West Seattle, Washington
07 Saturday
Two updates on the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce‘s upcoming Westside Awards breakfast (7:30 am April 3rd at Salty’s [WSB sponsor], tickets available now).
First, the keynote speaker has just been announced by Chamber CEO Lynn Dennis.
It’s Mayor Ed Murray, shown in a WSB photo from his Hiawatha appearance last week announcing the parks-funding proposal; he will be back on this side of the bay for the occasion.
Second, the nomination deadline has been extended through tomorrow, and Dennis says it’s important that you know EVERYONE is welcome to send in a nomination, Chamber member or not – “So often we do not get the chance to tell people how much we appreciate them and their involvement in the community,” she points out. “This is the opportunity to do just that.” Here again are the categories:
Westside Business of the Year – This nominee has been in business at least 3 years and demonstrated business excellence and success.
Westside Emerging Business – This nominee business has been in operations for less than 3 years but is meeting the challenges of a growing business through leadership.
Westside Not-For-Profit of the Year – This nominee non-profit is making our community a better place to live while contributing to community benefit through their mission.
Westsider of the Year – This nominee is making a lasting impact on our community and the lives of others or is an up-coming community role model.
West Seattle Chamber membership is NOT required for either nominators or nominees. Just go here to nominate a business or person tonight or tomorrow.
He’s now registered with an address on Queen Anne, but just in case he turns up in West Seattle again, here’s the newest photo of Michael S. Stanley. He’s the registered sex offender/convicted rapist who got out of jail one week ago after serving time for harassment related to an incident in Admiral, not long after he caused an international stir by returning to the U.S. after removing a monitoring device in Canada.
Of course, he’s far from the only registered sex offender out there. If you want to check to see who’s registered as living near you, here’s the website to use. (If you ever need to find it again, note that it’s on the resource list at the very bottom of the WSB Crime Watch page, too.)
(King County Assessor’s Office photo)
New details today from West Seattle Nursery, which announced via Facebook last week that it’s giving away the house next door (top photo) – owner Mark Smith‘s house – to make room for expansion.
First, the expansion: WS Nursery says: “We are planning to build a retail greenhouse, beverage stand and gift shop on the lot next door to the existing nursery space. … The greenhouse plans include a two story multi-function building that will house a classroom space for gardening classes, large storage area for back stock merchandise and spacious customer bathrooms on the first floor. The second floor will have a business operations office facing California Avenue SW and an efficient but roomy new apartment to serve as Mr. Smith’s new residence.”
They’re hoping construction will start in July, but first, the 92-year-old house (5269 California SW) has to go, and it’s yours for the hauling:
This spacious, well-lit and comfortable house has very sturdy 1920’s era construction with original molding, windows and doors. Mr. Smith is only the 2nd owner in the house’s history. West Seattle Nursery wishes to offer the entire house up free of charge to anyone who can haul it away in its entirety. The house is available for haul-away June 1, 2014.
WSN has posted more photos on CL.
Thanks to WSB Forums member Wakeflood for opening a discussion about this – the city is asking for your feedback right now about Comcast‘s franchise, before deciding on a potential 10-year-renewal. As Wakeflood points out, you can just answer a few quick questions here – or follow the link on that page to a full-fledged more-detailed survey (here).
Thanks to Jonathan French for the tip: Online city records say the site of Alki Auto Repair (2504 Alki SW) is proposed for 
conversion to a restaurant. The site is already next to two – Christo’s and Duke’s. What restaurant is on the way, you ask? The DPD docs offer only one big hint: The “financially responsible party” is listed as Charlie Olson, owner of Blue Moon Burgers, and the address listed on the application, 920 Republican, checks to Blue Moon’s South Lake Union business-district location.
The Blue Moon name is NOT on the publicly viewable city documents, though; they list another company with which he is affiliated, Olson’s Baking Company. (No restaurants in that company, though, so far as we can tell.) Olson declined comment. Blue Moon has three locations – besides SLU, Capitol Hill and Fremont; back in 2007, we mentioned it here on WSB because of a story elsewhere mentioning it was eyeing WS. If the new restaurant does turn out to be a BMB, it would join Fatburger, which opened its first Seattle location on Alki last October, and longtime burgers-and-more Pepperdock. Updates as we get them (including anything we learn about Alki Auto’s future).
