Recognize the lettering on that sign – the first sign ever to be displayed in the windows at Martin’s Way, the recently opened shop at Delridge and Findlay? If you do, you’re likely a customer of Tony’s Market, the produce stand at 35th and Barton. Three months after opening (here’s our January story), Martin’s Way is stocking fresh produce from Tony’s – right now, 8 kinds of vegetables and 17 kinds of fruit (a few of which are in this photo):

And with Penny’s chips in stock, you can even buy the makings for chips and guacamole, as the Memorial Day weekend approaches:

MW proprietors Vik and Nikhi also are stocking the items with which they started operations – an extensive selection of bulk spices, specialty salts and sugars, and some grains. Meantime, back to the Tony’s partnership – Vik says he first met Tony’s founder/namesake Tony Genzale in 2004 and was impressed with him as an entrepreneur and community member; since Tony’s death a year and a half ago, his son Joey Genzale has been running the business, so Vik says he spoke with Joey and his mom and they liked the idea of Vik stocking some of their produce – which he hopes to dub “Tony’s Market at Martin’s Way,” with a portrait of Tony hanging in the store. (Stand by for updates on that.) Martin’s Way is open noon till 7 Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon till 3 on Sundays (northeast corner of Delridge/Findlay).

(Sketch described as development team’s preferred ‘concept’ – click image for larger view)
4724 CALIFORNIA: We told you 3 weeks ago about the meeting date for this Junction project, so this is just a reminder – Thursday night, 6:30 pm, Youngstown Cultural Arts Center (4408 Delridge Way SW), is the first design review for the proposed 100-or-so-unit development at the ex-Petco site in The Junction. Last Thursday, we brought you the first look at concept sketches that the project team has shown to community members in advance of the formal meetings, as well as the “massing” – size/shape – options in the “packet” put together for Design Review (see it here).

9051 20TH: This planned two-phase, 40-plus-unit project in South Delridge had its first Design Review meeting on March 8th (WSB coverage here). It’s now tentatively scheduled for a second meeting on June 14th, 6:30 pm at the Senior Center of West Seattle.

2:55 PM UPDATE: Per the scanner, police are reopening SW Brandon.

3:30 PM UPDATE: A little more information from police – a car went into a ditch; a man and woman were heard yelling, and she apparently said he had a gun, then somebody reported hearing what sounded like a shot. A K-9 team was brought in to look for the man (no word at this point about the woman who was yelling) but couldn’t find him.

7:34 PM UPDATE: Lt. Alan Williams from the Southwest Precinct has a full summary of the incident tonight: “An adult male assaulted his 17 yr old girlfriend in an automobile, during which time he drove recklessly and crashed into the woods south of the West Seattle Golf course.  The suspect fired a shot at the victim and then fled into the woods.  The car sustained a bullet hole through the passenger door outward, but the victim was not hit.  A large wooded area between the West Seattle Golf course and High Point was contained and 2 K-9 units tracked/searched the wooded area for an extended period of time without locating the suspect.”

(SPD Blotter featured this case a few hours after we published that update.)

The “fishbone” bridge along Longfellow Creek in North Delridge is always a beautiful sight … even with something startling at one end, which was the case for a while this morning, as Rose e-mailed us to report:

As I was walking along the path from All-Star Fitness in the Dragonfly Park, I saw a tow-truck. Kinda strange. I kept walking and found another tow-truck at the bridge and asked what was going on….the nice young man pointed out to me the stolen car. It was missing the front bumper and hood. The front tires were taken off but left behind. Seattle’s finest in blue were there also.

Rose also shared the photos (thank you!).

