West Seattle, Washington
09 Tuesday
(May 17th photo by Christopher Boffoli)
Two weeks ago, Southwest District Council co-chairs Chas Redmond and Erica Karlovits, along with West Seattle Junction Association executive director Susan Melrose (photo second from right), hosted a visitor at “The Hole” – Natalie Quick (photo left), a spokesperson for Madison Development, whose owner owns the entity that holds the note for the stalled Fauntleroy/Alaska/39th project. The tour (WSB coverage here) was in response to the letter that Melrose drafted and the SWDC sent in April, pointing out safety and aesthetic concerns at the long-idle site. But a written response didn’t come till now: Melrose announced at tonight’s SWDC meeting that it had just been received, signed by Quick. Shortly after the May 17th tour, a few steps were taken – tagged tarp was replaced along the fencing, and “they did get out there with a weed-whacker,” as Melrose put it tonight. But now, she told the council, they’ve addressed other issues. For one, she said, they don’t have a solution for the issue of “The Hole” being right up against the sidewalk with nothing to stop, oh, say, a car from going in, but “they’re working with SDOT.” She says they have “agreed to remove the chain-link fence surrounding the park,” the small triangle adjacent to the site’s southeastern corner, and to maintain “the park.” And she says they will create a more aesthetically pleasing backdrop on that corner, including “a reinforced wood fence,” as well as making public the reports about the condition of the shoring on the north side of the site. Last but not least, they’re “committing to actually checking up on the site,” Melrose reported. We’ll add the letter itself when we get a copy. (More from the SWDC meeting coming up next – including the hour of discussion with Deputy Mayor Darryl Smith.) ADDED 8:55 AM THURSDAY: Here’s the letter – actually more like a memo – in its entirety, just forwarded by SWDC co-chair Karlovits.
(WSB photo of the Satterlee House, 4866 Beach Drive, taken in 2008)
Just got word from the clerk’s office at the state Supreme Court that the justices have said “no” to the request that they take up the longrunning case of whether a specific 3-house development can be built in front of West Seattle’s city-landmark Satterlee House, aka the “Painted Lady of Beach Drive.” As previewed here Monday night, the court’s Department 2 took up the “petition for review” (along with dozens of others) yesterday, behind closed doors. This is a process that does not involve oral argument – the justices review the documents submitted in the case, and decide whether to take it on. And the clerk’s office tells WSB “the petition for review was denied.” They confirm that’s the end of the line as far as judicial review; we will be checking for comment from both owner William Conner‘s lawyer G. Richard Hill and the city’s lawyer, Judy Barbour; this case even had drawn national attention along the way. More to come. (We have covered this extensively over the past 2+ years, each step of the way through the system – our stories are archived, newest to oldest, here.)
2:33 PM: We’ve heard back from Barbour, who called the ruling “a nice retirement present for me! And I do hope that Mr. Conner will now give up the fight and let the old place be fixed up and returned to usefulness as a home.”
5:09 PM: Hill hadn’t seen the decision yet, so is reserving comment until he has. The denial has now been noted on the Washington Courts website, however.
Thanks to Pete Rowen for the photo – he’s one of several people who e-mailed this morning to share the news that the “For Sale” sign just went up at Alki’s vacant, vandalized, weed-ringed Shoremont Apartments (2464 Alki; map). As reported here a month ago, the bank that owned the site – once slated for ultra-modern condos – was taken over in April by the federal government; the city has continued to write up the site for various code violations, but the inspector told us that due to the ownership situation, that had been little more than “an exercise in paperwork.” We couldn’t find the new for-sale listing online so we talked with one of the agents listed on the sign; Steven Chattin tells WSB that the listing will be online in a few days – they’re “having a website built for the property right now” and it should be live later this week. (The website for the team that’s selling it is here.) He says there’s no listing price: “We’re going to do a call for offers on June 25th.” We asked if he knows whether anything will be done about the condition of the site in the meantime, and he said not to his knowledge – “it’s being sold as-is.” (Note: We will always disclose if we alter a photo beyond cropping/light adjustment – so please note that we blurred out a big black-paint tag that’s on one of the boarded-up windows in Pete’s picture.)
