We’ve spent the past three-plus hours in the city Hearing Examiner‘s hearing room on the 40th floor of the Municipal Tower downtown, listening to arguments in the appeal of the city’s decision granting two “departures” for the Denny Middle School/Chief Sealth High School co-located campus project. (Those “departures” allow the project to exceed height requirements – for the “galleria” roof peak shown in the rendering above — and to not meet parking requirements, and were finalized by the city after going through a community/district advisory committee.) The appeal was argued by West Seattle-based district watchdog Chris Jackins, who brought two retired educators as witnesses; they focused largely on arguments against the co-location in general, rather than focusing on the parking/height issues that were officially challenged. Defending the decision, the city Department of Planning and Development and also private land-use lawyer Richard Hill on behalf of Seattle Public Schools. Jackins’ contentions include “The project will have adverse impacts on views and shading, removal of trees and vegetation, and parking and traffic,” and “The DPD decision … did not properly balance the ‘project’s relationship to educational needs’ ‘with the level of impacts on the surrounding area’.” Deputy hearing examiner Anne Watanabe heard the case and will now take it under advisement; she says she will issue her written decision within 14 days.

Some updates on Denny Middle School, from a conversation with Principal Jeff Clark: First big one, the move-in plan has changed for the new Denny that’ll be built on the nearby Chief Sealth High School campus. As we reported in recent months, there was a tentative plan to make the move over winter break 2010-2011. Now, Clark says, that plan’s been scrapped, since it would likely have been educationally disruptive, to say the least. The plan is now to move the Denny staff immediately after the end of the school year in June 2011 (so Denny summer programs that year will happen on the new campus), and start classes there in fall 2011. Also from our visit to Denny (and more to come later): Music director Marcus Pimpleton will lead the Denny Marching Band in tomorrow’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade downtown (parade info here), so if you’re going, watch for them!

That’s the doorhanger that people living around the Chief Sealth High School (permanent) campus will get this week, according to managers for the project that includes both Sealth renovations and the construction of the new Denny Middle School on the Sealth campus. It includes major digging for gas and water lines. As we reported last week, the district changed its mind about a big “groundbreaking” celebration for this phase, but the work proceeds, with the goal of Sealth moving back in fall of 2010, and Denny opening in 2011.

First, Seattle Public Schools announced a March 12 groundbreaking ceremony for the next phase of the Sealth/Denny construction project; then they announced last week it would be postponed till they had the permits all in hand; now, Tom Redman from the district tells WSB they’ve just decided to save the money and not have a groundbreaking event after all, in favor of spending the $ on “two big community celebrations” when Chief Sealth reopens in 2010 and when the new Denny Middle School on the Sealth campus opens in 2011.

Just got a call from David Tucker with the Seattle Public Schools communications team: The “groundbreaking ceremony” for the next stage of the Chief Sealth High School/Denny Middle School co-located campus project has been postponed. It originally was planned for March 12th, but the “master use permit” has not yet been granted by the city (here’s the city DPD page for the site), and Tucker says they want to be sure that permit’s in hand before they have a celebration. They won’t set a new date till the permit is officially granted. Other work has been under way at the site for months, but this phase will include some major construction, including the Commons to be shared by the two schools, according to the project team. Meantime, another school ceremony is coming up in our area: An event celebrating the international school designations for Denny MS and Concord Elementary (first reported here Feb. 11), 10 am next Tuesday at Concord (which is in South Park but is considered part of the West Seattle South elementary cluster).

Tonight’s meeting of the Design Team for the Redevelopment of the Denny Middle School Site – whose efforts we’ve been chronicling since September – was a momentous one. What you see above is the “preferred plan” for the site, drawn after many meetings in which community members, school employees, district consultants debated what to do with the site, with just three main prerequisites: It needed to have a softball field and tennis courts, to replace the ones removed on the current Chief Sealth campus as it transforms into the joint campus of Sealth and the future Denny, plus it’s supposed to hold space open for a possible elementary school some years down the road – read on for more details on this plan, and what happens next:Read More

