West Seattle, Washington
10 Tuesday
-Guess who’s surfaced in the growing push to keep Charlestown Cafe from being replaced by a standalone Petco store: Former City Councilman Charlie Chong. His letter to the current council members is in one of the latest posts on the Our Town/West Seattle group site, as it moves to organize the fight.
-Also stepping up their fight: The Morgan Junction/Gatewood neighbors who say the construction across the street from Gatewood Baptist shouldn’t have sneaked through the permit process as a group of small projects instead of the one semi-big project it really is. One neighbor has just posted a new comment on this WSB page, contending the project is clearly illegal, and also wants everyone to know project updates are on the ORCA site.
-And one last reminder regarding a (so far as we know) noncontroversial project: As we mentioned Sunday, tonight’s the third and final public meeting to talk about what’s going to be done to transform the “Ercolini property” (photo below) into a park.
A reader reminds us that we weren’t imagining things when we read recently that West Seattle’s State Senator Erik Poulsen is co-sponsoring the bill to extend various taxes to raise up to half a BILLION bucks for a new Sonics arena. Um, what part of the overwhelming yes vote on I-91 didn’t he understand? If you want to ask him yourself, start here.
Can’t go out Wednesday night? This Friday, Alki Community Center offers another “Parents’ Night Out” opportunity — they’ll watch 5- to 10-year-olds from 6:30-9 pm, $10/child, but you have to register by this Wednesday. And if you’re thinking, “Great, but what’s there to do Friday night?” we just heard about a splendid, affordable music/dining opportunity — a Chief Sealth HS band benefit at the school, 6-9 pm Friday, featuring music, dinner, and not only the Sealth jazz band, but also the fabulous West Seattle Big Band, $10 per person (under 12 welcome too, $5 each) — no web link on this but 938-3531 is the number for tickets.
If you haven’t seen the latest semi-satirical video by the pro-tunnel camp, it’s here. Nowhere near as good as the classic “Committee to Save Big Ugly Things” video, in our opinion. But the link did lead us to videos we’d been looking for — the official animated renderings of Replacement-A-Duct and Original Tunnel, first released last fall. P.S. Turns out there is an actual NO/NO group. Here’s their rather grabby logo/slogan:
If you drive a few blocks west on Alaska from The Junction, you’ll see a big grassy lot on the right. This is the future park currently known as the “Ercolini property,” and the city’s final public meeting on its development is coming up this Tuesday night (6-7:30 pm at the Senior Center). For a tidbit of history on the park site, check out this photo page from a relative of its namesake. Kudos again to the community members who worked to get this land turned into a park instead of, oh, say, townhomes.
One Metro route through eastern West Seattle just got extra service as part of the Transit Now tax increase that voters passed countywide in November. Route 120 goes between downtown and Burien via Delridge and White Center. Besides expansion of that route and several others, the county says it’s working on the new express routes promised in the TN initiative, including one (see this map) to get more of West Seattle downtown (especially once The Viaduct is out of service — speaking of which, the No Tunnel Alliance launches its campaign tomorrow, days after the kickoff for Not Another Elevated Viaduct — can’t find any official site yet for the No/No faction).
-As a couple people wrote to tell us, a “retirement sale” is now under way at Leslie’s, just south of Spiro’s.
-The construction site at Westwood Village now has a banner up promising GIANNONI’S PIZZA (different from the website spelling but we still can’t figure out who’s behind it), COMING SOON, PIZZA BY THE SLICE.
-Lots of signs of progress as Garlic Jim’s Pizza in The Junction gets ready to open next month, including a NOW HIRING sign.
-Just up the block from there, facade work is under way at the ex-Bobby’s Hobbies, future (apparently) bakery.
-Today’s supposed to be the last day for Hollywood Video at 41st & Alaska (mixed-use megaproject coming soon).
This sad tale of what happened to a West Seattle man’s dog — despite it having a license and microchip — while he was on vacation, is a must-read if you have a pet.
Rhonda had been blogging about her business for a while (linked from our Other WS Blogs page), then wrote about 3 weeks ago to tell us she’d started up a Beach Drive blog. We’ve been watching daily and think BDB is definitely worth sharing, especially this post about Bob the Beach Drive seal. Keep up the good work, Rhonda!
