West Seattle, Washington
14 Wednesday
A neighborhood in Sunrise Heights, in the 32nd/Holden area (map), is nervously watching a newly rented house. It’s been rented by an agency called Sound Mental Health, to use as housing for some of its clients. And one of the programs from which those clients might come is the Re=entry Housing Pilot Project — a relatively new, state-funded program (described here) to help people make the transition from jail/prison to the rest of their life. Of course, once they’ve done their time, they have to go somewhere. But these neighbors are worried their street isn’t the right “somewhere” – partly because of schools and day-cares nearby, and 10 small children on the block. But they also wonder why they got no notice – till this happened, as explained by Bill:
A couple of my neighbors were in front of their house doing yard work when they noticed two young people walk up to the house that is right next door to them. They knew the house was recently for sale and/or for rent so the said “hello” thinking that these might be their new neighbors. What they quickly learned was that they were actually County employees doing a site inspection for the house because this home had been leased out to the County to house 5 convicted felons who will be released from prison. The County employees stated that these were not sex offenders but simply “convicts who committed violent crimes, domestic abuse, are recovering drug addicts or have mental health issues. Our neighbors quickly informed the rest of our block about this and we just had a neighborhood meeting (over the weekend) to discuss this. Nobody in our neighborhood was contacted by the County or anyone else for that matter to inform us that felons convicted of violent crimes would be moving in right next door to us.
We’ve learned a lot more since that first note came in — including the fact those weren’t county employees — an explanation of why neighbors didn’t get notice – and whether felons really might be moving in, ahead:Read More
At day’s end, when the heavy-equipment operators parked their rigs for the night, that’s what was still left at the future site of Fauntleroy Place — a massive mountain of debris, and the shell of the ex-Schuck’s/Hancock Fabrics building’s east-facing facade. Crews started tearing into the building around 10:40 this morning, as we showed you here; we checked back around mid-afternoon for another video clip — the progress here was coming from inside the building (keep an eye on the background for chunks falling down, especially one pulled from up top about a minute into the clip):
So there’s more work to do tomorrow. And as mentioned before, the newest Fauntleroy Place design gets a public hearing before the Southwest Design Review Board at 8 pm August 14th (two weeks from Thursday), at High Point Community Center.
That’s a look inside the old Chief Sealth High School commons, where the old floor’s just been pulled up for replacement – one of many renovations that will be taking place in the next 2 years. At the back of the photo, the old cafeteria’s blocked off for hazmat work including getting out the type of old pipes that were wrapped with asbestos insulation way back when; the new cafeteria and commons will be a shared facility with the new Denny Middle School to be built on the Sealth campus, and while that’s not fully opening till a year after Sealth students return in fall 2010, project manager Robert Evans says the new cafeteria and commons will be ready in two years. We met with Evans and other key leaders from the Sealth/Denny project at CSHS this afternoon; full details of what’s happening now, what’s happening next, and the latest on the process to determine the future of the Denny site, coming up.
Here’s the official news release from the council – the fee kicks in next January (added late afternoon, the mayor’s news release, after the council’s version):Read More
Just before landing: Here’s our video of the traditional Museum of Flight flyby:
Please forgive us this non-West Seattle digression; it’s an annual thing. We’re at the Museum of Flight side of Boeing Field, where the Blue Angels have just landed for their Seafair appearances. You can see the planes through the fence on the south side of the Museum of Flight (right up against Boeing property) any time during their stay here; they’ll go up twice on Thursday to practice maneuvers, then do a practice version of their full airshow on Friday, and “the real thing” over Lake Washington Saturday and Sunday. As we’ve written here before, there’s a lot to see if you come to the MoF and watch the takeoff and landing (such as the “walkdown”) – and since the airshow site is just over the ridge east of the MoF, you get to see some flybys too. They land one by one (which is why the photo above shows just one), but then they taxi in a group – here’s how that looked, peering through the chain-link fence between the MoF parking lot and the west side of the runway:
Later this week – the Seafair fleet arrives (sailing in Wednesday, tours start Thursday). Two of the ships that are coming are identified on this Navy page.
Just out of the WSB inbox from Nancy Folsom:
Kelly Davidson, Project Manager for Seattle Parks and Recreation, just sent
me the news that Grindline (http://grindline.com/cgi-bin/view.pl) has been
selected as the DCC skate park designer.It’s great news. I was fortunate to be on the interview board last Tuesday
along with Matt Johnston–SeattleSkateParks.Org, Susan Golub–Seattle Parks
Projects & Planning, and Kelly. All the candidates were strong, but I felt
Grindline was the strongest. The company is local to West Seattle and is
passionately committed both to the sport and to the Delridge neighborhood.I hope the community brings their most positive ideas Wednesday night for
the first public design meeting. This development has the potential to be a
stellar community resource. As neighbor, I want this to be a fantastic
project, and it will take all of us working together.The meeting is Wednesday from 7:30 – 9 p.m. at Delridge
Community Center, 4501 Delridge Way SW.
(video no longer available due to Blip.tv shutdown)
WSB was there about 10 minutes ago as the backhoes finally started tearing up the former Hancock Fabrics/Schuck’s building at Alaska/Fauntleroy/39th that will be the site of Fauntleroy Place (Whole Foods, a new Hancock store, and almost 200 apartments). Demolition work at the site started last week and has proceeded relatively slowly because crews have cleared a lot of recyclable material from the interior. (Video added 11:43 am.)
Lots of changes in our latest West Seattle-wide survey of gas prices: The highest price in West Seattle as of late last night is seven cents lower than the highest price exactly a week earlier; one station has dropped its price more than twice that much; and four stations are now tied at the low end, while the highest price is not where you’d expect to find it. Text and map versions of the survey, ahead:Read More
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