At the end of our last update on the “rechannelization” proposed for a stretch of Delridge Way SW, in connection with changes along Metro Route 120, we mentioned having asked SDOT for clearer graphics, since the ones linked from Metro’s website weren’t optimal. Jeff Bender, who had represented the city at last Tuesday’s open house at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center (WSB coverage here), has provided a few that do seem much clearer, which might be helpful if you haven’t commented on the proposal yet. Above, the cross-section; he also provided PDFs that show the entire stretch of the proposed rechannelization from Delridge/Andover to Delridge/Oregon – here they are in simple black/white, or here, as an aerial-photo overlay. Though the reconfiguration discussion has been bundled into the bus-route discussion so far, Bender told us there is a separate SDOT review process under way right now – here’s how to get your comments to them. He did not indicate a deadline, but we’d say “ASAP,” since Metro had set this past Friday for its deadline to receive overall comments on the proposed Route 120 changes, including removal of some stops.

(2011 Delridge Day photo by Ellen Cedergreen for WSB)
Saturday, August 18th, is the date set for this year’s North Delridge Neighborhood Council-presented Delridge Day, and though that’s almost four months away, organizers – who put it together at the last minute as something of a rescue operation last year! – are signing up sponsors and vendors NOW, as well as musicians. Here’s an update from Holli Margell:

Last year’s 5th Annual Delridge Day was a true community success. North Delridge Neighborhood Council’s Co-Secretary, Amanda Leonard, stepped up when the previous organizing group’s lack of funds threatened to cancel the festival. The result? A community-wide celebration that included the Delridge Skatepark Grand Opening, over 40 vendors and more than 2,000 attendees. Plans for an even bigger 2012 Delridge Day Festival are currently under way.

The 2012 Delridge Day Festival is planned for August 18th from 11 AM-3 PM at the Delridge [Community Center] Park. This year’s festival will feature two new activities: the first Alki Bike and Board Skate Contest and a music stage. Interested musicians can e-mail Chas Redmond at credmond@mac.com and provide links to their music.

The planning committee is working on securing sponsors and vendors to make this year’s event happen. The sponsorship and vendor fees not only support the festival, but also give back to the community as 15% of all fees are donated to the ARC (Associated Recreational Council), which provides scholarships for Community Center classes at the Delridge Community Center.

Vendor and Sponsor packets are available online at www.ndnc.org/delridgeday – which is also where to keep up with festival plans – or by emailing the planning committee at delridgeday@ndnc.org.

The proposed Delridge rechannelization still needs to be reviewed and approved by SDOT. We worked with Metro to support their open house last Tuesday and to help gather more community input on the proposed rechannelization and other elements of the proposal. SDOT would like to approve a final rechannelization design within about a month so it can be implemented by September.

The City is very interested in comments on all elements of the proposal, and will consider all ideas we receive as the approval process moves forward. Interested parties should feel free to send any comments to me.

He’s at jeff.bender@seattle.gov – we have also asked if they have any renderings that more clearly show the proposed changes, since the only ones we’ve seen (PDF here) are difficult to read.

This Friday is Metro‘s deadline for comments on the big changes proposed along Route 120 in Delridge. Last night, they took comments in person – via butcher paper, among other methods – during an open house at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center; they also are offering an online survey. Even if you’re not a bus rider, you might want to take a look and offer an opinion, because the plan includes “rechannelization” for a stretch of north Delridge Way SW, with bike/bus lanes plus less parking. Here’s how Metro summarizes potential effects of the changes overall:

Bus riders— If you ride Route 120, you’ll have a faster trip and your bus will probably spend less time waiting at busy traffic signals. If your bus stop is planned for closure, you may have to travel farther to get to or from it. Many of the remaining stops will get new amenities such as bus shelters, landing pads, and/or benches.

Drivers— If you drive, you may experience more delays in your evening commute southbound on Delridge Way SW due to the added southbound bike lane and the elimination of on-street parking.

Bike riders— If you bike, you will benefit from the addition of southbound bike lane along Delridge Way SW between SW Oregon Street and SW Andover Street and a northbound shared bus, bike, and off-peak parking lane. You may need to be more alert as you negotiate the shared bus lane with buses, right-turning vehicles, and parked cars.

