Great places come with a cost

I’ve been spending the last few weeks putting together a photo album for Trouble 1. Like a real hands on photo album. I started for his 30 year birthday last year and made the first two, covering his life from my growing belly until he was five. Now for his 31 it was time for album nr. 3: summer -91 - summer -93. Which means our first stay in Seattle is told in pictures and writing.

Looking at a downtown picture shot from the Space Needle deck I am struck by how sparse it is. The high rises scattered over the area. And pointing the camera to South Lake Union I am thinking, wow these pictures are historic! Seattle has grown into a dense city and some places are completely changed. And the densification just keeps on happening.

There are more construction cranes in Seattle than in any other US city. While many American cities don’t have a real downtown, Seattle has a very clear and distinct one centered around the heart of shopping Pacific Place Mall, Westlake Mall and the Nordstrom flagship store. It’s great! Especially when you are new to a city it is really helpful to have a center to navigate around.

And as if that’s not enough one more downtown is coming up. South Lake Union in my pictures from 1993 is an industrial area area with one story buildings (Umebor, think Västerslätt) where you could find most anything from shipping and boat supplies to film rolls. And boy was that a hard neighborhood to navigate! Today it is the Amazon campus with 25 000 employees, more to come and a city center growing for the daily need for all those blue badged people. Easier to navigate? Well, they say it’s hard to get in and out because it’s already congested and has made the commute even worse.

For as long as I have known Seattle it has never been an inexpensive city. The only time the home prices went down was after the 2008 crash, but Seattle was never hit in the way many other cities in the US were. In 2010 I dreamt about buying the fabulous penthouse where I was staying for the summer which was for sale at a bargain, 375 000 $. I even bought lottery tickets! No luck though unfortunately.

Today Seattle tops the nation in home price growth. The national numbers are up 5.8% for the last year, Seattle 10.8%, close to double! During my early Seattle years renters were only people who were in transition or didn’t have a reliable income. That changed when home prices became unaffordable even for people with a more stable life, and during the past four years rents have skyrocket across Seattle about 40%!

So what happens to a city which is super expensive going on even more expensive? Well, except traffic congestion it attracts a finical elite. And some Seattleites who have been there for generations have to leave.

It turns out nearly half of Seattle millennials consider moving as Seattle-area costs are soaring!

45 percent of millennials in the Puget Sound region think they will have to move somewhere cheaper to afford the life they want, even though nearly all would prefer to stay in the area. Such a loss! Such a terrible loss!

This is not a problem exclusive for Seattle. Attractive places are difficult spots for young adults to start a life, same goes for Umeå although on a different scale. The condo market was up 12% only in the last quarter here. Those cities might also be a hard place to retire or being disadvantaged in other ways.

The costs in booming Seattle are even negative for tourism. A recent J.D Power survey ranks Seattle 37th on the list of the top 50 destinations in the US! The gorgeous Emerald City! What happened? Well, tourists have pretty much the same complains as Seattleites: traffic is bad and it’s expensive. A Best Western hotel in Seattle does probably not have a higher standard than in Phoenix or somewhere else. And Air.bnb doesn’t help. People offering apartments know the market values.

Where am I going with this? Well it all started with that 1993 downtown photo I just pasted in my son’s photo album. Cities like Seattle and Umeå where building cranes move like choreographed in the sky are great cities. Developing, evolving, fun, often young. The median age in Umeå is 38 years, in Seattle 35,5 of 2015. But all that comes with a cost. If you can afford that cost it’s great. If you can’t, not so much.

Persistence X 2 = film

In Seattle there is Paul Allen. In Umeå, Krister Olsson.

As a storyteller and documentarian I have some dream projects. One is telling the story of John W Nordstrom, a Swedish shoemaker who emigrated from Nederluleå starting a shoe store in Seattle 1901. When I first came to Seattle 20 years ago there were 54 Nordstrom stores (which in modern days is an upscale fashion retailer) in the U.S. Today the number is 252 stores. Nordstrom is still widely known for their shoe department and their customer service, the head quarter is still in Seattle and oh how I would love to tell that story!

In Umeå, the dream story is the one about Krister Olsson.

Krister Olsson is the Paul Allen of Umeå. The main developer. The person who pictures the opportunities in a piece of land. Who has the visions, the economical resources and the persistence to follow them through.

They are also the persons who sometimes make politicians and public uncomfortable. The Swedish and American cultures are quite different when it comes to being successful, wealthy and powerful. Those three words are the American Dream in a short story. Sweden, as a basically homogeneous country where we are all descending from farmers with a couple of cows, some acres of land and at best a horse, is in general skeptical towards people who are making noticeable peaks on the national culture codex scale.

Therefore, it is interesting and a bit surprising noticing how the discussions and reactions to Paul Allen,Vulcan and Krister Olsson, Balticgruppen are very similar. Although Seattle is a fairly big American city and Umeå a smaller Swedish one. It seems like there is something about the size of the place and the dimensions of the developers’ acting. When the developer’s footprint gets big it turns intimidating. He (there isn’t a lot of female developers) simply takes up too much space, land wise, economically, and strategically. And this makes people worried.

Krister Olsson and his company Balticgruppen is involved in most every developing project happening in Umeå right now. I am crossing the Umeå River entering Umeå from the south side where my village is located. This fall has been the most beautiful I can remember in my grown up life. The birches and maples have been on fire reflecting in the river. And the flat red brick downtown silhouette has been added on with new buildings rising above creating fresh reflections in the wide and streaming river.

Downstream there is the Art Campus (Konstnärligt campus) and the Art Museum (Bildmuséet), boxes in various sizes out of Russian Lark designed by Danish Henning Larsen. In the city center the Winn Hotel blue and white cross-striped floors emerging from out of the Forsete block, and at the waterfront the Norwegian Snöhetta designed building for cultural arts Väven, busy with getting dressed in the black and white glass exterior inspired by the graphic stem of the Umeå birch, the tree synonymous to the red cedar for Seattle. Balticgruppen is the common denominator for the new Umeå skyline.

In 2004-2007 I made a film-documentation for Balticgruppen, covering a different project. Back then we were talking about documenting Krister Olsson’s life as an entrepreneur on film, and even started on it. Since then he has been busy realizing his visions about Umeå, and so the tale about him hasn’t been neither a priority nor focus. I have never given up the hope of telling his story though, and about every other year I have been making the calls, poking around to make sure the idea wouldn’t die, keeping it alive. Waiting for the timing to be right.

It’s been one of those really nasty November days in Umeå today. Foggy, rainy, windy. About freezing point but feeling like 14°F (-10C). I’ve been sitting on the third floor of Väven wrapped in a big long down coat. The building is still very much in progress and there is no heat inside. Camera man Tomas, sound guy Johannes and me all thought we were dressed and covered for the occasion (after all, we have some routine), but being still and focused on a long interview in a cold humongous building is just…very cold.

I think though, the interviewee was even colder, although the atmosphere was warm. Krister Olsson is known for his persistence. Well, I am too. After nine years of keeping the idea alive, this fall I finally got a yes for telling Krister Olsson’s life on film. I’ve been close a couple of times before but something has always come up. The fact that it is now finally happening has kind of been hard to grasp. Today it became real. And I am so thrilled about it.

And quite proud. And humbled. I have been given a great trust. And I will try my very best to do a good job.

So what about the Nordstrom story? Well, it is yet to be told, at least from the Swedish perspective. And Paul Allen? I wouldn’t say no if I got the question. That’ for sure.