West Seattle, Washington
13 Tuesday
When we showed you images this morning from the presentation to be made at tonight’s second “early design guidance” meeting for the Admiral Safeway redevelopment proposal, we wondered aloud if there was much difference between the applicants’ “preferred alternative” from round 1, and the “preferred alternative” this time around (rendering above). Short answer: No, except for an “alley vacation” transformed into an “alley relocation.” And the lack of change did not go over well with most of the board members – though before the meeting was over, it became an interesting case of what happens when design philosophy clashes with economic reality – read on:Read More
From tonight’s Alki Community Council meeting: Crime prevention was the major topic on the agenda, as the ACC held its last scheduled meeting of the year. Southwest Precinct crime-prevention coordinator Benjamin Kinlow had been invited to speak as a followup to a meeting last month with neighbors in the 1500 through 1700 blocks of Alki SW. That in turn was a followup to a late summer wave of break-ins in those two blocks (which spawned this WSB reader report at the time). Kinlow gave an abbreviated version of his standard Block Watch presentation, saying he hoped to return with more detailed information tailored to both the neighborhood and the residences involved. He said the security issues involved in a condo building are very different than those of single-family residences, noting that the neighborhood had both. Also he encouraged the Council to have an informal meeting prior to Night Out next August so that neighbors could meet and share information about what they see going on in their neighborhoods. ALSO: The ACC gave out recognition awards to former board members of their board. Receiving personalized coffee mugs and gift certificates to the Phoenician restaurant were Jackie Ramels, Gary Ogden, Peter Stekel, and Don Wahl.
Thanks for the tips that Delridge Arco, at $2.09 just last night, has dropped a dime since then and is now the first $1.99 gas spotted in West Seattle. (We cut the photo short but in case you’re wondering, midgrade is $2.19, premium $2.29.) ADDED FRIDAY: By this morning, at least two other stations were down to $1.99, including “Ruxbury” Gasoline – thanks to Sky for sharing this pic:
Before night finishes falling, a quick note about some of what’s happening in The Junction tonight as holiday-shopping season really starts to rev up: We’ve mentioned the Capers “Girlfriends’ Night Out” event (see the Holiday Happenings page for full details), and we’ve also received word of an event at Windermere in The Junction (4526 California SW): “Jewelry, scarves, glassware, holiday items galore! Hosted by Kim Tingley and Barb Ogden of Flutter and No Wire Hangers, an upstart boutique, soon to open in West Seattle. 5:30-8:30. Bevs and snacks served while you shop. % of proceeds to help fight Lou Gehrig’s disease!” Tomorrow, meantime, you’ll be able to start entering the holiday gift-certificate raffles being offered by participating merchants in the West Seattle Junction Association (WSB sponsor) – thousands of dollars in gift certificates will be raffled off next month, at events including the West Seattle Christmas Tree Lighting (5 pm 12/6). (More on Friday-Sunday events coming up in tomorrow’s West Seattle Weekend Lineup; also, Junction merchants have more holiday events listed on the WSJA website – we’ll be adding those to Holiday Happenings ASAP.)
The city Parks Department says a bid’s been awarded for Dakota Place Park construction (we published an update just before bids were due last month), and that the work will start December 1st and continue till February. WS Contractor Inc. is to deliver an “exterior package” including “a plaza with integrated artwork, ADA access, site lighting, multiple seating elements,
refurbishing existing historic elements, automated irrigation, and extensive community-provided landscaping.” From the official city webpage for the site (a former substation), here’s the schematic design for the park:
(added 4:56 pm – the streetscape level envisioned at California/Alaska, looking across from Easy Street)
Technically, the Seattle Design Commission is reviewing the proposal for an underground “alley vacation” – required for the two Conner Homes buildings at California/42nd/Alaska to have one underground garage – but the hearing that just wrapped up also yielded new information on where the project’s design is going overall, and new imagery that’s been provided to us by the architect (as shown at this meeting). The action from the meeting: Conner and its architects did not get final signoff – they will have to return to the Design Commission to answer a variety of concerns – the commission has to sign off on the proposal before SDOT can finish reviewing it, and the SDOT rep who handles such matters told the commission that her agency has its own concerns. Meantime, the project itself has one more Design Review meeting ahead – the architects tell us that will likely be in January, but no date is set yet. Stand by for more, including the new imagery – we’ll be in transit for a bit (heading back to HQ after three major events downtown today – this one’s at City Hall, which also was the scene of this morning’s jail briefing, with the Seattle Center Viaduct briefing between them) before we can add it here. ADDED 6:08 PM: Here’s another image, the massing (NOT the final design proposal with finishes etc., just basically the shapes) of the two buildings, looking south at them from Cupcake Royale vicinity):
More to come. The entire presentation document is way too big to link here but we’ll see if we can break it into chunks.