For more than two years, we’ve covered the fight over whether the owner of the “Painted Lady of Beach Drive,” the city-landmarked Satterlee House (4866 Beach Drive), will be allowed to build 3 houses on its expansive front lawn – subdivided into buildable lots years ago. The longrunning fight began in December 2007, when the city Landmarks Board rejected the specific 3-house proposal that owner William Conner wants to build, saying the houses would overwhelm the Satterlee House itself and aspects of the site that made it a landmark (a designation sought by its previous owner in the ’80s). Conner appealed the decision to the city Hearing Examiner, who ruled against him in April 2008, then to King County Superior Court, where he lost, then to the 1st Division State Court of Appeals, same result last December, and then (as reported here in January) it’s before the state Supreme Court as a Petition for Review. We’re mentioning it tonight because tomorrow is the official date that Supreme Court Department 2 is scheduled to consider it – it’s one of two “motion days” in the court’s current session. The court may, or may not, agree to review the case; that decision is based only on written materials – no oral arguments are scheduled at this stage. The city has maintained all along that it has not prohibited Conner from building on the site – it has only rejected the particular proposal he brought forth and declined to change. We don’t have the actual petition – Supreme Court case documents are not filed online (though decisions are), and our request to get it from Conner’s lawyer went unanswered – but we do have the city’s 21-page answer, which they provided after it was filed in February (see it here).
One month ago, a reader tip led to first word of the Seattle Design Commission‘s “Holding Patterns” competition – soliciting ideas for stalled development sites around the city, with the possibility that ideas for temporary use might even become reality. (This of course instantly brought the “Hole Foods” site to mind for many.) The application period closed this past Monday, and this WSB Forums post inspired us to check with the SDC this morning to see if they’d heard from anyone regarding West Seattle sites. SDC’s Valerie Kinast says she did a quick check and sees “one for (a) Huling Brothers site, one strong one for the Alaska/Fauntleroy intersection, and one four blocks south of Delridge Community Center.” No specifics yet, but Kinast adds that, “In the week of June 7th, we’ll (decide) which ideas to move forward into an implementation workshop, probably on July 20th.”
Thanks to those who pointed out the trailer that’s gone up in the Admiral Safeway parking lot, e-mailing to ask whether it marks the start of construction on the redevelopment, or something else. Safeway’s Sara Corn says the trailer will be the temporary pharmacy – they scrapped the plan to first build the smaller retail building along California on the northwest side of the parking lot, so it could serve as the pharmacy during construction:
The permit for the retail building was not issued per the planned schedule. Since Safeway wants to provide uninterrupted pharmacy service, we couldn’t demolish the store until the retail building was completed and the pharmacy was open. Waiting for this would cause our entire store construction to be delayed and likely pushed out to a 2011 start. For this reason, we decided to run our pharmacy out of a trailer so we can start the construction of the new store as soon as we receive our permits.
As for when construction will start – Corn says there are still a few steps ahead – the site rezone goes to the City Council in June (she expects public notice this week for June 9/23 meetings); no date yet for the alley vacation to be considered, but once that date’s set, she says they’ll have a construction schedule (which would include a date for the closure of the current store). The smaller retail building, she says, will now be built concurrent with the main store; Catalyst Commercial Partners is currently listing its retail spaces for lease. (Here’s our report from the project’s final Design Review Board meeting back in February.)
Thanks to commenter “dd” for observing that a crew was at “The Hole” this afternoon, removing the tagged green tarp that had been up against the fence – one of the problems pointed out by the community leaders who led a walking tour of the site late Monday (here’s our original report, published this morning). We went over to check on “dd”‘s report, and got the photo you see above. The crew told us they’d be replacing the tarps.
