Thanks for the tip about a crane visible from North Admiral, looking toward the water. We went over and discovered it’s a tower crane going up for what you might know best as the project on the ex-Alki Tavern site. This is blocking the inland lane of the 1300 block of Harbor Avenue SW, and some staging is under way across the street at Don Armeni Boat Ramp.

This will be the third tower crane up in West Seattle right now – the first has been at the Upton Flats project (35th/Graham) since last February, the second went up two and a half weeks ago at the site of The Foundry (northeast corner of Fauntleroy and Edmunds, on the ex-pawn shop site).

Work started at this site last summer, more than four years after the tavern and other buildings were vacated. It’s planned as a 6-story mixed-use building with 15 residential units, office and “light manufacturing” space, ground-floor retail/commercial, and a public hillclimb/breezeway between California Way and Harbor SW.