Neighbors— If you live or own a business along Delridge Way SW between SW Andover Street and SW Oregon Street, you or your customers will have fewer parking options due to the added bike and bus lanes. Parking will be allowed in the bus lane during non-commute hours. See a diagram showing how parking on Delridge will change.

The Delridge/Andover intersection in particular drew some attention while we were at the open house; Metro reps were being asked if they had observed the area’s jam-packed traffic before suggesting that – including the truck traffic bound to and from the Nucor steel plant. There was also discussion centered on the proposed removal of some stops – here’s the list of stops to be closed in West Seattle/White Center:

Delridge Way SW

Northbound (at SW Oregon St)
Southbound (at SW Oregon St)
Northbound (at SW Edmunds St)
Southbound (at SW Edmunds St)
Northbound (at Puget Blvd SW)
Southbound (at Puget Blvd SW)
Southbound (at SW Orchard St)
Southbound (at SW Holden St)

16th Avenue SW
Southbound (at SW 110th St)

Closing fall 2012

SW Henderson
Westbound (at Delridge Way SW)
26th Ave SW
Northbound (at SW Cambridge St)
Southbound (at SW Cambridge St)
SW Roxbury St
Westbound (at 22nd Ave SW)
Eastbound (at 20th Ave SW)

Some stops are to be moved/added, as well; take a closer look via this map).

As for the rechannelization – the changes are to be made primarily between Andover and Oregon on Delridge, as shown here.

Metro’s website for the proposals says the changes will start as soon as next month (for some of the stop-spacing plans); again, they’ve set Friday as the deadline for comments – use the survey link above, or e-mail haveasay@kingcounty.gov.

P.S. For a neighborhood perspective, North Delridge Neighborhood Council co-chair Amanda Leonard was among the open-house attendees and has published a summary on the NDNC website – see it here.

(Julie Schickling, “Volunteer of the Year,” with Council President Sally Clark; photo by Dina Johnson)
“Most neighborhoods don’t do what you’re doing right now,” City Council President Sally Clark told the first-ever “Gathering of Heroes: Celebrating Volunteers” event tonight, “taking a moment … to simply say ‘thank you’ to one another and recognize good deeds.”

(Photo by Holli Margell)
The “moment” was a two-hour event attended by more than 50 people from around eastern West Seattle – plus some neighbors from over the ridge – at High Point Neighborhood Center to celebrate volunteers working hard to improve the community, the people that organizers dubbed Delridge’s Unsung Heroes. You might recall, the Delridge Neighborhoods District Council put out the call for nominees – and while the original thought was to choose honorees from among them, they decided to celebrate everyone who was nominated. Then at night’s end, two finalists were announced for “Volunteer of the Year” – here’s the reading of the nominations, then the announcement of the winner, and a few words of explanation from Council President Clark about the Jefferson Awards for which that winner will be nominated:

The winner, Julie Schickling from the Highland Park Improvement Club (how she led the charge to save the HPIC building was well-told by our partners at the Seattle Times in 2009), and the other finalist, Alejandra Ruiz Diaz, from the Roxhill Elementary PTA, were among 27 honored individuals and groups. Here they are (including our truncated descriptions of how the event program explained their achievements):

from Highland Park
Betsy Harris – public-safety volunteer
Blair Johnson – “volunteered in multiple capacities”
Julie Schickling – “led the double facelift at the Highland Park Improvement Club”
Carolyn Stauffer – spray-park project leader, Westcrest Park expansion, more

from High Point
Mat McBride – Camp Long Advisory Council, chairs Delridge Neighborhoods District Council
Peter Miller – ESL computer lab teacher