As first reported here April 8, the Southwest District Council voted to send a letter to the owners of The Hole – the excavated-then-stalled Fauntleroy Place/Whole Foods site at 39th/Alaska/Fauntleroy – voicing concerns about safety and aesthetics issues. (Here’s our April 13 report with the final text of the letter.) Then at last week’s Junction Neighborhood Organization meeting (WSB coverage here), president Erica Karlovits announced a date was set for a representative for the company that wants to take over the site, Madison Development, to come out for a walking tour and firsthand look at the concerns.
Last night, that tour happened. In the top photo, that’s Madison spokesperson Natalie Quick with Karlovits, her fellow SWDC co-chair Chas Redmond, and West Seattle Junction Association executive director Susan Melrose, who originally proposed the letter. In this clip shot and edited for WSB by Christopher Boffoli, they explain the tour:
As for whether Madison Development is currently liable for The Hole, Quick is checking on that – in a complicated series of transactions tied up with the legal action involving the site, an entity called 3922 SW Alaska LLC holds the note and has filed for judicial foreclosure.
Read on for our notes from the tour, and more photos:Read More
“The Hole” on the Junction/Triangle border is far from the only stalled-development eyesore in West Seattle. This afternoon, we have new information about another one:
After receiving an e-mail inquiry about the status of the Shoremont Apartments site at 2464 Alki – at one point purchased by the development arm of an architect firm and slated for an ultramodern development, with a demolition permit issued – we’ve done some research the past two days, and have learned two things:
First – City records show repeated citations for violations regarding the building being unsecured, and overgrown. City inspector Michael Griffin – who laughed ruefully when we told him what we were calling about – tells WSB that the Shoremont’s (previous) owners wouldn’t even return phone calls, so it’s all been “an exercise in paperwork.” The city, he says, is doing its best to make sure that the building “is secure to keep transients out” – but even that has required repeat visits, and repeatedly replaced boards (we’ve retouched the tags out of this photo):
Griffin mentioned that neighbors had told him the building was to be auctioned off this month. Online county records show indeed, there was a foreclosure auction scheduled for April 2nd. Including delinquent interest, records say more than $3 million was owed on the site, which had been sold for $2.2 million two years ago. The inspector told WSB he was waiting to see the new ownership, if any, recorded before figuring out who next to start notifying of the violations at the site.
This afternoon, we found out who the “new” owner is: The federal government, according to Chris Sheehan, who is with Whidbey Island Bank, the new owners of what was CityBank of Lynnwood, which the feds closed a week and a half ago. Sheehan tells WSB the Shoremont was part of the CityBank assets seized by the FDIC when they closed the bank – beleaguered by bad real-estate loans. So – he didn’t disagree with our suggested assessment – it’s the feds’ problem now. As soon as we figure out who to talk to at the FDIC (it’s after-hours back East now, anyway), we’ll pursue further. (The site’s not yet listed here.) Meantime, as you can see from our photos taken this morning, the windows are broken, the grass is overgrown, and a once-stately apartment building continues to fall into disrepair.
Tailor-made for The Hole at Fauntleroy/Alaska/39th … or maybe Avalon Center … or maybe one of the other stalled/not-yet-started development sites around town … the Seattle Design Commission has put out a call for “Holding Patterns,” and Kevin thought you’d want to see it – here’s how it starts:
The Seattle Design Commission wants your ideas for Holding Patterns, interim uses for stalled project sites. We are seeking your concepts to transform the following types of stalled project sites around the city:
*holes in the ground
*surface lots
*ongoing construction above or below street level
The deadline for sending in ideas is May 24. After that, certain ideas will be “selected” and you might get to make a pitch to “potential partners who are able to help make your ideas a reality.” Here’s the document with all the info on how to enter.
