THE HISTORY OF THE HUB (Part 1)

INTRODUCTION

 Once upon a time there was a man who was burned out with the corporate world and longed to be in control of his own destiny.  He walked away from a life that certainly would have been financially rewarding, but offered little else.  He ran to a romantic life of making all the major decisions himself and the risks that go along with it.

So begins the history of the Dana family at The Hub Drive in.  It was July of 1960 when our family uprooted from seven years in Madras, Oregon to come home to Western Washington to take over a drive in restaurant called The Hub.  Newell and Shirley Dana were both from Lake Stevens so Snohomish wasn’t all that far from their roots.  The decision to choose Snohomish was based upon the high quality of education offered in the local district and a drive in that was for sale.  They never regretted their decision.

In 1960, old fashion drive in restaurants were in their hay day.  Folks would rumble up to one of two drive thru windows at the Hub in their big old American-made gas guzzlers.  They felt like kings since eating away from home was a big deal back then.  Burgers were thirty five cents and a coke was a dime.  You parked your car in the lot anywhere you liked and when you were done eating, you just tossed your trash out the window on the ground.  Boy, things have changed over the years.

For our little drive in, history is not well documented until July of 1960 when Newell and Shirley Dana took over The Hub.  Since that time, operation of the drive in has been continuously managed by the Dana family.  History of our restaurant is more likened to history of a big family.  Most of us today realize that service businesses are about relationships with people.  Each of our businesses sells a different product, but in the end, it is the people in the businesses that make us want to come back.  The Hub has been no different. 

We have been blessed with customers and employees that go so much further than the original business relationship might suggest.  Our greater family now encompasses hundreds of threads that we still maintain to this day.  We have enjoyed graduations, weddings, births of babies, anniversaries and family reunions.  We have also endured divorces and funerals.  The risk you take when you form a relationship with someone else is you get what they get.  Our lives are intertwined and we wouldn’t have it any other way.  The HUB Club is an outgrowth of forty seven years of relationships.

History for The Hub is a huge collection of short stories.  Most of the stories are told from the perspective Newell and Shirley’s second son, Steve.  That is me.  My wife, Noreen and I bought The HUB from my parents when they decided to retire in 1985.  In the name of fairness, I may occasionally insert a contribution from a family member or friend that might take exception with my spin on an event or fact I represent as the truth.  

This history will be related in two parts.  Part One is 1960 to 1985 we call “Newell and Shirley, the early years.”  Part Two is 1985 to today which we call The Great Divide. 
 

IN THE BEGINNING

The stories start with Newell and Shirley Dana deciding to abandon a life in the petroleum distribution business for a life in a hamburger stand.  If you know Newell Dana, you understand why he had no tolerance for the politics of a big company like Texaco.  Even though the expectation was good for a prosperous life in that business, Newell and Shirley decided that having more personal control over their destiny was more important than wealth.  That was a life changing decision.

It is important to know that our family has its roots in Lake Stevens.  Both Newell and Shirley were LSHS Class of ’42.  Their network of friends after WWII was in and around Everett.  Friendships with Bob Tuerk and Bill Pardee began with Newell owning a gas station across the street from their restaurant on Broadway.  In the early days, Newell would sit in the restaurant until someone came into his station and he would dash across the street to “fill ‘er up” then dash back before his coffee got cold.  Bill and Bob were close friends with Newell until they both died in the past couple years.  The early friendship enabled Newell to see that the restaurant business was a hard life, but it was an honest life.  When you are fed up with the politics of business you begin to look for greener pastures.  The opportunity to buy a restaurant in Snohomish was the key to deciding to abandon the oil business.  Newell and Shirley wanted their kids to have the best education available.  They knew that Snohomish had superior school system.  It was their destiny to own The HUB.   

By the late fifties, Bob Tuerk and Bill Pardee had parted company as friends and built their own restaurants on opposite ends of Broadway.  Bill and Patti Pardee went north and built the building that is currently a Chinese restaurant at Eleventh and Broadway.  It was PARDEES Restaurant in those days.  

Bob and Pat Tuerk went south to Thirty-eighth and Broadway to build the largest drive in Everett had ever seen.  The Stadium Drive In was the birth place of a restaurant style that carried over to Snohomish when Bob and Pat mentored Newell and Shirley about the operational aspects of this new business.

Shirley recalls that during the time when they were phasing out of the oil business in Madras, Oregon and phasing into the drive in business in Snohomish, Washington, she had to become a more active participant in the business.  It was Shirley that packed up the kids in the station wagon and moved to a new life leaving Newell to wrap up sale of the old business.

It is always exciting to start something new.  Shirley remembers 1960 when she walked into The Hub for the first time.  The romance of the new venture was quickly snuffed out once she realized all the work that had to be done before one dollar could be made.  She reminds us even today that it was her that started the business and that we should never forget it.  For Shirley the beginning was a lot of elbow grease that became a part of a work ethic for our family.

 At that time in 1960, Shirley had a brood that numbered four; Tom was twelve, Steve was ten, Melody was eight and little Ricky was just three.  Each of the kids had a different view of the new life since being torn from comfortable surroundings in a previous life.  One thing was for sure, there was work to be done and tasks were matched to ones abilities.

Growing up in a restaurant family made us different from most other kids.  Our busy time was when regular families were off.  We worked hard at night and on weekends because that was when people were out and about.  My brother Tom and I started working that summer of ‘60 and never looked back.  At the start, it was determined that Tom was old enough to actually take orders and make drinks, but I was not.  I guess they figured that the extra two years of age made the difference.  In my eyes, it was just another case where my brother got preferential treatment.  So, we both were responsible for doing back room work, but he could also do out front stuff.  Neither of us was allowed to actually cook then.

 In the back it was mostly about cutting lettuce and onions and peeling potatoes.  We would have four or five hundred pound bags of spuds delivered twice a week.  Our job was to make French fries.  When you are ten, that seems like an unbelievable amount of work to do.  We peeled potatoes in house for only about six or seven years before we switched to pre-cut French fries, but they all were years where I was sitting there peeling them.  It got the point where volume required we have more and more bags delivered and storage was scarce.  I didn’t feel a bit bad when we stopped doing them.

In 1960, we sold a Deluxe Burger for thirty-five cents and a Special Deluxe Burger for fifty cents.  An order of fries was a quarter.  An eight ounce soda was a dime and a sixteen ouncer was twenty cents.  A milk shake was thirty cents.  It meant that we had to sell a bunch of stuff to make a buck.  The minimum wage back then was ninety cents per hour I think.

 My dad, Newell had spent years in the “service station” business so he was really into the “service” part of the business.  He understood that what differentiated us from the competition was often just the service we gave.  He was determined that ours would be “outstanding”.  To that end, he decreed that we would run out the back door when cars lined up in the drive thru to get the orders rather than relying on an intercom system.  When I say “run” out the back door, I really mean it.  He wanted us to dash out there rain or shine.  He believed that face to face contact was more personal. 

My dad spent seven years working for Texaco in central Oregon only a few miles from Prineville, Oregon.  Les Schwab was a young buck in his business in those days too.  They both learned about the value of hustling.  Les parlayed his knowledge about that philosophy into a billion dollar chain of tire stores where even to this day, the employees run wherever they go.  We never grew beyond our single hamburger stand but we never forgot the value of hustle.

