the place. “There’s a charm here that captivates people,” Sedro-Woolley Mayor Julia Johnson says. “There is something that’s kind of magical about our little town.”
But to Kageyama, details like a fading mural or an aging chainsaw carving have the potential to represent a “death by a thousand cuts,” because they serve as a constant reminder of what the city isn’t doing.
Coming from someone who considers his job an exercise in “being relentlessly positive about places,” that observation might seem counterintuitive. But whether he’s offering a new perspective or reframing some of the concerns city officials have always had in new words, Kageyama says the professional service he provides is unique: “You have consultants for all kinds of stuff, from the technical side of running your city,” Kageyama adds. “That’s great. I’m not one of those guys. But I am somebody who brings a different perspective, and maybe would help you see and feel your city a little differently.” He believes that the kind of constructive feedback he can offer, while still rooting incessantly for each city to succeed, is a primary part of his appeal for locales who seek his advice. “I’m the best friend of cities,” he says. He works hard to build them up, celebrate their accomplishments, and praise what makes them special. But “I’ll tell you if you’ve got something in your teeth.”
“There is something that’s kind of magical about our little town.”
– Sedro-Woolley Mayor Julia Johnson
Sedro-Woolley “took him at his word,” says Mayor Johnson, noting that the city council created a community development grant program that would allow business owners to apply for funding to refurbish storefronts, deteriorating murals, and weathered wood carvings. In April, with a community development grant from the city, Loggerodeo hired a father-and-son team of former competitors to restore 17 chainsaw sculptures to their original grandeur. Working with Kageyama gave Sedro-Woolley and its citizens a “stronger sense of community excitement and possibilities,” Johnson adds. “It’s one thing for somebody to come in and let you know where your flaws are, and then leave it at that. It’s another thing to have somebody come in and say, ‘there’s great opportunity in your city, and here are some ideas.’”
“Working with Kageyama gave Sedro-Woolley and its citizens a ‘stronger sense of community excitement and possibilities.’”
– Sedro-Woolley Mayor Julia Johnson
What makes one city lovable can’t be distilled into another’s simple playbook, Kageyama notes. Add a heron statue to a bench in Yakima, and it might not have the same impact as it would in Kenmore. Refurbish a carving or two in a place not known for its woodworkers, and the change won’t be as appreciated as it is in Sedro-Woolley. “It’s an emotional connection,” Kageyama says. “That’s something that has to be sort of homegrown.”
Professional chainsaw carver George Kenny uses a sander to restore one of Sedro-Woolley’s aging Loggerodeo sculptures, work that was funded by a community development grant. (Photo by Vince Richardson, Skagit Valley Herald)
Taking the first steps
Step 1 to creating a city that inspires engagement and love from those who experience it? Figure out what people love about it already. “I try to explain that, hey, look, you need to be the best, most authentic version of you, and somebody will love you for that,” Kageyama says. The concept can feel liberating: People might love Tacoma for its walkable waterfront, or Bellevue for its ritzy shopping centers, but that doesn’t mean that other cities should try to emulate those amenities. “Somebody who loves Seattle may not love Sedro-Woolley, because they’re very different,” and vice versa, Kageyama says. “And that’s okay.”
For some cities, becoming more lovable can be as simple as celebrating, and bringing well-deserved attention to, what drew people there in the first place. When Sequim partnered with Kageyama in 2016, gathering locals to brainstorm community-building projects for the famously rain-shadowed Clallam County city of 8,241, the group ultimately awarded the event’s $500 grand prize to “It’s Always Sunny in Sequim.” That project involved creating murals of sunshine shapes using water-repellent paint that would appear when wet, sending a positive message that in Sequim, a place that averages 300 sunny days a year, the sun comes out even when it’s raining. Likewise, citizens in Sedro-Woolley brain-stormed ways to emphasize its location as the Gateway City to the North Cascades or build upon its identity by creating a city flag. Most agreed that Sedro-Woolley should work on “making ourselves known,” Mayor Johnson says. “[We] really want to see other cities become aware of what we have to offer.”
Not every city will find tapping into its existing attributes to be such a straightforward exercise, Kageyama says.
Kenmore, for example, wasn’t incorporated until 1998, so it can’t exactly draw on its historic identity like Sedro-Woolley might. It lacks a downtown, which can make planning city-wide events more difficult. And like many Washington suburbs, onlookers all too often think of Kenmore as a bedroom community of Seattle rather than recognizing the unique attributes or amenities it might offer on its own. “People know Kenmore because they drive through it, and Kenmore kind of wanted to change that,” Kageyama says.
Inspired by Kenmore Air, the local seaplane-centric airline, as well as locals’ impassioned requests for a community space that can be used all year regardless of the weather, Kenmore recently dedicated a 4,600-square-foot gathering place called the Hangar at Town Square, adjacent to city hall. “It’s what we call our year-round living room,” Karlinsey says. A coffee shop anchors the space, which hosts many events inspired by Kenmore’s Love Notes initiatives: salsa dance classes, addiction recovery groups, and the aforementioned talk on aviation. “It’s working exactly as we had hoped. It’s always packed with people just hanging out,” Karlinsey says.
And who welcomes people as they arrive? A bronze Hank Heron kicked back and grinning on a bench on the park’s periphery, inviting others to join the fun.