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
When the city-convened West Seattle Triangle Advisory Group gathered for its first meeting (WSB coverage here), developer Denny Onslow of Harbor Properties pronounced Triangle parking “the 500-pound gorilla in the room”: It wasn’t on the official agenda, but it was on almost everyone’s mind.
When the group gathered again this past Wednesday night at the Senior Center of West Seattle for meeting #2, the “gorilla” was at centerstage, with four potential Triangle “streetscape” concepts presented, each one including information on how it would affect the area’s street-parking inventory.
The other major headline from the meeting: While local property owner and advisory-group member Steve Huling wasn’t in attendance this time, several other Triangle business and property owners were represented in the audience, including Alki Lumber, Tom’s Automotive and Doyle’s Automotive.
Their concerns and what happens next – as the story continues:Read More
A week and a half ago, the Southwest District Council decided (WSB coverage here) to send a letter to the owner of The Hole, aka the excavated-then-stalled Fauntleroy Place development site at Fauntleroy/Alaska/39th, asking for safety and aesthetic improvements. The letter subsequently was sent, after a few changes (here’s our report with the final version). We subsequently sought reaction from the addressee, Seattle Capital. After a few days, spokesperson Mary Grace Roske sent this reply:
I have talked with representatives of Seattle Capital Corporation, managing member of Fauntleroy Place LLC, and they have received the letter from the Southwest District Council. Seattle Capital intends to respond to the letter and is reviewing the issues raised. A response will be sent as soon as reasonably possible … the property is in foreclosure and that legal process continues.
A motion for judicial foreclosure was filed eight months ago (WSB coverage here) as part of the ongoing lawsuits (consolidated into one mega-case that is currently set for trial in October).
We first told you last Thursday about the Southwest District Council‘s plan to send a letter about The Hole – aka the stalled development site originally known as Fauntleroy Place – pending some final tweaks, as well as a determination of who should receive the letter. Late today, the original drafter, Susan Melrose from the West Seattle Junction Association, sent around the final version, which has been sent by e-mail and postal mail to site owner Seattle Capital Corporation, and cc’d to 22 people including Mayor McGinn, members of the Seattle City Council, and various city department heads. As per the intent expressed during discussion at last week’s SWDC meeting, the letter voices concern about “over the condition, esthetics and most importantly the safety” of the chain-link-ringed, 4-story deep excavation. We’ll check tomorrow with Seattle Capital regarding any response that they plan to make; meantime, read on for the full final text of the letter:Read More
(WSB photo from July 2009)
On the hottest day in Seattle history last July, the group in that photo talked about the West Seattle Junction Neighborhood Plan, as part of a West Seattle-wide meeting at Youngstown Arts Center (WSB coverage here), with breakout groups discussing all five of our peninsula’s neighborhood plans. The Seattle Planning Commission co-sponsored that gathering and others like it around the city, as a series of Neighborhood Plan Status Checks; now the commission is out with a report suggesting which neighborhood plans it believes should be updated next, and the Junction plan is among those at the top of the list. The “white paper” sent a few days ago to Mayor McGinn and other elected officials (see it here) lists five neighborhood plans as in “urgent” need of updating – and the Junction plan is the only one from West Seattle that’s in the group. The document explains:
An unanticipated, significant development opportunity exists in this neighborhood planning area because Huling Brothers Automobile has vacated/sold several acres of land. The redevelopment opportunity at the “gateway” to West Seattle, in combination with the future RapidRide stations, warrants a precisely focused subarea plan and urban design effort that would implement goals already outlined in the neighborhood plan; the current neighborhood plan calls for redeveloping this area and improving the gateway. We understand that DPD’s City Planning office has begun a small planning effort here and would encourage more resources for an interdisciplinary approach that includes transportation, housing, parks and economic development in addition to land use and urban design that will result in right of way improvements, urban design, zoning and land use. We also strongly recommend enhanced efforts designed to create transitions between the new development and the retail core on California Avenue that serves as West Seattle’s downtown heart.
