My gosh, we must have some lightning-fast construction crews on tap for Fauntleroy Place. This listing for a nearby condo says Whole Foods is opening this fall. And I haven’t even seen the groundbreaking announcement yet!

Several of the projects already in the pipeline will make 42nd the “second Main Street of The Junction” more than ever. One wasn’t really on my radar till we walked along 42nd yesterday, from the north edge of the Junction down to Jefferson Square. This one saddens me a bit. At 4532 42nd, if you look behind and over the fencing and the overgrowth, there’s a huge old house with some style and flair (despite what must be, by now, years of neglect and disrepair). It almost looks like a Southern plantation house, with a huge balcony under the eaves on its top story. The golden-yellow land-use-ap sign in front has been there so long, somebody has tagged it; the online information doesn’t say a whole lot, though the architect who’s listed seems to be associated with the fabled Roger Newell — it’s just listed as another proposed “mixed-use” building. I know old houses come down all the time so the land can be cleared for condos, townhomes, “mixed use,” whatever, but few of them are as striking as this one. I’d bet it has a bit of history, too. (And in fact, Googling its address just before finishing this post, I found it on a document of “cultural and historical resources” that were “inventoried” at some point along the way in the monorail studies. Hmm. Might have to check with the Log House Museum people on this one.)

The city’s latest semiweekly bulletin of land-use applications & decisions contains a few more “subdivisions” of lots on this side of WS. All along Cali Ave, it seems like at least a dozen houses have made way for townhomeplexes in just the past half-year or so. A Times columnist muses today on the subject, certainly not something affecting our side of the city alone.

As we passed through a bluffside neighborhood tonight, the view to the Sound and Blake/Vashon Islands seemed a bit clearer than usual. Won’t be able to verify till daylight, but I suspect more trees have come down; developers have stopped shying away from the area’s steeper hillsides. Brings back wistful memories of our earliest WS years, when I wished so hard to have enough money to buy a particular lot along Beach Drive where a thicket of trees hung over the northbound lane, marked ominously with a “FOR SALE” sign. It sat there for years, then finally went away when houses started going up atop the bluff where the trees grew. And the tree-thinning began. Now a “FOR SALE” sign hangs in the same spot again, in the shade of only a few remaining west-leaning trees. Most likely fewer birds sing, fewer bees buzz; did anyone notice but me?

The Morgan Community Association site has posted the architect’s vision of what Fauntleroy Place might look like, in advance of an “Early Design Guidance” meeting next Thursday. (I found a closer look here — click the link below the image.)

West Seattle Blogger Spouse and I both asked the same initial question: “Where’s the bowling alley?”

The look is typical New Millennium Mall — a lot like the latest additions to Westwood Village — not the same architect, though (GGLO for Westwood Village, Stricker Cato Murphy for Fauntleroy Place).

The bowling-alley question might sound odd to you, but it seems relevant to the issue of plopping a huge new retail/residential development into an area like this. Perhaps everything around it will fall away and/or transform in time. Right now, my mind is hung up on not just the neighboring bowling alley, but also the funeral home across the street. Does it survive, thrive, or eventually get the boot?

P.S. Found an interesting link to the floorplans for Fauntleroy Place, for anyone interested in immersing themselves in every little detail.

The woman who inspired this Times column today had a kindred spirit along Alki Avenue not that many years ago.

I am fuzzy on specifics. But I can see it in my mind — one of those mondo-condo high-rises that went up, east of the beach, had to wrap itself around a home whose owner just wouldn’t sell out. Eventually either she sold out or died, and the home went away.

As they all do … even here in my neighborhood on the south side of the West Side, homes never seem to just change hands any more; if they are on land with even a hint of a view, the “sold” sign is followed by the backhoes, the debris, the new construction. We know we are the last owners of our little house, whether we are here six more months, six more years, or until the day we pass on to the next plane of existence (and no, I don’t mean Ballard).

All along the west side of California Avenue SW as it climbs the shoulder of Gatewood Hill, south of the Morgan Junction urban village, er, business/residential district, the old warbox houses are making way for three-(or so)story reworks. None, though, is quite as mystifying as this one. Price tag: almost a million bucks. OK, we get that, for a view house, but this one is in a spot where sightproofing seems as necessary as soundproofing. It’s a corner lot directly across one street from a busy church and school, and across California from the church annex, including more play space for the kids. To boot, the lot is right at the start of the California climb, right about where buses (and many other vehicles) start to gun their engines to make it up the incline.

We repeat — a million bucks?

Not far from Lincoln Park, housing developers have ripped out a phenomenal amount of greenery in the past few years, turning hillsides into homesites. The watershed is gone; the trees and bushes for urban wildlife, all gone. Today, one of these projects has turned up in the P-I. A developer whines that it hasn’t been particularly profitable, while also claiming he and investors launched the project with these questions: “What’s the best use of the land? What can we do that impacts the site the least?”

The article doesn’t even nod to the possibility that the answers might have been, leave it alone.