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

 For us baby boomers, growing up in the fifties, sixties and seventies was an extraordinary life experience.  With the back drop of the cold war, we grew up under the cloud of Communism.  We have memories of Nikita Khrushchev pounding on the lectern.  At the time I am sure it was just happening on an every day basis.  We had been advised that Communists were lurking around every corner and infiltrating respectable organizations.  Their effort was to undermine the stability of our government.  We grew up with school training for what we do in the event of a nuclear bomb attack.  We would hide under our desks.

 In the fall of 1962, Newell and Shirley were visiting with Bob and Pat Tuerk one evening when the news report came that our government was in a showdown with the Russians over the missiles in Cuba.  The thought was that there would be an attack on America from the Russians any minute.  The folks were playing bridge that night when the eleven o’clock news headlined the imminent threat.  Newell and Bob were convinced that this was going to be it.  Because they were fearful for their families, they decided to pack up their kids and head someplace safe until the war was over.  In the middle of the night, we all packed up and headed for Penticton, British Columbia.  They thought we would be far enough away the Russians would not get us.  We camped in Canada for a couple weeks until the coast was clear.  The Hub was closed for that vacation.

EARLY HUB EMPLOYEES

 It is hard to remember with clarity some of those early days.  Memories are related to people mostly.  As a family business, my folks worked a lot, early and late.  As the business could afford it, they hired outsiders.  I believe the first employee was Donna Dietrich.  She wasn’t married to Bill in those days, but I don’t remember her maiden name.  Donna was working at the Hub while she was attending beauty school.  It was always interesting to see what Donna’s hair looked like when she came to work since the students all practiced on one another.  Sometimes her hair would be green or pink.

 I think the second employee was Ralph Alger.  Ralphie was a boisterous rebel high school senior in 1960.  He never really changed.  He lived a hard and fast life.  Newell saw a lot of himself in Ralph and did what he could to help another young man that had lost his father at an early age.  Ralphie didn’t work that long at the Hub because he couldn’t handle being accountable to an authority figure.  It just wasn’t in his nature.  Even though his length of employment was short, he was a part of the HUB family until his death in the 1990’s.

 Another early employee that had lifelong impact was Marie Moon.  She came to work at the HUB in ’61 or ’62.  Marie was a cute girl that attracted boys every day.  She was a nice girl with looks and brains.  Marie worked at the HUB for at least her senior year, then after graduation, she worked while she went to ECC getting a two year Registered Nurse degree.  Even though Ralphie was older, he had the hots for Marie.  She just wanted to be friends.  Marie married Randy Patrick to keep Randy from being drafted into the Viet Nam war.  Being married was all you needed to be deferred in those days.  Even though she moved as far away as Iran with Randy, she was a dear part of our family until her death in 2006 from cancer.

Along with Marie, the work force consisted of a bunch of babes.  We had Susie Kinkead who married Dave Lande; Irene Dawson and Diedre Averill.  Then in about 1964, Marie’s brother Bill Moon came to work and the tide shifted to boys.  For a period of ten years or so, all the employees were boys.  Newell didn’t like the idea of mixing boys and girls.  There was too much opportunity for hanky panky. 

Brother Tom worked at the HUB until his graduation from SHS in June of 1966.  He did attend the U of W for a quarter, but in January of 1967 he signed up for the US Army and he served until his retirement as a full colonel in 1995.

Over the years, our restaurant has employed hundreds of kids.  We have been fortunate to have a bunch and saddened to have a few.  During the Newell and Shirley years we hired kids we knew from being friends with one of us in the family.  Dave McCutchen was a classmate and great friend of Tom’s.  He worked for a couple years then his brother Don, a friend of mine, came on board somewhere in 1966 and finally a couple years later the youngest brother Roger.  During this time period, we also had another friend of mine, Bob Wright, start in late 1966 followed by his brother Don in 1968.  Bob and Don’s sister Janet was my brother Tom’s girl friend at that time too. 

We were a work crew made up of kids from three families; the Danas, the McCutchens and the Wrights.  We also managed to add a couple new faces into the crowd.  Joel Thaut was the same age as my sister and Roger McCutchen.  He worked a couple years.  As some of us phased out, we also added guys like Grant Weed, Evan Thomas and Todd Wolfe.  The significant twist of all this is that my sister, Melody never worked on a regular basis at The HUB.  Since Newell didn’t want to mix boys and girls, he wouldn’t make an exception for his own daughter.  He made her work for Bob Tuerk at the Stadium Drive In over in Everett.

A side benefit of the close knit work group was the fact that our families became friends as well.  We maintain relationships with the families even today.  We will highlight some of our previous employees in a “Where are they now?” section later.

In the 1970’s as brother Rick came of age, we phased in a bunch of kids in his class.  A change was brewing in 1973 when Newell realized that he needed more mature people watching the store.  He hired Noreen for the first time in the spring of that year to help out.  She went away for a while and then in 1975 when the Stadium Drive In burned down, she came to work on a permanent basis and has been the one consistent aspect of Hub history since that time.  I had known her since we were in high school, but we didn’t become a couple until 1975.  We were married in 1976.

Other kids that have been a part of our team include Gus Kouyian, Greg Pate, ……

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Newell was an avid sports fan during his younger years.  He was a big advocate for high school sports all his years in Snohomish.  He supported the school athletic programs whenever he could.  One of the programs he started was a radio show called “Panther Tracks” where the sports guy from KWYZ would have a half hour interview with Coach Armstrong to talk about that week’s football game.  Newell really liked Dick Armstrong.

From 1963 to about 1995 The Hub paid to have wallet sized sports schedules printed.  In the beginning there was just Football on one side and Basketball on the other.  Then as wrestling became more popular, we added a fold out page and finally when Title IX passed it opened the door for girl’s sports and they became multi-page fold-outs.  In the later years, the scheduling became so difficult; we had to abandon the program.  There were many people in the community that didn’t know that we paid for those schedules.  They had been a part of the school scene for so long, many folks assumed the school paid.

For many years, we were so closely linked to high school sports that we posted scores on our reader board almost in real time.  At a time when you had to get on a ladder to change the message, that was impressive.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE FOOD

Since our beginning, the driving principles for The Hub have been to provide the best quality product available in a timely manner at a fair price from a clean facility.  That simple statement drove everything.

Our menu over the years stayed pretty consistent.  My dad was a process guy rather than a product guy.  He refined a process for making a product and worked it.  Adding bacon to a burger was an earth shaking change that took forever for Newell to implement.

Since I was a kid, we regularly loaded up the family truckster to make visitations to other food establishments in the region.  We would go to look at what is being sold, how it is being presented, how much they are charging and evaluating whether it is a product we can replicate successfully.  I can remember going to food places where my dad would order ten different things.  Take a bite out of them and pass the rest of the thing on to one of us kids.  If he found something he liked, he would buy more.  That was market research circa 1962.  We still use the same tool today.

The Panther Burger evolved over a couple years.  Dave Butler ordered a Special Cheeseburger with double meat and double cheese and only mustard and ketchup.  That was called a Butler Burger.  Then Bob Atkins wanted a Special Cheese with double meat and double cheese fixed stock.  That was called an Atkins Special.  Neither burger was on our menu.  It must have been 1963 that someone suggested it be called a Panther Burger so we could put it on the menu and sell it to everyone.  It was a hit from the beginning and for good reason; it was a killer burger.