(photos removed 11/24 by request of the original provider)
Just in from Bil Hood at Seattle Lutheran High School, a followup to the story we brought you 2 weeks ago about the SLHS Key Club reaching out to Gulf-bound soldiers:
These photos are just in from Seattle Lutheran parent, Fabienne Zwerling (pictured in blue). She’s a parent of a SLHS sophomore and works in the airline industry; she took 400 soldiers to Kuwait.
The SLHS student body created care packages for the soldiers as well as writing thank-you notes to the soldiers and signed a banner that reads, “Seattle Lutheran High School supports our troops.” Some
students wrote short stories and jokes as well as thank you notes on their cards. “It feels good to know that we’re making a difference in a soldier’s life!” said senior Emily Meyer, Key Club president, as she
was writing a thank-you card.Last week the soldiers called the school on Fabienne’s cell phone. Their thank-you call was played for the students of the school’s p.a. system. These pictures were all taken on the plane ride over to Frankfurt. The Troops were then going to Kuwait and the a one year tour in Iraq.
Next briefing: We’re at Seattle Center’s Center House, where the next sheaf of data in the search for the Alaskan Way Viaduct Central Waterfront solution is being released. One quick topline: The costliest in terms of time and money would be Scenario F, the “bored tunnel” — up to 9 and a half years of construction time, $3.5 billion cost. The numbers here are all described as “capital costs” — so that’s just the basic building costs for the “Highway 99 corridor” itself, not including additional components in the complete study area (which includes downtown) such as changes to I-5, changes to traffic, etc. Other “capital” dollar figures: Scenario A, “demand management/low capital,” $800 million; B, “surface boulevard,” $800 million; C, “surface couplet,” $900 million; D, “independent elevated,” $1.6 billion (shown in WSDOT rendering above); H, “lidded trench,” $1.9 billion; E, “integrated elevated,” $2.2 billion; G, “cut and cover tunnel,” $2.7 billion. The handouts here also break out the major components in terms of cost — relevant because the government leaders working on this have said that the three “finalist” options to be determined within a few weeks likely will be composites with elements of the current “scenarios,” rather than including any existing scenarios exactly as they have been considered up till now. WSDOT’s Ron Paananen stresses, these are “rough estimates.” ADDED 12:57 PM: Our previous links to briefing materials have vanished into the wireless ozone, so here they are again: For starters, all eight “scenarios” — pieces of which will be cobbled into the eventual “finalists” — have a new set of graphics that you can see by going to this Flickr collection set up by WSDOT. The handout with the full range of cost possibilities can be seen here; the handout with the full range of construction-time possibilities can be seen here. Later today, the Stakeholders’ Advisory Committee will be briefed on this information, 4 pm, Plymouth Congregational Church (downtown). The city and state officials who have been leading these briefings stressed again today, they are still on schedule for state/city/county leaders to arrive at a final recommended solution by year’s end. One interesting note from the briefing: SDOT’s Bob Powers said they’re realizing as they evaluate data that, regarding transit, “if we build it, the riders will come” – so there is a suggestion that before major construction starts, transit additions be made, including a second West Seattle RapidRide Metro bus route along Delridge (that previously was suggested as something that could be considered in the long run). ADDED THURSDAY EVENING: A downtown public forum is set for people to speak out on whatever the final options are revealed to be: 5-7:30 pm December 15, Town Hall (1119 8th, downtown). Also – all materials presented at today’s briefing, plus additional information unveiled at the Stakeholders Advisory Committee meeting later in the day, is now posted on the Viaduct website – look here, under November 20 meeting materials.
We’re in the briefing room next to the mayor’s office at City Hall downtown. A media briefing with the next steps on the jail-site search process is about to begin – and we’ve just been given a list of the six sites that are now under consideration, including sites that other cities partnering with Seattle have brought to the process. The Myers Way South site in southeastern West Seattle is OFF the list, but the Highland Park Way/West Marginal Way site (Google Street View imagery above; here’s a conventional map) is still ON the list, along with two other Seattle sites (King County Jail Annex at 5th/Jefferson, and 1600 W. Armory Way), one in Bellevue, one in Shoreline, and one in “unincorporated King County” (13225 NE 126th). More after the briefing. Next steps include a series of public forums next month — none of which is set for West Seattle, though there will be a “scoping” meeting at South Seattle Community College January 13th as part of the environmental-review process. Also, a new website is mentioned in pre-briefing material: www.necmunicipaljail.org (though it’s not up as of this writing – the jail-process communications team says it should be up within the hour) — and the one-sheet given to the media says “no decisions will be made until 2010.” 10:23 AM UPDATE: The public forums, it’s been explained, are for the newly identified sites – West Seattle and Interbay already had forums. The aforementioned website has just gone live, and it includes this link to the official news release from today’s briefing. Seattle spokesperson Catherine Cornwall, who has led this briefing, says the studies explaining why the Myers Way site is off the table and Marginal/Highland still on, are on the new website (we will search out direct links shortly). One of the big reasons why Myers is off the list, Cornwall added, is a concern about wetlands in the area. Here’s our video clip with her explanation:
(video no longer available due to Blip.tv’s closure)
ADDED 12:45 PM: Just in – a statement from King County Councilmember Dow Constantine.