The “small planning effort” refers to the Triangle planning process, which launched with an advisory-group’s first meeting two weeks ago (WSB coverage here) and continues when they meet again tomorrow night, 6 pm, Senior Center of West Seattle. Meantime, this same “white paper” also has a group of neighborhood plans around the city listed as “important” to update – those 6 plans include Delridge (see the plan here), with this explanation:
Recent assessments have shown that current infrastructure exists to support additional jobs and housing growth in this neighborhood. A neighborhood plan update would look fully at the opportunity this presents and also allow for planning that considers whether, where and how additional growth should occur.
The city’s neighborhood plans were developed more than a decade ago; an updating process has begun, but because of budget constraints, only a few are expected to be tackled each year for the foreseeable future. West Seattle’s other three neighborhood plans are Admiral, Morgan Junction, and Westwood/Highland Park, but the Planning Commission did not rate any of those three as either “urgent” or “important” to update soon.
Last fall, we reported that the city was moving toward an official planning process for the West Seattle area east of The Junction known as The Triangle, bounded by Fauntleroy/35th/Alaska. A senior planner is now assigned to the project and an advisory group has been assembled, with its first meeting planned this Wednesday, 6 pm, at the Senior Center of West Seattle. According to the meeting information sent by planner Susan McLain, the first gathering will include an introduction to the project and discussion of “land uses, connections, public-realm designs.” This is the first major city-facilitated Triangle discussion since the one at Merrill Gardens-West Seattle (WSB sponsor) in November 2008 (WSB coverage here). The Triangle planning process has a city webpage, which also includes notes from that November 2008 meeting. A lot has changed in The Triangle since then, including the start of construction on Link and the arrival of new businesses including Mountain to Sound Outfitters (WSB sponsor), Cycle University, 37th Shoe Repair, and The Wax Bar. But it hasn’t been an idle time – last fall, leaders of the neighboring Fairmount Community Association led walking tours of the area, including this one we covered in November with City Councilmember Tom Rasmussen. Meantime, the new advisory group is expected to meet at least four times between now and June.
If you’re following the Admiral Safeway redevelopment project – still working its way through the approval process – there are two notices worth noting this morning: First, this one includes word that the city Department of Planning and Development is recommending approval of the rezoning that’s required for Safeway’s plan, and has set the mandatory public hearing before the city Hearing Examiner – 9 am April 16. Second, here’s the land-use decision on the 1st building that’s planned for the site – the smaller, California-fronting 7,000-square-foot retail building in the left foreground of the rendering above. Safeway had said it wants to build that first, so that its pharmacy can move there and continue service while the main store is closed for construction. As with all such decisions, this one is appealable, and the notice says April 8 is the deadline for that. (For more on the project, see our report on its final Design Review meeting.)
It’s just a couple months shy of two years since Councilmember Sally Clark convened a forum to talk about townhouse design. Zoning/code changes have been in the pipeline ever since, but the process isn’t over yet, and for those still interested in the topic, we wanted to make sure you’d heard about a special City Council committee meeting this weekend. 
Like that famous forum in 2008, this one is a Saturday morning meeting, not in West Seattle, but not that far. Clark now chairs the Committee on the Built Environment (before, it was Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods – that last part has split to a different committee), and its special meeting on low-rise multi-family housing, including townhouses, is set for 10 am-noon this Saturday at Taproot Theatre in Greenwood (map). Lots more info here, with meeting documents/agenda here.