from North Delridge
Gale Hurley – public safety
Dave Brown – preparedness
Jake Vanderplas – Greenways
Tammy & Chris Stewart – fighting drug houses/street activity
Amanda Leonard – saved “Delridge Day” in 2011, co-chairs North Delridge Neighborhood Council
Nancy Folsom - skatepark liaison, cleanup organizer
Betsy Hoffmeister – “gets things done when others see no way”
Vonetta Mangaoang – DESC advisory committee
Patrick Baer – Delridge Community Forum
Parie Hines – NDNC
Mike Dady – “diligent in his pursuit of a better community for more than 12 years”
Michael Taylor-Judd - “longtime advocate for transportation and transit”
Benjamin Canfield – preparedness

from Puget Ridge
Pamela Dore – Block Watch captain
Tasha Mosher – “Recovery Garden”

from Pigeon Point
Gene Recker – quiet steward, cleanups
Helen Shampain – directs Community Orchard of West Seattle

from Westwood
Alejandra Ruiz Diaz – active PTA parent @ Roxhill

“special groups & people”
Willard Brown - development of affordable housing, DNDA board president
Delridge Branch Library Homework Helper Team (John, Robyn, Jim, Linda, Michele, Elaine, Robert, Dang, Joyce, Phil, Gary)

Longfellow Creek stewards
Jay Mirro, Scott Blackstock, Mike Arizona, Kirsten Rohrbach

Those at the celebration, which included a buffet dinner sponsored by Tuxedos and Tennis Shoes Catering and Events (other contributing sponsors included the Delridge Day Committee), also heard from Christa Mazzone-Palmberg from Sound Alliance. Organizers promise coverage to come on the Delridge Grassroots Leadership website. This was intended to be something of a pre-func to tomorrow’s Gathering of Neighbors – you’ll see more than a few of these dedicated volunteers there – hope to see you at Chief Sealth International High School during the GoN, 11 am-3 pm Saturday!

Finding people to help with the many tasks of preparing for a retail operation was a big topic. Half a dozen community members had shown up by about midway through the meeting, and several signed up for volunteer positions. Outreach and website work is important right now, according to the DPC board, as well as community fundraisers, and representing DPC at events such as this Saturday’s Gathering of Neighbors.

Board members, meantime, are meeting with a Highline Community College instructor to work on a business plan and feasibility study, both brought up by the Delridge Supportive Housing Advisory Committee at its meeting last Thursday. Board members reviewed the document they had received with “community recommendations for tenant selection,” listing criteria including responsiveness and sensitivity to a variety of neighborhood factors, hiring from within the neighborhood, pricing products “based on thorough review of actual income levels of residents.”

Still plenty of time and ways to get involved with the DPC; their regular meeting date will be the third Monday of the month, Delridge Library (Delridge/Brandon), 6:30 pm.

(Photo by Holli Margell)
A comment following Sunday’s report of burglaries at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center mentioned vandalism at Delridge P-Patch. We don’t know if it’s related, but we do know more about the P-Patch problems tonight, thanks to this firsthand report from Valerie:

The storage shed at the Delridge P-Patch (5078 25th Avenue SW, at 25th Ave SW and Puget Blvd SW) has been vandalized , with holes chopped into the walls from the outside and both doors badly damaged, twice in the past five days. So far nothing has been stolen, but both times the damage has required considerable effort to repair. Police reports have been filed for both attempts, but of course after the fact there’s not much to be done except make the repairs.

People garden here through the city’s P-Patch program, which not only provides individuals with a space to garden in the city, but P-Patches also donate a significant amount of fresh, organic produce to food banks around the area. All P-Patch maintenance and improvements are done on a volunteer basis by people who garden there, and it’s dispiriting to have to make repairs after pointless acts of vandalism.

We’d appreciate it if people would keep an eye out, and if anyone sees anything suspicious at the Delridge P-Patch, or any P-Patch, please report it to Seattle Police.

And if you see this before 7 pm, one more reminder that tonight is the monthly West Seattle Crime Prevention Council meeting at the Southwest Precinct (Delridge/Webster).