ADDED TUESDAY AFTERNOON: Dane at Alki Auto confirms what was mentioned in comments:
We the staff at Alki Auto Repair are pleased to inform you that we will be moving to Avalon way and the site of the british auto center as of April 1. We will continue to operate at the 2504 Address until the end of the month. Our future is bright in the auto repair business and we will continue to strive in helping our customers with quality auto repair.
Dane W. Hurn
Service manager
Alki Auto Repair
No court today in what we’ve been calling the Morgan Junction murder trial – we arrived downtown only to learn that King County Superior Court Judge Theresa B. Doyle is out sick today, so that postpones the resumption of the trial until 9 am tomorrow (Tuesday). This is the fourth week that jurors have been hearing the case of Lovett “Cid” Chambers, charged with second-degree murder in the January 2012 shooting death of Travis Hood alongside Morgan Junction Park. WSB is the only news organization in court covering the trial start to finish; if you’re interested in catching up on our coverage, our report on Thursday’s proceedings (the trial is in recess on Fridays) includes links to all the previous installments.
This morning the decision is in from the city Department of Planning and Development – land-use approval for the 30-apartments, no-parking-spaces project at 6917 California SW (map), with DPD determining its “environmentally non-significance,” meaning the city will NOT require a full environmental-impact report. Read the decision here.
After we broke the news of the plan here last October, it drew citywide attention as another flashpoint of concern over increasing density adjacent to single-family neighborhoods – including commentary on its official sign:
Though the project was not planned for Design Review, three meetings were held in December – one with contextual information about the land-use process, one with developer Mark Knoll, a third with city planners, organized after they gathered enough signatures to ask DPD to call the meeting for comments. The decision document includes the results of planners’ review, including these paragraphs about the parking concern:
The proposed 30-unit apartment building proposes zero on-site vehicular parking spaces, and eight bicycle spaces in the basement of the structure. The subject site is within a multi-family zone, the Morgan Junction Residential Urban Village, and is within 1,320-feet of a street with “frequent transit service” (SMC 23.84A.038 “T”); therefore, there is no minimum requirement for on-site parking (SMC 23.54.015).
The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Parking Manual indicates that the residential use could generate peak demand for approximately 41 vehicle parking spaces (1.37 spaces per residential unit peak demand). However, these estimates are generated based on data collected from suburban sites, with typical market-sized residential units. The proposed development consists entirely of studio sized residential units that are approximately 220 square feet in size, located in a dense neighborhood with frequent transit and opportunity for walking and biking to nearby services. It is reasonable to expect that the actual peak parking demand from this project would be less than 41 spaces. As is typical with residential projects, the peak parking demand is expected to occur during late evening and overnight hours.
To better understand the impacts of this development, the applicant submitted a Parking Demand and Parking Utilization Study (William Popp Associates, January 22, 2014). This study estimates the parking demand for this use, and evaluates the existing availability of on-street parking in the area. What the study finds is that this apartment building will likely generate a parking demand of approximately 15 vehicles (0.5 per unit), and that these vehicles can be accommodated on the street as the study area has a late evening parking utilization rate of 55% (282 legal on-street spaces with 156 vehicles parked). The expected 15 project-related vehicles would increase the on-street utilization rate to 61%.
The decision can be appealed to the city Hearing Examiner; deadline is two weeks from today, March 31st. Meantime, demolition and construction permits are pending.
(Latest bridge and Viaduct views; more cams on the WSB Traffic page)
Good morning! No major problems so far. But if you’re using the Spokane Street Viaduct eastbound between 1st and 4th Avenues, take note of a big pothole reported Sunday morning – we’re hopeful it did get fixed, but can’t confirm that until later.
Also of note: WSDOT is not done with the Spokane St. Overcrossing bridge restriping just south of the West Seattle Bridge, so it’s expecting to close 99 between East Marginal and Atlantic again for up to 3 more nights, starting tonight, 9 pm-5 am. We’re told that the closures are weather-dependent – so they’re not a sure thing if it’s rainy.
8:02 AM: 911 log shows a crash at 40th/Hanford.
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