PANTHERBURGER CHALLENGE

In the early summer of 1967 Bob Wright and I were talking with our friend Howard Anderson about how many of these burgers we could eat at one time.  Bob thought he could eat two or three and I knew I could eat three or more.  Howard suggested that we were just junior varsity eaters and that he could eat five Panther Burgers at one time.  Of course we challenged him to deliver.  We would pay if he ate five and he would pay if he failed.  What started out as youthful boasting turned into a legend.

That summer day in 1967 still lives on as the day the record was set.  Howard Anderson knocked down five Panther Burgers that day.  Even though Greg Osborne tied the record Howard is still the record setter.  Until someone breaks the record by eating six, Howard will always be the man.  There have been a couple dozen wannabees who have started the challenge, but we don’t encourage eating Panther Burgers for entertainment purposes.  We want to sell as many as we can, but only for a meal and not a prize.

MENU DEVELOPMENT

During the Newell and Shirley years the menu didn’t change too much.  The constraints of the small building prevented too much.  The rule of thumb was in order to add a product, you had to take away a loser.  We had a menu that worked for them and why would you mess with success.

Newell was a visionary when he decided in 1972 that the consuming public wanted and would pay for hard ice cream cones.  Soft serve cones had been all the rage in the post war years, but they wanted more.  His market research indicated that if he had them, he could sell them.  In the limited space available to him, he managed to work in an ice cream freezer that could hold eight flavors and he put a couple more in the fountain freezer for a total of ten.  Long before Baskin & Robbins, the Hub had hard flavors.  We sold hard cones until about 1998.

THIS PLACE IS BUILD LIKE A FORTRESS

We know that hundreds if not thousands of friends had fond memories about the Hub because it reminded them of the old days.  Nostalgia helps soften our memories when we look back, but the facts of that old building were glaringly real.  Most of our business was take out in the old place so you really didn’t have to eat the food in the dining area.  Frankly calling it a dining area is giving it the benefit of the doubt.  With only three tables we use the term loosely.

In the winter it had no heat, in the summer it had no cool.  When the yellow jackets were bad they came in every opening available to them then trapped them until they died.  Sometimes there were literally hundreds of them buzzing around the place.

Our inside seating area came about in 1964 when Newell realized that the outside seating area with umbrella tables didn’t work most of the year.  My uncle, Jerry Brothers told Newell he could put an addition on the building for a modest sum if we could pitch in with the labor.  Since Newell didn’t intend to be part of the labor party, he said sure.  Getting a permit required that Jerry draw a rectangular box on the end of the building for the city building inspector with simple notes about a door and a bunch of windows.

Measurements were made to determine the grade for the floor in the seating area.  A slab floor was poured that defined the foot print of the seating area.  The framing of three sides took a couple days since we had to tie the roof of the old building into the roof of the new one.  The old building had a pitched roof; the new building had a flat roof. 

Then, the real work started.  In order to get access to the new seating area, the end window on the building needed to be removed and the cement block wall needed to be chiseled out.  Surprise, surprise who do you think got the job of chiseling out the old cement block wall.  It took the better part of a whole day to bust that block section out.  As was the custom in those days, the brick mason filled the holes in the blocks with rebar and mortar making the wall a solid mass of cement-like material.  Even after we were done, it looked like we used explosives to do the job.  It took some additional carpentry to cover up the hack job we did.

In the end the opening was really skinny but it worked.  It provided a path for us to get people and product into the new sheltered area.

I believe that from the beginning Newell knew that the purpose for the inside seating was to give him a place to put the pinball machines.  He always said that the seating area was for customer comfort, but he made so much money off those machines, they paid for his vacations every year.  Then you could also find him playing the machines too.  It was not uncommon to find him playing all night when he found a machine that challenged him.

For thirty years or so, kids knew they could find arcade machines at the Hub and flocked in droves to play.  Even today some of our customers reminisce about their own childhoods when they came to play the machines.  As video games became more available at home, their popularity waned in places where you had to pay to play.  The deciding factor in our decision to take them out was the frequency of comments from our eating customers about the uncivil behavior of the gaming customers.  We had to decide whether we owned a restaurant or an arcade.

The lessons learned about drive thru businesses over the years have been hard lessons at times.  For both the business owner and the customers, there have been expensive experiences.  The reason the face on the building roof was so stout came from number of times customers with trucks and other large vehicles forgot they were driving trucks and other large vehicles.  Numerous times gutters were ripped off.   

At the time the inside seating was added, Newell knew he had to have a better plan.  Tying the new roof to the old roof gave them a chance to provide a solution that at least protected the business from serious harm.  In doing so, it increased the risk for the unsuspecting customer.  If you ram your car into a brick wall, you are not too surprised when you sustain damage.  If you forget you have a camper on your truck when you line up to approach the drive thru window, you are brutally reminded when you crash in your tracks leaving a gaping hole in your sheet metal.

Warning signs, waving pennants and other devices were tried over the years to prevent crashes, but they never worked particularly well.  Over time, regular customers just learned to keep their distance.

After the inside seating area was added, the building was fortified pretty well.  For many years it fended off attacks from campers, pipe racks, boats and trailers.  In February of 1982, it met an assault it could not repel.

A driver for Volunteers of America parked his truck on the edge of 10^th Street near what is now Blockbuster Video.  He left it there while he was away to get something at 7Eleven.  Somehow, he neglected to set the parking brake and the truck rolled down the hill, across Avenue D and crashed into The Hub.  It hit the building in the middle of the dining area.

It happened just before lunch that day.  Two ladies were sitting at one of the tables with their backs to the window.  Newell, Noreen and Mary Jayne Hamilton were working that day.  Noreen or Mary Jayne looked out the window and saw the truck coming on a collision course with the building and hollered to the ladies in the dining room to get away quickly.  The ladies managed to get up from their seats and head for the door, but the truck impacted the building before they could get away safely.

The impact drove the front of the truck through the wall until the fortified façade on the building stopped its advance when the box struck the face.  The front of the truck hit with such force it drove the wall, a video game and the tables across the room pinning the two ladies in the debris.  It was a splintered mess.

Fortunately, neither of the ladies was killed, but both sustained injuries.  For some reason, they never came back.

A Washington State Patrol officer just happened to be eating a Hub Long Hot Dog in the parking area and was there to render assistance and gather information.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

In the years since Noreen and I have owned the Hub, we were fortunate enough to have Brian Martina give us the photograph of the old building taken in 1952 when the auction barn was in its heyday. 

In the early days, the street was paved, but the parking areas were all gravel.  You can see the way things looked on the old picture.

When Newell and Shirley took over the Hub, it was still gravel with big pot holes.  Avenue D was the main drag and since it was also a state highway, the paving was quite wide.  On more than one occasion when it really rained hard, the water would come sheeting off the highway down into the drive way by the back door.  It wasn’t quite as bad as flooding at the river, but there were times when we had to sand bag the back porch to keep the water out.  It would come in torrents.

HELLS ANGELS

One year in the early sixties word came through town that the Hell’s Angels were coming down Highway Two and would be passing the Hub.  In those days, the cops weren’t very sophisticated.  The communication system between jurisdictions was all but non-existent.  We had a patrolman reminiscent of Barney Fife come into the drive thru to warn us about the impending threat.  It was like “Get all the women and children off the streets, the Hell’s Angels are coming.”  In those days, our town was known for the number of churches and the number of bars.  Snohomish would be a prime place for the bikers to land.  Some businesses actually closed early that night.  My old dad believed that you couldn’t make money if you were closed.  We stayed open.  The bikers never showed.  It was a false alarm.