What you see here on WSB isn’t always everything we spend the days and nights doing … there’s also our content streams on Facebook and Twitter … and we are blessed with plenty of phone calls and e-mail to answer. Often we handle questions that don’t ever turn into stories, because that’s just part of the job. But when more than a few people e-mail or call with the same question, that tends to be a hint it’s time to share the answer on the site too. So — We’ve heard from several people in the past week wondering what’s up (or not) with the Whole Foods (and Hancock Fabrics, and residential, etc.) development site at Fauntleroy/Alaska. Here’s what we know: Whole Foods’ regional spokesperson Vicki Foley told us recently that they will not have news any sooner than June, which is when she said their lease on this site expires. So at least until then, their official line is still, they remain committed, etc. Meantime, the big legal battle over the site itself is not yet resolved. (It’s been a year since we broke the news that the first suit had been filed – months after work at the site halted in late 2008.) There have been a few small rulings along the way – mostly involving whose claim has preference over whose, so there have been some “partial summary judgment” decisions, but the consolidated case is not yet resolved and has not yet gone to trial. We check the online file for the lawsuit almost every day, just in case something big happens; there are so many parties to the case, requiring multiple notifications every time any action is taken, that the file is REALLY big. As we wrote in September of last year, the note to the site is now held by 3922 SW Alaska LLC, which had moved at that time for “judicial foreclosure”; we haven’t found any evidence it’s happened yet.
Three items of West Seattle interest in today’s Land Use Information Bulletin from the city: First, the permit for a “sidewalk café” at Prost has been approved – we mentioned the application last month; here’s the notice that it’s been approved. Meantime, the future wine/beer bar Locöl (35th/Kenyon) has applied for permission to have an outdoor patio; we profiled Locöl and its proprietors here in January. And outside the beverage world, the land-use permit for Transitional Resources‘ new residential building on SW Avalon has been approved; that opens an appeal period, and anyone interested in how to do that can follow the links on the official notice.
By Johnathon Fitzpatrick
Reporting for West Seattle Blog
During the Junction Neighborhood Organization (JuNO) meeting Tuesday night, attendees were given a walk-through of the new guidelines that the city plans to use for the construction of new multifamily and commercial development.
Despite a cooling in the building construction industry, developers continue to move through Seattle’s Design Review process, including a community input period and a hearing before a community Design Review Board. Engaged West Seattle Junction residents are wanting to learn how to get involved as the process evolve, so they can keep up with developers.
The latest issue to get a round of public meetings organized by the city: “Creating a Great Central Waterfront.” One of the four meetings will be in West Seattle. Read on for the news release that just came in:Read More
This note came in from Sara Corn at Safeway’s local corporate HQ, after she read a discussion in comments following our full report on last night’s 5th and final Southwest Design Review Board meeting for the Admiral Safeway redevelopment. It seemed worth showcasing beyond just popping it into that comment thread.
Each of the [current Admiral Safeway] employees will be offered the opportunity to work in a different Safeway store in the Seattle Metro District during the time of construction. We understand this could be inconvenient for some, but years of planning could not yield a design that would allow the existing store to stay open during construction. It is one of the many reasons that we wanted to shorten the construction timeline to as short as possible. In addition, it is worth noting that the new store will employ 65-100 more employees than the current store employs, and the existing employees will have more hours available to them to work.
(Street-level rendering by Fuller Sears Architects, showing the middle of the new store’s California SW frontage)
We’re at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center in North Delridge, where a major development proposal has just reached a milestone: The Admiral Safeway redevelopment project has finished the Design Review process. The process is a two-meeting minimum for any project, but this was the 5th design-review meeting. Safeway plans to tear down the current store and moving a house on Safeway property behind it, building a larger new store, a small one-story retail building, and a residential/flex-work-units project on the 42nd SW side of the property. Only one issue remained for this last meeting – the new store’s California SW frontage – and it took less than an hour for the board to give its approval. Four board members were present, and only one was on the board when it started going through the Design Review process in September of 2008 (here’s our first report). They’re about to turn out the lights here in the Youngstown theater, as board members and development representatives wrap up post-meeting chat, so we’re moving back to HQ to finish the story. This isn’t the last review for the project overall – it still needs City Council approval for alley vacation (behind the current store) and partial rezoning. ADDED FRIDAY MORNING: Read on for the details of the meeting:Read More
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