10:14 AM: In the hallway at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, the Gathering of Neighbors is under way, starting with a resource fair – tablers include:
*SWYFS
*West Seattle Food Bank
*Dept. of Education & Early Learning
*HALA
*West Seattle Time Bank
*SDOT
*DPCI
*West Seattle Helpline
*Seattle Subway
Opening ceremony is at 10:30. More to come.
11 AM: First panel is under way in the theater.
11:37 AM: The theme today is ‘growing pains’ and this discussion with Councilmember Lorena González and the Junction Association‘s Susan Melrose, plus Ben Crowther from The Urbanist and the city’s HALA project manager Michelle Chen, has touched on many challenges and opportunities. We have it on video and will add later when the clip’s ready. West Seattle-residing broadcaster Brian Callanan moderated. (Added – here’s the video:)
12 PM: Breakout sessions now, from business development to light rail. Still time to get here for the concluding panel on homelessness, to be moderated by Councilmember Lisa Herbold, scheduled as an encore of the panel we covered at the 34th District Democrats in January.
ADDED SATURDAY EVENING … a few more photos. From the organizing group VieWS (Visualizing Increased Engagement in West Seattle), Pete Spalding showed off his T-shirt from the first GoN back in 2004:
The group that launched the GoN was Megawatt, which disbanded in 2007 but not before having a lasting effect on the local community, not just via this event but also by creating West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day in 2005 (after MW’s closure, we took it over in 2008 and beyond; we’ll be opening registration in early April for this year’s WSCGSD, which is nine weeks from today – Saturday, May 14th).
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