If you grew up watching movies about prison breaks and the activities associated with them, you can imagine what it was like in town back when there were actually guys escaping from the prison in Monroe.  The sirens would wale all over the place as police agencies mobilized to assist in the search for a convict that went over the wall.  As in the case of the Hell’s Angels, the local police department consisted of a single night patrolman who may or may not have actually had a bullet in his gun.  The word would go out about an escape and the cop would make his rounds to let all the night businesses know to be on the look out for suspicious characters.  I guess the State Patrol and the County Sheriff served as the “track em down squad” for escapes.  The stream of police cars heading to Monroe would seem like a never ending parade at 80MPH.  I don’t remember an escape that got beyond the city of Monroe ever.

CRUISIN COLBY

For some older folks, remembering back to “the old days” is the thirties and forties.  For people in my generation, those days are the fifties and sixties.  A drive in can’t have a history without talking about cars and music.  We had our share of car guys in town.  Everyone knew the goal for the weekend nights was to be over in Everett on Colby between 9:00pm and midnight.  Cruising was like a peacock competition.  If you actually had a nice car, you were the cock of the walk.  If you just wanted to be a part of the activities with your Plymouth Valiant, you could get some girls and get in line.  Turn up the eight track to the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean or Jim Morrison.  Just make it loud.

The part we played in the drama was the hours before nine when everyone was getting something to eat and some mixer for their beverages.  Guys with fast cars would rumble up to the drive thru with their chick tucked in tight in the center of the bench seat next to her man.  But not so close as to inhibit his shifting.  Everyone had a big V-8 and a four speed tranny.  If you didn’t have a four speed you were a woos.  In our case, we had a V-6 and a three on the tree in our fifty-eight Chevy wagon; not exactly intimidating.  The chicks didn’t need a hot car if they were hot.  There would be carloads of girls driving old dad’s Ford Custom four-door sedan strutting around the parking lot, primping for later.  You knew they were looking to hook up with one of the guys with a real car.  This may have been where that term “drama queen” came from.

DANCE HALL DAYS

Hand-in-hand with cruising Colby was the dance hall/rock n roll scene.  We had some hot spots around Snohomish County and our local crowd was right there with the rest.  Normanna Hall in Everett was handy for cruising and dancing.  Some of the icons of Rock n Roll played there.  The Kings Men, The Walers, Don & the Good Times, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Merilee and the Turnabouts were all local groups that played.

Lundeens Dance Hall was a rocking place along with Silvana Hall.  Just walking around in those days, you could be among giants and not even know it.

LIFE ON THE EDGE

Rumble up to the window at The Hub.  “Where you headed?”  “Gimme a large cherry coke and a Deluxe Burger, we’re headed to Lundeens”  “You got anything to drink?”  “We’re gonna get a pint later.  Gimme a pack of Camels and you got any matches?”

It was a pain in the butt to have to work every week-end night, but my dad understood that if I was working, I wasn’t on Colby, at Normanna, Lundeens or Silvanna.  We lived on the edge experiencing the life style from our contemporaries and their stories.

You always aspire to do what the older guys did.  In my case, Ralph Alger was like an older brother.  Ralphie was like a god with the “cars and girls set”.  He always had a fast car even though he rarely worked.  He had girls hanging off each arm when he strolled through a dance hall.  He was a really tough fighter and stories abounded about his rumbles with other notable fighters.  If you knew an icon like Ralphie, you were somebody just for that reason.  Ralphie was eight years older than me so I was in awe of him myself until I was eighteen. 

FAST CARS

Some guys had fast cars and some guys had cars that looked fast.  We really didn’t care about the reality when a rumbling shiny ride drove up to the window.  “What ya got in that baby?”  “I got a 409 with dual Holley four barrels, and a Hurst four speed.”  “I got solid lifters and a cam that does this and that.”  “Cool man!”  Half the time, we didn’t know what the guy was talking about, but when he popped the hood, we all stood around and hemmed and hawed appropriately.  Cars sitting around the parking lot at a drive in was a given.

Bob Porter had a GTO, Denny Wise had a Fifty six Chevy then he bought a brand new Sixty-Six Chevelle, Walt Delaney had a ’67 Dodge Coronet R/T with a 426 Hemi and of course Ralph Alger had the ’67 El Camino with a monster 427 engine.  There were car guys all over the place and we had our share lined up in our lot.

When a challenge to race was circulating around town at midnight on a Friday night, you knew the roar of his El Camino would eventually be heard.  Many times, his reputation would bring pretenders to town looking to knock off “the Man.”  We closed at 1:00am on weekends and often had to work until 2:00 to finish clean-up.  We knew there was street racing in the works and hustled to get done so we could be in the crowd when they actually faced off on highway nine north of Second Street.

SNOW DAYS

In the old days, we seemed to have more snow than we do now.  My dad always said that if it snowed he stayed closed.  There were lots of times it would snow overnight and he would be closed for a day.  Then if it looked like the snow would hang around a couple days, he would get us boys out with shovels to clear the lot.  After cars have driven over it a few times, it gets packed tight and is a pain to shovel.  Since the road was on the high ground and the Hub was on the low ground, there were a number of times when cars lost control on the road and ended up sliding into our building.  Snow days meant time off from school and more time to play the pinball machines.  We might have eight or ten guys hanging out playing all day.

BUG BLACKOUT

I remember times in the sixties when toward the end of summer; the moths would hatch after a good caterpillar season.  There would be millions of them.  Our lights were industrial bright so we were the proverbial magnet for them.  There were times when we would try to stay open when they were in season because Newell didn’t authorize us to close.  They would pour in the window when a customer came to the drive thru and we would have to worry about them getting in the food.  Some of the smart butt customers came in to torment us knowing that in order to do their order; we had to open the windows.  When Newell was available to give us the word to shut down, we would close and the only significant light would be the street light and it would be blacked out with the swarm.

PAINT IT WHITE

From his years with Texaco, my dad knew the importance of keeping his facilities clean.  He was a fanatic for cleaning and keeping the place looking clean.  To that end, he painted his whole place bright white.  It always looked sharp when it was clean.  He could tell when it needed cleaning since the dirt contrasted with the bright white.  All employees were a part of the clean team.  Then, to keep the bright white bright, he closed every winter to re-paint the inside of the building.  I kid you not, every year for his twenty five years he painted inside and about every other year he painted outside.  I guess the more accurate term would be that he had someone paint.  I can’t remember a time when Newell actually did the painting.

Food service businesses were often seasonal in the old days.  Being closed for maintenance and vacation was expected.  Sometimes the Hub would be closed for a month or more, depending on where Newell and Shirley were vacationing that year.  If there was a modification to the place that needed his personal attention, Newell would go on vacation then come back to do the work.

 Top

THE GREAT DIVIDE

The second part of the Hub History starts with the hand-off of the business from Newell and Shirley to Steve and Noreen. 

After twenty-some years at the Hub, Newell decided twenty-five would be enough for him.  He announced to the family that he would be retiring in 1985.  He had some health issues that were pushing him toward a change.

 My part of the family had doubts whether Newell would actually sell and move somewhere else.  In conversations within the family he talked about putting a value on it and what kind of terms he was looking for.  We listened, but didn’t think too much about it.  We really could not conceive of the Hub being owned by someone other than Newell.

Noreen was unsure enough that she had a back-up plan for what she would do after the Hub passed to another owner.  She enrolled in travel agent school so she could have something to do that she liked.  By that time, she had worked in the restaurant business for more than twenty years herself and relished a change.