As they used to say in the print heyday, “from the mailbag” … in this case, e-mailbag: Two people have written with questions to throw out to the WSB world — one about a restaurant, one about a “mysterious light.” They’re kind of LONG questions, so we’ll excerpt both e-mails “after the jump” … and if you have any answers, please leave them as comments …
Read More
You can make your opinions about the viaduct measures, and other transportation issues (including future tax votes), known via this new “opinionnaire.” (!)
Check this out. Now our heads really are spinning (along with our wheels).
Yet more details in a long investigative Times article today, suggesting criminal and unethical activity among employees at Huling went far beyond the infamous case that broke wide open last month. (Last part of the story says the new owners “will not try to undo the sale” but are accelerating the sign-changing process, though we haven’t seen anything new since what we posted two weeks ago.)
Promise we won’t waste your time by mentioning this every day it continues. But since it does seem confusing and some have asked … the Metroblogging Seattle “best blog” poll is an NCAA spoof. They named “regional brackets” that have nothing to do with the physical locations of the blogs they chose to put in their polls — so that’s why West Seattle Blog wound up in the “Ballard Regional” (after winning the “City Beat Qualifier”). To vote (continuing six more days), go here and click the little circle next to our blog’s name in the box titled “Ballard Matchup 1.” OK, thanks again, and now on to bigger things.
We were just reminded that it’s been exactly a year since the developers of Fauntleroy Place east of The Junction announced they’d signed Whole Foods. Six months since their land-use permit application. Looks like they’re not through the red tape yet — another Design Review Board meeting is tentatively set for the project in a month. Seems somewhat behind schedule, since the developer’s own fancy PR sheet suggested (page 11) groundbreaking ’06, completion mid-’07.
Mentioned earlier that Junction Art Walk organizers were hoping to finally get a break from bad weather. Tonight’s the night; forecast’s fine; get out ‘n’ show ’em some love!
Doesn’t the whole Viaduct thing seem more like a bad movie every day? Usually a comedy; hopefully not eventually a tragedy. Today’s plot twist: The No-Tunnel-No-Way state legislative leader starts making Third Option noises. Incidentally, the official ballot measures we’ll be voting on by-mail-only (boo) are now online (here’s tunnel yes/no; here’s replacement-a-duct yes/no).
On behalf of your humble WSB team, people who in school would never even have been allowed within 100 miles of a popularity competition, thanks for helping us win the first round of our “bracket” in Metroblogging Seattle’s NCAA-style blog popularity tournament — now it’s Round 2; please take a sec to go here and vote for us (we’re up against somebody really good this time so we’re underdogs). This round is apparently running for a whole week. Thank you! (P.S. We will be especially touched if you tell your friends, neighbor, parents, therapist, whomever to vote for us too. Look, it could be worse, at least we’re not asking you to support our kid’s school by buying The Fundraiser Wrapping Paper From Beyond.)
WSB comment denizen “Jiggers” wrote to say Jak’s Grill in The Junction (trivia: they used to be in Admiral) is now open for lunch, Tues-Fri. (He recommends their burgers.)
Just posted at the Seattle Weekly site: new information about the victim in the Huling Brothers car-salesmen scandal, suggesting the accused bilkers/burglars weren’t the only ones who did him wrong.
We mentioned the city’s first “warning shot” about this just after Christmas. Now, shall we say, they’re barking more loudly: Buy a license for each and every one of your pets, NOW, or else. The “known delinquent pet owners” and “patrolling neighborhoods” rhetoric in the latest press release makes us wonder if Critter Cops might be driving past our house, spotting our all-indoors-all-the-time cat sunning itself on a window ledge, then leaping out of the car to bang on our door and demand proof “Fluffy” (pseudonym) is licensed.
The proprietress of Divina writes, “I think that if we have any kind of storm this Thursday, I will cry.” See, the 2nd Thursday is Junction Art Walk night, and the past two “second Thursdays” both were beset with cataclysmic weather (Dec. 14 rain/wind, Jan. 11 snow). But TOMORROW, February’s 2nd Thursday, sounds tame. Which is good, because this Art Walk celebrates young artists. Here’s the list of venues and artists:Read More
| 2 COMMENTS