During Seattle Public Schools‘ current closure process, we’ve heard a lot about “design teams” — groups formed to talk through a project, with members drawn from a variety of groups with stakes in the process (district employees, school reps, community members). Tonight, one of those teams continued working through the process of designing what will happen on the current Denny Middle School site, once the new Denny is built and open. They’re close to a final design; three options were developed in the past few months, and recapped at the start of tonight’s meeting by Robert Evans, Denny-Sealth project manager. Landscape architect Jonathan Morley ran through a PowerPoint presentation (you can see it here either as a narrated clip, or drag the playbar along to fast-forward through the slides). As we’ve reported earlier in the process, the Denny site may eventually be home to a new elementary school, in addition to the tennis courts and softball team that are being installed as a replacement for what’s been torn out on the Chief Sealth site, so each of the three options was shown with and without a school building. Team members were asked to identify which features they liked most, so a “hybrid” drawing can be developed before the next meeting February 9th; the most popular ones included keeping existing trees, incorporating rain gardens and swales to keep rainwater onsite, and creating a terraced area for use as an amphitheater. Once a final proposal is developed, it will require School Board approval. You can find district background on the project on this website; our past coverage of the design-team meetings, newest to oldest, are part of our Denny-Sealth story archive.

The current Seattle Public Schools school-closure process has included prominent recent mentions of “design teams,” to be created — with participation from various school/community representatives — in hopes they’ll help the upcoming transitions succeed. That said, we wanted to note that a “design team” is continuing to work in West Seattle right now – the one that’s been helping the district plan what will be done with the Denny Middle School site after the school buildings close when the new Denny is done on the nearby Chief Sealth High School campus. That team will meet again next Monday night (1/12), 7 pm at the Denny library – and in the meantime, you can see what ideas are in the works, by viewing a video posted on the district website. As the video’s written introduction explains, few team members attended the last meeting December 15th because of the weather – so the district asked its landscape architect to record his presentation on video. You can see it here; other links related to the ongoing process are here (including photos and graphics from recent meetings – that’s your editor with the laptop in photo #1).

“It only took a year,” apologized one district official, ruefully, before tonight’s Denny Middle School Site Redevelopment Design Team four-hour “charrette” (which is just getting under way now that non-district and non-consultant participants have arrived) — but, elapsed time aside, they are happy to announce tonight that there’s finally an official website for the Denny-Sealth project and other district BEX (Building Excellence) projects. The start page is at bex.seattleschools.org – the Denny-Sealth-specific information starts here, and includes everything from a photo gallery to permit information to the meeting calendar (including non-district meetings at which the project will be discussed).

All those sticky notes, and dozens more, represent the latest progress toward figuring out what will happen at the Denny Middle School site after the new school opens on the Chief Sealth campus. Even though that’s more than two years away, Seattle Public Schools managers want a final design in place within the next few months, and that’s why Design Team meetings are under way. Last time, we reported on a meeting for which few showed up; tonight, a better turnout, and as SPS manager Don Gillmore put it, this was the end of the “abstract” part of the process — read on for more on what happened and what’s next:Read More

Reminder that the school-district-organized Design Team charged with helping settle the future of the current Denny Middle School site meets 7 pm tonight at Denny, two days after the Westwood Neighborhood Council‘s meeting to discuss the community’s hopes for the site (WSB coverage here), once the school is demolished after its replacement is built on the Sealth campus. Meantime, the Departure Advisory Committee tasked with reviewing the district’s request for code “departures” as part of the Sealth/Denny consolidation — to enable less parking and more height — settled on a recommendation last night. Member Monica Kenny says the committee recommended approving the “departures” with a fairly sizable list of conditions, including signage, some street-parking restrictions in nearby neighborhoods, angle parking on the east side of 27th between Thistle and Kenyon, and providing neighbors with a “master calendar” of major events planned at the school. They’ll meet again Oct. 20th to make a final decision.

Though Denny Middle School won’t be moving into its new location on the Chief Sealth campus for 2+ years, Seattle Public Schools wants to lock down a plan for the current Denny site’s future within a matter of months. A district-organized Design Team already has had its first meeting; tonight, the Westwood Neighborhood Council is offering the community a chance to voice its hopes and dreams. 7:30 pm, Southwest Community Center. (As we mentioned over the weekend, this is the first of three Denny/Sealth-related meetings over the next three nights; we are also reminded this morning that Friday night also brings a major school district-related meeting to West Seattle — 6:30 pm Friday, West Seattle High School library, the community meeting to talk about what should be in the district’s next levy request; see the flyer here.)