As 1984 ended, Newell started getting serious about selling.  He began gathering information on real estate and business marketing companies that might connect him with prospective buyers.  It looked like he was serious after all.

At that time I was working for Don Wright at his business in Everett doing reliability testing on integrated circuits and other electronic components.

Noreen and I were talking one evening about how Newell was actually going through with selling the Hub and could I imagine what it would be like to drive by the place and not be involved in its operation.  Initially I wasn’t focused on what it meant on any level other than that it was my dad’s business and he could do what he wanted.  Then when we were talking about how life would change after the sale, we became somewhat melancholy.  That would be a real void in our lives.  But, what the heck, that was his business.

A couple days passed and we talked about “what ifs”.  What if this, or what if that.  Then it came to “What if we bought the Hub from Newell and Shirley?” 

Well, we had a plan for “After Newell sells”.  Noreen was going to be a travel agent and I enjoyed working with Don. 

“Yeah but can you imagine not having the Hub in your life?” 

“Well, we don’t have any cash for a down payment.  And don’t you want to be a travel agent?”

“Sure, but just think about it.”

We hashed it back and forth for a couple days before we decided to approach Newell and Shirley with a proposal.  Then we sat with them and hashed it some more.

There had never been a time when any of us in the family contemplated taking over the family business.  Tom was very happy in the US Army and intended to retire when he made his thirty years.  Melody was enmeshed in her career.  Rick was only twenty-eight and lacked experience and capital.  Noreen and I were cruising along, life was good.

At the same time each and every one of us still enjoyed coming home to The Hub for burgers and the camaraderie of the place.  There was a lot of nostalgia there.

If anyone in the family was going to step up, it would have to be Noreen and Steve.  But, was that what we really wanted?  We agonized for a while before we decided to move forward.  “Yes, we wanted to continue the family story at The Hub.”

It took a couple weeks to do the legal things that made the transfer from Newell and Shirley Dana to Dana Lane Inc our new corporation and Noreen and Steve Dana.

Newell and Shirley closed their Hub for the last time in March of 1985.  The transfer would take place on April 1, 1985 and we would re-open on April 9, 1985 under new management.  One era had ended and another had begun.

MAKE IT YOUR OWN

When you are a second generation operator of a business, you get the rare opportunity to change things that might have bugged you for years, but you couldn’t change because it wasn’t yours to change.  Newell often said “If you don’t like the way I do things, get your own place and you can do it any way you want.”

It wasn’t that we wanted to totally revamp the place, quite the contrary; we were enthusiastic about not changing the place.  What it was is what we wanted it to continue being; The HUB.  At the same time, there were little things.

Avid Hub watchers remember that if you bought Fish & Chips or a Fishwich under Newell’s watch, you got Hub Sauce for Tartar Sauce.  Who ever heard of that besides Newell?  Since he didn’t like tartar sauce himself, he didn’t care whether you got it.  Our first change was to develop a recipe for HUB Tartar Sauce.

I turned to old friend Bob Tuerk to work with me to create a tartar sauce that was sweeter than most.  Bob and Bill Pardee had owned the T&P Packout on Hewitt Ave just east of Cedar for a long time in the fifties. (there was a barbecue joint in the little building recently, but it has closed and the old building is being gutted)  The T&P was mostly about hand-cut batter-dipped fish n chips with fresh cut fries.  They were doing that style of fish before “Spuds Fish n Chips” in Seattle.  He knew all about fish n chips stuff.  Bob met with me in the Hub Test kitchen to try different flavors.  We turned out some awful tasting mixtures before we settled on the flavor you get today.  Hundreds if not thousands of our customers rave about our tartar sauce and I have Bob Tuerk to thank.  Some customers have been known to buy twenty of them at a time to have at home.

When we added Chicken Strips to our menu, Bob also volunteered the original recipe for our sweet n sour sauce.  Noreen has modified it a little over the years, but it was Bob’s mother that made the recipe in the beginning.

Even though Robert Leroy Tuerk was my dad’s friend, he became a close friend to me as well.  Leroy, as I called him was like a second father to me.  I look back fondly when I think of him.  I still miss him.

Other than the tartar sauce, we opened with the same menu items as the “Old Hub” had closed with.  I am sure we had higher prices though.  We had a huge mortgage after negotiating terms with Newell.

DEVELOP A LOGO

One thing that I had in mind when we took over the business was the fact that we had never developed a graphic identity for the HUB.  From a visual perspective, we were logo-less.  I have always been a doodler, so I started working on a “new look” logo.  I scratched out a few ideas then I hooked up with Bert and Gretchen Abernathy through my brother Rick.  I was planning to make bib aprons that would be the perfect location for a logo.  Right in front of everyone that came up to the counter.

Bert was a screen printer and Gretchen was an artist.  We talked about my ideas a while before I told Gretchen to work up some ideas that incorporated my doodles with things they could do with the technology at the time.  The round logo was born in Gretchen’s studio.  It worked for us for many years.  Bert and Gretchen printed aprons, hats, shirts, jackets and a couple other items for us over the years.

For the most part, I had tackled the two items that I thought would correct Newell’s errors in judgment.

PAUL TOTUSEK

One of the business practices Newell was committed to was the buying of serviceable equipment then repairing it rather than constantly replacing it when it broke.  That philosophy works if you have service professionals to do the repair.  You get a plumber when your hot water tank breaks, an electrician when your breaker breaks. 

In a restaurant, you need a refrigeration repairman you can trust.  In our case, we had a jewel.  I inherited Paul Totusek from Newell and he made it possible for us to keep our refrigeration equipment “on the road” all our years until the old Hub closed in 2001.  Paul retired from his business in 1990, but kept working on his oldest accounts since he had fabricated our equipment. 

Paul worked on The Hub, the 25^th Street Market, Walt’s Milk House, King Charley’s Drive-In and a couple others since he knew a new service guy would be lost if he tried to figure it out.  Paul doesn’t work on our new equipment these days, but he is still around. 

When we opened the new place in 2003, we made sure that our old fountain freezer was the one carry over piece of equipment from the old place.  Newell procured that used freezer from Foremost Dairy in 1960 when he opened and started using their products.  We are proud of the fact that we value older things that continue to work for us.  People too.

WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER

Some couples that start a business together learn that they can only handle so much togetherness and after a short time decide that one of them needs to do something else.  My mother only worked at the Hub on a regular basis until my father was up to speed.  She went to work away from the Hub in the early sixties.

Noreen and I have been working together now for twenty three years.  She may not have been making the strategic planning decisions, but I/we could not have done the things I needed to do if she had decided to go away to avoid the conflicts that are unavoidable. 

The reason that our working relationship works is because we love each other and she has adopted my goals and vision as her own.  There are a lot of women that wouldn’t do that.  When I decided to run for city council, she supported me, even though we both knew there might be negative financial impacts.  She knew I wanted to do it and gave her blessing.

I appreciate the fact that if she had not supported me when tough decisions were made, we might have blown apart.  Certainly there have been occasions where we had disagreements, but she gave me her input and left the final decision to me.  If she didn’t love me and trust me, she couldn’t have done that.

In many ways, owning a restaurant is like adopting children.  They are not your flesh and blood, but they become a part of you.  Our restaurant is a part of who we are.

When we started planning the new restaurant, my goal was to create a place where we could sell food items that Noreen has been making for me at home all the years we have been married.  She is a wonderful cook.  Whenever we have new items to try out, she usually whips up a few test efforts for us to critique.

