Paris has the Eiffel Tower. London has Big Ben. New York has the Statue of Liberty. Saint Louis has the Arch.
Bothell has the Chicken.
This proud monument to poultry towers (about 15 ft) over the entrance to Country Village, an old-timey-themed collection of shops on a landscaped site just north of downtown Bothell. It is very much unlike the modern sterile malls throughout the US. These are old wooden buildings, interspersed with planked walkways, creeks, and ponds with ducks and geese. There are antique railway cars and boats, rigged as playground equipment for children. It’s an attempt at evoking memories of small towns of the American past. Pure kitsch, but on the cheap, with rough edges you would not see in Disneyland.
Country Village has fallen on hard times. The millenials are not interested in this stuff. We were saddened to learn that a developer purchased the site. In a year, the shops will close, the bulldozers will arrive, and eventually all this lovely kitsch will be replaced by an apartment complex.
This creates a dilemma. What to do with the Chicken? We must save the sacred symbol of our home town.
There is only one solution. Bothell City Government recently moved into a new (and very expensive) city hall. This facility is purely utilitarian, utterly lacking any style or panache. The front entrance faces a large empty plaza – a vast expanse of concrete with no purpose or soul. This is where the Chicken must be.
Here is the City Hall, as it looks now.
Here is the improved version.
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