Morgan Community Association: Park concerns; CSO design

After last Saturday’s shooting by Morgan Junction Park, some discussion centered on safety concerns in the park itself. Some of those concerns came up at last night’s quarterly meeting of the Morgan Community Association (a week later than originally scheduled, because of last week’s snow/ice).

Other major agenda items included an update on design of the Murray CSO-control project across from Lowman Beach Park, and upcoming electrical-cable work in Gatewood. Read on for details:

MORGAN JUNCTION PARK SAFETY: Southwest Precinct Community Police Team Officer Ken Mazzuca was at the meeting. Regarding the shooting itself, he couldn’t comment because of the “ongoing investigation” (latest WSB coverage, here). Regarding park concerns, several attendees asked about drinking in the park and “aggressive panhandling” across the street. Not only is alcohol use – which is illegal in the park – a problem, it’s starting earlier and earlier in the day, they said. Officer Mazzuca said they would patrol the area more closely, and provided his contact information (which you can find on the CPT webpage) for citizens to report specific concerns directly.

LOWMAN BEACH CSO PROJECT: After seven meetings to discuss the design of the site where a million-gallon storage tank will be installed to reduce sewer overflows, Doug Marzano from King County brought some of the renderings. You can see them all here (including the one above) – note that there is not a final design yet. Two notes of interest include “traffic calming” for the stretch of Beach Drive between the facility and Lowman Beach Park, and plans for public access on the storage site – the tank is now envisioned as a circular design, which the county says would free up a little more of the surface as greenspace. (P.S. We asked county spokesperson Annie Kolb-Nelson a few followups while writing this story – she says they are still negotiating with the owners of four of the six properties at the project site; the other two have been purchased, including the one where the bogus Craiglist sale was advertised earlier this month – more security measures are in the works, she says. Seven of 15 tenants in the site properties have been relocated already and the others, she says, are on schedule for relocation by April. Demolition work is expected in late spring/early summer, but a contractor hasn’t been chosen.)

GATEWOOD CABLE WORK: Seattle City Light reps presented a briefing on silicon reinforcement of underground electrical cables in north Gatewood. There’s some info (including a map) on their website; they say a community meeting is in the works to discuss what happens next, with about a tenth of the targeted cables still needing work.

MYRTLE RESERVOIR PARK: MoCA president Deb Barker noted that the large chain-link fence that was up for most of the construction project has been replaced by what appears to be the permanent fence for certain off-limits-to-the-public parts of the park – a lower black-chain-link fence.

DATE SET FOR THIS YEAR’S FESTIVAL: The Morgan Junction Community Festival just keeps growing. Go ahead and mark your calendar for this year’s date – it’s June 23rd, with the time frame roughly 10 am-6 pm.

The next MoCA meeting will be in April; watch for info at morganjunction.org.

7 Replies to "Morgan Community Association: Park concerns; CSO design"

  • marty January 26, 2012 (11:32 am)

    Park safety has never been a Seattle priority. Have you even noticed the drunks who use the nice Seattle waterfront parks? Not a place I would ever take my family.

  • James January 27, 2012 (8:08 am)

    The circumstances surrounding the shooting outside of Feedback Lounge sound very suspicious of a hate crime incited by hate speech. The bottles of hard liquor prominently displayed in the front window remind me of a scene out of a spaghetti western. I won’t patronize businesses in the area because of the crowd and excessive drinking it encourages at night. I have never been in the “park” and do not think the site worthy of the title. A bunch of concrete and some benches is merely an invitation to crime.

    The coverage in the WS blog was childish and biased such to reinforce its role as racial inquisitor, carefully repeating the prosecuting attorneys list of criminal history for the defendant while not wasting time to do a criminal background check for the alleged victim.

    • WSB January 27, 2012 (9:11 am)

      Hi, James. The “racial inquisitor” allegation is so ridiculous I’m not even going to address it.
      .
      Whether a crime victim has a criminal background or not is absolutely irrelevant. Do you think a burglary victim’s background should be checked by reporters? A mail theft victim? A rape victim? A robbery victim? A car prowl victim? It’s even more ridiculous that a few commenters have tried to suggest a witness’s background should be investigated and reported on. One would-be commenter even suggested looking up the background of one commenter who was a friend of the victim.
      .
      The suspect’s background is absolutely relevant because: In every serious crime case, prosecutors cite suspects’ backgrounds as reasons for the level of bail they request. If they want someone held on $5 million bail, they had better have a damned good reason. And that is the context in which it was reported.
      .
      I heard Lovett Chambers’ name on the scanner within an hour of the shooting and knew that is who they were looking for and that is who they arrested. If he had never been charged, his name never would have appeared on this site, though it already had appeared on most other news sites that apparently believe your name is fair game to be publicized the minute you are arrested (a change in standards from my decades as a major-media newsroom manager).
      .
      I invite anyone who is interested in telling Chambers’ story to come forward and contact me rather than slinging accusations of racism, unprofessional reporting, victim-blaming and witness-blaming through our comment section. I have a researcher trying to find out more because I suspect it is a fascinating story. If you are “just a criminal,” you don’t spend 19 years living an apparently quiet life in a quiet neighborhood as a homeowner and businessperson. We alone have reported that detail too – about the only things we could publicly find out about him online. Maybe that’s irrelevant to the case and I shouldn’t have bothered.
      .
      Tracy

  • miws January 27, 2012 (10:13 am)

    Anyone that questions the journalistic, and overall integrity of WSB, is either a very new reader, or has some sort of ax to grind…

    .

    Mike

  • WS_neighbor January 28, 2012 (2:08 pm)

    @WSB

    With all due respect. The victim’s criminal background is absolutely relevant. Many on this blog are jumping to conclusions about what happened just based on what appears on the surface. What happened is absolutely tragic and murder should never be the answer, but it is wrong to assume that the victim was an innocent victim who is incapable of instigating something that unfortunately turned tragic. How do we know if there hadn’t been a gun involved that the suspect wouldn’t have been the victim of a crime? I am not blaming the victim for what happened; however I do believe that people need to wait until all the facts are on the table before making any declarations about guilt and a person’s character.

  • leslie January 28, 2012 (2:13 pm)

    Tracy – Good.On.You.

    One of the finest attributes of this site and your reporting is looking beneath the layers and taking the time to do so. What are the impacts, who else was affected, what led to the event, looking backwards later to see the changes and ramifications of an event, linking to the history; and yes, correcting when needed.

    James – Where were you during the park design process? Sliming two local businesses built from the ground up works for you? You would publish victim’s information? For what purpose? Hope you’re not my neighbor.

    Looking forward to hearing the rest of the story – goodness knows we won’t find it anywhere else.

    • WSB January 28, 2012 (2:46 pm)

      So far my intrepid research specialist has zeroed in on one state (after trying a few others) and found archives that have yielded handwritten ledgers of verdicts, prisons, paroles, etc. The next layer is to find the stories behind those events … was anything of a magnitude chronicled by a local newspaper that’s on microfiche somewhere … I have a new appreciation now for those working on digitalizing past archives, of all types, from real estate records to criminal-justice-system histories. – TR

Sorry, comment time is over.