 Isn’t it ironic, I have been the one that cooks in the restaurant, but can’t cook a lick at home and Noreen is the great cook at home, but has never cooked in a restaurant?

My partnership with my wife has been the consistent driving force in my life for thirty-two years.  If we are thought of as a success, it is because of her confidence in me.  Without that, I would be nothing.

HUB DAYS

We took over the Hub in 1985, the twenty-fifth year.  By 1990, we were cruising along with five years under our belt.  Approaching July of that year, our thirtieth, conversation turned to what we would do for the anniversary celebration.  Brain-storming produced an event that would allow us to turn back the clock thirty years.  We would roll back prices to the 1960 level and we would celebrate with the community.  A mile-stone had been reached.  It would be held on two days; a Friday and a Saturday.  Friday for the week day customers and Saturday for the weekend customers.  It would be called HUB DAYS.

We picked a weekend near the end of July, identified the menu items that would get price roll-backs then we tried to estimate how much product we would need for the weekend.  I don’t actually remember how we calculated how much meat to order from Goetz’ Western Meat Company.  I am sure I ball parked it and ordered a bunch then went to Bob Goetz and asked him to be at the ready with fresh hamburger patties if I screwed up.  I imagine I made a similar arrangement with Gai’s Bakery.  We brought in huge stacks of buns and had the bakery driver be ready to restock after the first day.  Syrup for the pop machine and mix for the shake machine were stockpiled along with all the other supports that went along with selling tons of product.  We knew that if this deal didn’t work out, we would be buried with inventory.

Whenever you are planning a celebration, you advertise so you can let everyone know to come.  We gave ourselves enough lead so we could really get the word out.

Anyone who has ever participated in a recital will know the feeling we had when we opened on the Friday morning.  We were “just playing the piece we had practiced over and over” and we were just waiting for the audience to arrive.

We opened at ten thirty that morning and the people just poured in.  In 1990 the price for a Deluxe Burger was about $1.50 and we were selling it for thirty five cents for HUB DAYS.  A Special Deluxe Burger was selling for about two dollars in 1990 and we were selling them for sixty cents.

Our grill could cook a max of about twelve burgers at a time.  Orders were coming in for dozens at a time.  People were ordering bags to take away.

We started cooking when we opened and we cooked them nonstop for the rest of the day until we closed.  At times the wait was estimated at two hours.  We told them about the wait and they said they would eat when their order was done.  I know it was a pretty good deal, but I am not sure I would have been that committed to a hamburger stand.

We took a couple breaks during the day, but Noreen and I worked pretty much non-stop that day for twelve hours then had to assess our inventory situation to prepare for day two.  We had all the staff humming and we even enlisted a couple outsiders to help out.  Our friend Denny Kendall actually strapped on an apron and served as my fry guy for part of the event.

Day two was pretty much a repeat of day one.  There was no ramp up on Saturday morning.  People were waiting for us to open.  People waited all day and were still waiting at the end of the day.

Our little hamburger stand turned out more than two thousand hamburgers during the two day event.  Along with all the other items people order, we cranked out a ton of stuff.

It is very gratifying to have customers so committed to your business they will endure the nightmarish waits.  We held the event to thank the community for thirty years of support, but it was still humbling.  We didn’t make too much money that week end, but we learned some things about ourselves, our staff members and customers.  We were happy with what we learned.

One thing we learned with HUB DAYS the first year was we don’t have to roll back prices quite that far to celebrate.  We did HUB DAYS at different times for about eight years.  It got to the point where we didn’t have enough skilled staff a couple years which made it a real challenge.

HOT OFF THE GRILL

As HUB DAYS was losing steam, my creativity turned in another direction.  A little known fact about me is that I took journalism in high school.  That means that after a year of book learning, I had excellent training that enabled me to write a newspaper.  I think every Arrowhead staffer will agree with me.

Technology enabled me to advance with great strides beyond what my dad could do in so many ways.  Computers gave me the ability to gather data I could use to analyze many aspects of the business.  Purchases, sales and communication all benefit from even a rudimentary computer.  I could create a news paper for the HUB on my computer.

For my purposes, the newspaper would be a vehicle I could use to draw attention to the people that made our little hamburger stand work.  Relationships with customers make you want to draw attention to their good fortune.  Relationships with staff members make you want to draw attention to their successes.  A newsletter/newspaper would enable me to do that.  My little newsletter called HOT OFF THE GRILL was born because I had tools at the same time I had the desire to create.  The rest is history.

HOT OFF THE GRILL was a bunch of tasks all rolled into one.  The first thing you have to do is develop a list of topics to write about.  Then you have to see if you can write anything folks want to read.  My writing style is a blend of facts with fiction.  I don’t take my stuff very seriously and I don’t want my readers to either.  My writing is entertainment above all else. 

The next step in the process is to format the document so that it is pleasing to my eye.  I say my eye because there was a lot of discussion about how I wanted my little newsletter to look that might have differed from other people in my circle.  I bought Microsoft Publisher when it first came out and I still use it for all my graphics work.  It is not a professional grade product, but it works for me.  In the end, I settled on a style that I liked.

The last part of the production was the printing.  My friends Rick and Denise Foster at JMJ Printing worked with me to actually print it.  Without their help it would have just been another good idea that went nowhere.  Denise helped me with formatting things and Rick solved the technical problems that came about because I used Microsoft Publisher.  Rick and Denise are committed Apple people.  My PC documents could have been Chinese, our computers weren’t going to talk to each other.

I think the first issue we printed a couple thousand copies.  After that, the word got out that it was free and a little entertaining.  People signed up in droves.  At the end, we printed around five thousand copies.  We mailed most of them and had a bunch we delivered to places in town that were interested in giving them away.

Rick and Denise had boxes of sixty pound slick paper with colored ink printed and folded, all they needed were mailing labels.  Denise had a bulk postage stamp I used.  Labeling was by hand.  Thirty to a page, we had lots of pages.

We published an issue every quarter for a couple years and then sporadically for a couple more years.  The project ended because the cost of production along with the cost of postage killed the deal.  When you are mailing four thousand copies at thirty-two cents per copy for postage, the bill is huge.  We spent thousands of dollars on the project and don’t regret it a bit.

For book writers there are vanity publishers that do small volume printing runs.  Rick Foster was my vanity publisher.  It was my ego that led me to spend that kind of money for a project that was fun, but not very profitable.

The thing I haven’t touched on yet is who was I mailing the newsletter to?  That is almost a story in itself.  It was actually a question I asked before I wrote my first story.  Would anyone want to receive a newsletter from The Hub?  The answer came back a resounding yes.  The challenge would be to gather names and addresses. 

The solution came in the form of drawings for prizes where customers would fill out entries for the drawings with their names and addresses, then every week, we would give away a pair of tickets to a Seattle Seahawk game or some other sporting event as the enticement to enter.  Since we had six seats for every Seahawk home game, it was a good investment.  We gave away a lot of prizes, but we gathered thousands of names with addresses.

Match the names and addresses with a printed document and you either have a HOT OFF THE GRILL newsletter or a political mailer.  In my case it could have been either.

ROOTS OF COMMUNITY ACTIVISM

 I am fortunate in that my dad was a doer.  He believed in figuring out what you want then going after it.  When he lived in Madras, Oregon between 1953 and 1960, he was involved heavily with Jaycees; the organization that develops leadership skills in young men.  Newell was between 28 and 34 during those years.  An extension of his community involvement in Madras was his serving on the town council for a term.  He put his money where his mouth was.