“I’m very pleased with today’s announcement. The Myers Way site has been removed from the list, in part because of the environmental issues – issues which I also cited in my June 2 letter to Mayor Nickels. I wish the Highland Park Way site was not still on the list. Instead of a Seattle-only effort, this is now a regional process with King County and suburban cities having a seat at the table. The expanded site list now includes possible locations across the region. I am particularly happy to see promising sites on the Eastside, and in Downtown Seattle adjacent to our existing jail.”
ADDED THURSDAY NIGHT: The city’s jail-site communications team calls our attention to the Resources page on the new jail-info website, if you’re looking for various studies and reviews, including analysis of why the Myers Way site was taken off the list, while the Highland Park Way/Marginal Way site is still under consideration.
Those images are from the revised “early design guidance” Admiral Safeway presentation that will be taken to the Southwest Design Review Board tonight, two months after board members asked Safeway and its architects (Fuller Sears) to go back and come up with more distinct options for the proposed redevelopment of the Admiral site. (9/25 WSB report here) In advance of tonight’s meeting — at which public attendance and comment are encouraged — the new presentation is available online (you can get it here). The four “alternatives” above (views from the northwest, as if you were in a helicopter over Circa looking toward Mt. Rainier) have been added — #4, #5, #6, and #7. The last one is flagged as the company’s “preferred” alternative, and is more detailed because it’s from the original presentation (hard to say what’s been changed there, but that’s up to the applicants to explain at the meeting). 6:30 tonight, West Seattle (Admiral) Library branch (map).
Much happening today even before the unscheduled news starts breaking. First, two media briefings that aren’t public events, but WSB will be there to bring you the news as close to immediately as possible: There’s a City Hall briefing at 10 am about the jail-site search — the first official jail-related news in months. 11 am at Seattle Center, it’s a briefing about the Viaduct-solution search; this time, we’ll get information on projected cost of the various options — including the much-buzzed “integrated elevated,” shown above in a WSDOT rendering. The following events are all open to the public: West Seattle Democratic Women‘s monthly lunch, 11:15 @ West Seattle Golf Course, call 935-3216 by 10 am for a reservation; High Point Community Center has a free (early) Thanksgiving dinner, from turkey to door prizes, 6-8 pm; Southwest Community Center hosts its final workshop on designing a new fitness room, 6 pm; the Southwest Design Review Board looks at the revised proposal for the Admiral Safeway rebuild, 6:30 pm at West Seattle (Admiral) Library; Alki Community Council meets at Alki Community Center, 7 pm. Fun stuff tonight too, like “Girlfriends’ Night Out” at Capers in The Junction – see the Events calendar for more.
We reported Tuesday on tree work being done as a followup two months after the volunteer-laden West Seattle Gateway Cleanup organized by the Fairmount Community Association (that’s the neighborhood south/uphill from the Triangle). 
The photos above and at left show some of what the tree crew took away at the end of its workday. Organizer Nancy Driver reports: “On Tuesday, City Foresters pruned the understory on 15 Japanese red pines and 15 to 20 deciduous trees in the gateway area and cleaned out at least 70% of the invasive vines that were in the trees. They also removed two dead trees that had fallen long ago. All work was done under the supervision of an ISA-certified arborist and was permitted by SDOT. Everyone should be able to notice the improved profiles of the trees, and just as important, the work will contribute to the improved health of many of the trees. The work was funded by generous contributions from Harbor Properties, Excel Pacific, Ken & Donna Olsen, Jeffrey Bond DDS, Scott Lybeck/Courtesy Tires, Next Pages LLC, Menashe & Sons Jewelers, Mike Ng/Ng Westside Pharmacy, Yarmuth Wilsdon Calfo PLLC, Diane Kennedy/Curves, Jim Sansburn/John L. Scott Realty, Wiseman’s Appliance, Robin Mers M.D., Doris Jennings, Linda Walsh/Clementine, Deanne Sposari, Dixie Dokken, Joseph Webster, Margaret Miaullis, Wanda Pommer, and Joan Jeffrey. “
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