Hello Neighbors – I am sad to say that your neighborhood Cultural Arts Center, Youngstown, has been the victim of two break ins in the last week. The SW Precinct officers have responded to our calls quickly and dusted for fingerprints while taking our statements.

Youngstown is the home to several well known and respected non-profit organizations, two of them, Power of Hope and Nature Consortium, both have been broken into this week.

In the six years since Youngstown opened we have not experienced anything like this. As anyone who has been a victim themselves understands, our sense of security has been shaken.

We suspect that these break-ins have happened between midnight and 5 am. If anyone living or working in the neighborhood noticed anything out of the ordinary recently, especially the nights the break-ins occurred (Monday night into Tuesday morning and/or Friday night into Saturday morning) please report it to the SW Precinct immediately.

Thank you.

Margaret Way, DNDA @ Youngstown

And if you see anything suspicious *in progress* – there or elsewhere – call 911.

We plan for a large part of our produce purchases to come from the Delridge community itself, and so we have a great need to reach out to neighbors to find and recruit members and growers. If we connect gardeners to the food hub that we are growing, we can all eat healthy, local food without paying the high prices that we are all used to seeing for organic produce at the grocery store.

If you can help with that – or in some other way – or just want to know more, the DPC hopes to see you at 6:30 pm Monday, Delridge Library (Delridge/Brandon).

Still time to go join some of your West Seattle neighbors busy beautifying the North Delridge area right now for the annual Spring Clean. Headquarters is Delridge Community Center, but volunteers (including Jackson the dog!) were planning to fan out to a variety of locations, till noon.

BUSINESS, PRESENT: A business association is being organized for the main retail area in North Delridge, known in the Neighborhood Plan as the “Brandon Node” (since it’s centered around Delridge/Brandon). It’s an outgrowth of the “visioning” meeting held for the area in February, with businesses, residents, and City Councilmembers participating (read about it on the NDNC site).

BUSINESS, FUTURE: Much of the meeting focused on the business that is considered the frontrunner for the commercial space that DESC has promised to build on the northwest side of the ground level of its 66-apartment Delridge Supportive Housing building (5444 Delridge Way SW). That’s the Delridge Produce Cooperative, which has tested various types of operations over the past few years such as a buyers’ club and mobile market. DESC has said it would like to settle on its business tenant sooner rather than later, to incorporate the space’s needs into the planning process, and the issue now is community support for the “greengrocer”-type operation DPC envisions.

From the Delridge Alliance, working with the Community Advisory Committee for the DESC project, Vonetta Mangaoang suggested it might be good for the DPC to have benchmarks and dates set for coming up with capitalization, pricing, product lists, etc. Her concern is to help position the DPC for success, because it wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interest for the operation to fail, leaving that space empty. But, the question kept arising, is it up to the NDNC/area residents to do anything beyond endorse the idea of a market – which has long ranked high on area wish lists – and leave it up to DESC/DPC/whomever to take it from there? DPC board member Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley was at the NDNC meeting and said it is important for them to know where they stand with the neighborhood, and she invited the public to the cooperative’s next public meeting next Monday (here’s the DPC calendar). In the meantime, the DESC project’s Advisory Committee has its next meeting this week, 6:30 pm Thursday at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center.

PARKS AND GREEN SPACES LEVY OPPORTUNITY FUND: The city is embarking on the second round of seeking applications for a share of the money available for community-generated projects. As mentioned here last month, workshops are coming up to help would-be applicants put together proposal letters and then applications (here’s the schedule). Community discussion is expected shortly, to elicit potential proposals for discussion; one of the possibilities mentioned last night included enhancements in the Delridge Skatepark area of the Delridge Community Center complex.

NORTH DELRIDGE SPRING CLEAN: This Saturday morning, 10 am-noon (here’s the reminder we published last weekend).

The North Delridge Neighborhood Council meets on second Mondays, 6:30 pm, Delridge Library, with lots of information online at ndnc.org.