Fast forward to 1987.  I have taken over the Hub and like all small businesses, we struggle to stay afloat.  The city council had decided to jam a LID proposal down the throats of all the businesses on Avenue D from The Hub north to the bowling alley. (You do remember the bowling alley, don’t you?)  They invited us to some meetings to brief us on the concept, then when we told them we might not be interested in spending our own money that way, they informed us that they had already done the calculations and we didn’t have the votes to stop the deal.  The project would be built the next year. 

The city gathered its’ commitments whenever a property owner along the street needed a permit to do their deal, the city made them sign a document giving up their right to protest.  When the city had enough assessed value to make the required percentage of ownership, they sprung the deal.  That project was done in the 1987-88 time-frame. 

I remember standing in the Hub one day whining to my dad about how the city public works project was killing our business.  You know, when you are just shooting the breeze you say things like “Those stupid SOBs don’t have enough common sense to do this or that.”  My old dad saw his opportunity, he replied, “If you think you are so smart, why don’t you run for council?”  Without thinking too much, I shot back that I just might.  Of course that got me thinking about whether I was actually up to the challenge.  It didn’t take too much to conclude that it was not a smarts issue, but a willingness to commit the time and effort to do the work. 

In the spring of 1989 I was psyched to take on one of the candidates up for re-election.  At that time, you filed for election during the last week of July.  I was at the courthouse in Everett the first day of filing, working up to my first election since high school when I defeated Dennis Thaut in a competition for Senior Class President.  I had ideas about campaign slogans, bumper stickers, buttons and everything else.  I just needed to know whose butt I was going to kick.  The days ticked by and at the end of the week when filing ended, I found myself facing “no one”.  Either I scared them off or they just didn’t care.  I would be on the city council come January 1, 1990.

For me, the next question to answer had to do with what I would need to know if I wanted to do the job and not embarrass myself.  I signed up for a class at Everett Community College in Urban Planning taught by the Snohomish County Hearing Examiner John Gault.  From September to Christmas, I learned about a lot of stuff city council members need to know.  I aced that class, I was stoked.

I could write a book about my eight years on the city council.  They were the most rewarding years of my life.  I learned a lot, I met a bunch of asshole politicians and I also met a bunch of really great people struggling in their own communities with the same things we all struggle with in small towns.  I still meet regularly with many former elected officials from Snohomish County cities.

For all the years I served on the city council, I never held back giving my opinion about how I thought the city should be functioning.  I am a big advocate of less government regulation.  Government is about balancing needs with the ability to pay.  Some of the discussions at city council meetings are controversial.  From controversy, you get animosity at times.  Animosity makes some of your customers stop coming in to your restaurant.  We paid a price in our restaurant for my years of outspoken council participation.  After eight years, I decided I couldn’t afford the price any longer.  My family shouldn’t have to pay for my service.

Our family has been a part of this community for forty eight years in 2008.  During that time my dad and I have been continuously involved with community activities.  We are proud of the fact that we have been a part of efforts to build the food bank and create affordable housing in Snohomish.  Newell served on the Planning Commission and Capital Facilities Planning Committees with the city and was involved with efforts to build the Hal Moe Pool and the new stadium at Snohomish High School.  I started off on the city Board of Adjustment, the city council and since leaving the council, I have served on the Planning Commission.

Anyone who has ever been on a committee that had to do a tough job knows the difficulty in factoring the needs of all the interested parties.  After all the work is done, there are always the complainers.  “You didn’t adequately represent my interests.”

That is what government is on a large scale.  You can’t win for losing.

After leaving the city council at the end of 1997, I refocused on business.  The lesson I learned about being in business in the city where you live means your business pays if you screw up.  I was motivated to look outside Snohomish for expansion opportunities. 

Our customer base is clearly in and around Snohomish, but we have large groups of customers numbering in the hundreds as far away as Marysville/Arlington/Smokey Point, Frontier Village/Lake Stevens, Mill Creek and South Everett.  Many times we were asked when we would be expanding into those markets.  We just smiled, pleased that people were interested.

Over the years, discussions with the Health District indicated that our old building was quaint, but it was seriously out of compliance with current restaurant standards.  We should be looking for ways to get current.  The restrictions of the old building prohibited too much “remodeling” that would begin to solve the problems.

I weighed the options with the old building and began to consider making the investment in a new restaurant at a different location.  We would build a second Hub and keep the old Hub until we phased out the old building as a restaurant.

As a city government guy, I knew the struggles within Marysville and Arlington to control Smokey Point.  That area was set to explode.  I found a piece of land that would meet my needs and negotiated a purchase agreement subject to a number of things.  The most significant thing was the need for the property to annex into a city to have access to city land uses different from county zoning regulations.  The property owner was very cooperative for quite a while.  Then when things bogged down after about eighteen months, he told me to either buy it or he would sell it to someone else.  I had to let it go.  There is now a North County Bank on my site.

After that deal flipped, I looked around Frontier Village, South Everett, Murphy’s Corner/Mill Creek, Central Everett and even Monroe for a site in my price range.  Needless to say, I didn’t find one.

I guess we could have let it drop at that point.  Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.  We could have limped along with the old place.  We owned it outright.  Or, maybe we needed to figure out how to make a deal happen.

Once again, knowing how government worked and being involved with capital facilities planning gave me the knowledge I needed to reach out to the city to suggest a deal that served their needs and served my needs at the same time.

The city needed to signalize one of two intersections on Avenue D.  Tenth Street went east from D and Bonneville Ave went west and north from D.  Traffic was bad for both, but you couldn’t have two signals within two hundred feet.  I proposed selling my house and forty-five feet of property to the city for a street that would bring Bonneville Avenue up to Avenue D opposite Tenth Street.  That would satisfy most of the city’s needs.

In the process of moving the traffic off the old right-of-way west of the Hub, the city could surplus the right-of-way and I could trade my property for the street.  Needless to say, that solution looks easy in conversation, but government doesn’t work that smoothly.  The deal took a long time and a lot of heartburn. 

I enlisted my friend Arnold Hansen, owner of Snohomish Properties, to negotiate on my behalf.  That was the point where we were drawn into a swirling negotiation involving the Danas, the city and our big brother to the west; the Bonneville Power Administration. 

Vacating the street only gave me access to the street from the center line to my side of the street.  That didn’t meet my needs.  I needed Bonneville to give up their claim on the property.  Arnie Hansen is a genius when it comes to real estate law.  I could not have prevailed without his efforts combined with support from Bob Thompson at Chicago Title in Everett.  Our three legged agreement worked after a year of negotiations.  Execution of the parts didn’t take place at the same time, but we had promises that we were covered.

We moved out of the old house in 1999.  It was dozed and a new street was built sometime that year.  We could see the foot print of the site we would have for a future restaurant.  The old Hub continued to march.

A benefit of being in business for a long time is knowing people.  We knew Gordon Cole and his company Kirtley-Cole Construction were great people.  We began discussing a project on our property with them in 1999.  We called it HUB2K.  We thought it would be a deal that could be done for the millennium change.  Someone was laughing about that plan.  Things just don’t happen that fast.

We needed a lender that would do the deal before we could move on.  We went to Frontier Bank and developed an understanding about our project.  They would work with us so we could proceed with Kirtley-Cole to develop a plan.

All the years we worked at the old Hub, we had ideas about things we wanted to do, but were stymied because we had no room to execute.  We wanted to sell a nicer class of food, we wanted to do some catering.  In our new building, we would have capabilities for both of them.  Once again, my government training suggested incorporating multiple uses in a multi-story building.  I could have a couple rentals on an upper floor, a banquet room for a hundred or so and an elevator to provide handicapped accessibility for the upper floors.  And oh by the way, I could use a basement for storage too.

That was the vision.  A building with a ground floor restaurant, a second floor banquet room, a couple thousand square foot apartments on the Penthouse level and a basement for restaurant storage and production uses all served by a hydraulic ram elevator.

My discussions with Ken Ryan at Kirtley-Cole set limits for the design/build project at about a million dollars.  His staff went away and came back with a document that established the scope of the project and the estimate that they could deliver the building for the price.  We were excited that we were embarking on our dream.  That was the beginning of a rollercoaster ride that lasted a couple years.

We spent a lot of time developing the design of the original structure only to discover when they costed it out, the price would not be a million, but a million four hundred thousand.  Design fees for this phase had reached eighty thousand dollars and it was a project that never was within the constraints of the original agreement.  That should have been the signal I needed to go back to the agreement to understand why the product they produced didn’t meet the terms of the agreement.  That lapse on my part cost me. 

Nevertheless, we needed to step back and come up with a solution.  The solution came through stripping away the vision.  There would not be a banquet room, there would not be apartments, there would not be a basement.  I could get a single story wood frame building with a slab floor for my budget.  That was quite a “change order” for my vision.

When you get lemons, make lemonade.  I was so enthused about having any new building, I decided to put the hassles with the previous design aside and focus on the doable.  If I was wronged by the way the project finally developed, I would deal with it.

We endured prolonged negotiations with Bonneville Power Administration, the City of Snohomish and Kirtley-Cole during one of the most stressful periods of my life.  I am not sure we were as successful as we might have been had I been able to focus all my attention on the deals, but that just wasn’t possible.  I had other issues that needed attention.

FIGHT THE WEIGHT

All my life, I have dealt with obesity.  I was a “husky” child.  I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fighting my weight.  I started dieting when Larry Prigg was my sixth grade teacher at Central School.  He was concerned enough as a teacher to work with me to get control before the problem exploded.  Needless to say, he was not particularly successful.

In 1999 I had gained back all the weight I lost when I went through the Optifast program.  A program where you don’t eat food for sixteen weeks, you drink protein shakes.  I lost a ton of weight (well maybe not a ton).  But, when you stop fasting, you have to have a plan to change your life style or else.  I spent a couple years in group counseling but after all that time, the group began to fall away one by one until there were only a couple of us and we just quit one day.

I remember telling Noreen that I thought if I didn’t do something to “change my life style” I was going to die.  I was convinced that my out of control weight would kill me very shortly.  My knees were killing me with every step I took.  I was really heavy.  The prospect of dying in pain like that is a motivator.

Through discussions with people that I knew I began to investigate Gastric Bypass Surgery as a solution.  I worked with my doctor at Group Health to explore my options there.  Group Health did not recognize Gastric Bypass Surgery as a solution for morbid obesity.  They suggested mainstream diet control programs like Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig.  They would not participate in a surgical intervention.  That meant that if I was to proceed, I needed to come up with about twenty-five thousand dollars cash.

There is a stressful realization.  Come up with $25K or die.  It took some effort to develop a plan, but we did.

We would plan for the closing of the old Hub to coincide with the construction of the new Hub.  I would schedule my surgery for right after we closed so I could be recovering during down time.  Yeah right.

FIGHT THE WAIT

The negotiations with all our partners languished.  Y2K came and went.  Y2K plus one was on us in no time.  It looked as though 2001 might be our year.  Things were coming together.  The Bonneville negotiation required that I hire an attorney to petition the Federal Court to establish ownership of the land I needed to build my restaurant.  That took the better part of a year and ten thousand dollars.  The building plan was close to completion, all we needed was the lender to finalize the loan and the city to issue permits.  It sounds so simple.  Get the lender to finalize the loan, not simple.  Get the city to issue a building permit, not simple.  (And miles to go before I sleep.)

Getting the city to issue a permit was not as painful as some folks imagined.  Working with the city is often a pain, but in all fairness, our permit did not get held up by them.  There were issues that needed to be addressed and Kirtley-Cole did.  Working out the issues one at a time was slow, but it was working.

We thought in the spring that we would get a permit some time in September of 2001.  For our team at the Hub, that signaled a definite time frame for closing the old business.  We developed a plan to ramp down and close the Hub on August 15^th.

The plan now was to close in August, clear out the old building, get a building permit in September, get Gastric Bypass surgery in October and start construction after the new year in 2002.  Not!

We did close on August 15 with a well attended “HUB Be Gone” party which we will describe later, but that was our last celebration for a long time. 

Everyone knows that on September 11^th, 2001 the world came to a stop while we reeled from terrorist attack on our country.  All bets were off.  The world was a different place over night.

Some time that fall in 2001, Frontier Bank decided they couldn’t actually make the loan we had counted on.  It just didn’t work for them I guess.  I was screwed, where was I going to find a lender now?  Kirtley-Cole put my project on hold.  My world was falling apart.  The holidays were pretty bleak that winter.  The planned surgery was delayed and wouldn’t take place until February of 2002.  I had no lender and no income.  I was a dead duck.

We decided to proceed with our plan to the degree we could.  Get the surgery out of the way, get on with the recovery.  February Fourth of 2002 was the day I was given a second chance.  I did have a good recovery and I lost a ton of weight again.  That will have to be a different story.

BACK ON TRACK

In the summer of 2002 it was time to start working on our deal again.  We went back to Kirtley-Cole to assess.  We would have to revisit issues with the city and we would have to secure a lender.

Out of the blue, Bob Miller from Cascade Bank called me and offered to see what he could do.  I think Dave Thompson told him I had a problem.  Bob was a life saver.  He picked up my deal and got Cascade Bank to make a construction loan.  We were back on track.  Just push through the permit issues.

During the “hiatus” the city decided to adopt additional permit regulations that were not a part of the original deal.  Technically, we could have resisted and prevailed, but we decided that the time lost to winning the battle might cost us the war.  We entered into a phase of plan review that subjected us to the Design Review Board.  Their recommendations would not be binding, but they should be considered.  Whatever.  Time is ticking.

The holidays came in 2002.  We had been closed for fifteen months.  Our budget was strained.  We had mortgaged our future to get through a surgery and a year off, but not two years.  We really had to tighten our belts.

Good news came in January 2003, we had a commitment for a loan and we had a tentative commitment for a permit.  Kirtley-Cole needed to get me in the queue for construction and I would be off and running. 

April 4^th 2003 would be the day construction begins.  A plan was set into motion for that to happen.  There would have to be asbestos abatement and other things like that before you can knock the old building down.

HUB BE GONE

We need to go back to that last high point for the old Hub.  August 15, 2001 was bitter sweet for those of us who experienced the drive in, both from the inside and the outside.  I would be lying if I didn’t admit that we had some really good times in that old place.  We had a lifetimes worth of good times.  It’s not that, but once you make up your mind to put down the dog, you start looking for all the reasons why it is a good idea.  The old building was that old dog you loved but couldn’t do anything for at that stage in life.

My sister Melody came up with the celebration of life for the old place.  It was like a wake for a living thing.  We invited friends and relatives from both side