West Seattle, Washington
26 Wednesday
In June, the state said wi-fi service would be on the Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth ferry run by July 16th. Didn’t happen. Now there’s a new date: August 13th.
The Vespa enthusiasts who are rallying in Seattle this weekend headed out WS way today. Chris sent us word of his Flickr page with video and pix after spotting the huge group coming off the low bridge. Looks like they were headed to the Fauntleroy ferry dock for a ride to Vashon, so watch out for the procession heading the other way later this afternoon.
Seattle City Light still hasn’t posted a peep about the power outages on this side of WS Friday night & Saturday morning, but King County has posted a press release noting the bigger outage caused an overflow at the Murray Street pump station @ Lowman Beach. NOON UPDATE: Warning signs (photo below) are still up at Lowman.
How exciting was the “lowest tide of the summer” (11:39 am today)? So exciting, field trips even came to West Seattle from Mercer Island; saw the MI bus parked by Lowman Beach, as we headed to our chosen tide-wandering spot at Cove Park by the Fauntleroy ferry dock.
You’re not supposed to walk under the dock … but during mega-low tides, you can … a few more photos, one click ahead: Read More
Four and a half months after the Alki pump-project permit, comes a key permit just granted for the Barton Street pump project, just north of the ferry dock. Appears that starting later this year, this will tear up the Cove Park vicinity like last spring’s emergency repair work (followed by the post-windstorm repairs). In all, three pump-station projects are in the works for the West Seattle shoreline; various collateral can be found here.
An update on the Fauntleroy Creek page says 20 of the creek’s coho are on their way out to the “saltwater phase of their lifecycle.” Check out the creek overlook (part of the view shown in recent photo below) next time you’re down by the ferry dock or the south end of Lincoln Park; it’s a little bit of wildness amid all our urbanity, kept up by a lot of hard (volunteer) work.
On this busy spring Sunday, perhaps between your Farmers’ Market stop and your Water Taxi trip, take a little time to help ponder the future of the Fauntleroy Schoolhouse. A community open house is happening there 11 am-2 pm to facilitate and inspire that pondering. And there’s urgency — the school district still owns this 90-year-old treasure (the child-care center, events hall, and others based there are tenants) but is indicating it’s time to sell off this and other “surplus property.” If you have only driven by, perhaps heading to or from the nearby ferry dock, you may not realize how large the schoolhouse property is; as a result, as one reader wrote to us, “there are developers who are hovering over the property.” Will it be the next townhouse cluster — or will the community rally to preserve it? Drop by today to offer ideas … or absorb them … a rare chance to do something before it’s too late.
Didn’t know this was happening today, till we saw a banner at a worksite along Fauntleroy near Lincoln Park while we watched out a bus window: It was “Spring Rebuilding Day” for Rebuilding Together Seattle, which we hadn’t heard of till now; sounds like a great cause.
The automated ticket machines and other components of “Wave 2 Go” have been working their way down from ferry routes further north; now the date is set for their Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth debut.
Until this article today on the stinky seaweed phenomenon that has frequently plagued Fauntleroy for years, and apparently now is spreading, we didn’t know the seaweed in question was called “sea lettuce.” One thing to take away from the story: the valuable reminder that runoff from everything we do eventually finds our way into the Sound. Just one valuable step you could take: don’t use fertilizer on your lawn or in your garden; enrich your soil (Cedar Grove compost from recycled yard waste is our fave) instead.
Fauntleroy Creek (across from the ferry dock) is worth a visit sometime soon if it’s not someplace you regularly visit. Not only is salmon season revving up, it’s also the annual blooming time for the official favorite flower of WSB, Darwin’s barberry, which comprises an entire hedge at the creek overlook but still hasn’t caught on as a garden plant (aside from a spray on Genesee Hill, one along Beach Drive, and one along Fauntleroy; let us know if you’ve seen others).
Seattle Public Schools now seems settled on the plan to sell the old Fauntleroy Schoolhouse building as well as several other pieces of “surplus property.” It’s home to a busy child-care center as well as The Hall at Fauntleroy; many have wondered what a sale would mean to the site’s future. The Fauntleroy Community Association site says an event is now set for April 29 to serve as both an open house and “an opportunity to express your ideas for this property if it were in community hands.”
Reminder — Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis talks transportation at the Fauntleroy Community Association’s community meeting at The Hall tonight. (He’s filling in for Hizzoner, who is in DC this morning to talk to Congress about global warming.)
Don’t know if we’re ready for another community meeting till we truly recover from WSDPM, but this one could be good. Same location as WSDPM — The Hall at Fauntleroy. The Fauntleroy Community Association has enticed West Seattle’s Most Famous Politician to travel a few miles south from his Admiral home base to answer citizen questions at 6:30 pm March 1 (but will it be over in time for GA?). The FCA site asks that you e-mail questions, however, so we’ll have to get some clarity on whether there will be any actual audience open-mike time at this event. (We still have the same question we had two months ago — why was he virtually invisible when thousands of us were without power for days after the windstorm?)
2 hours and 40 minutes, but nobody was really fired up till the very end … shame, since by then, about 95% of what started as an SRO crowd had long since fled into the fog.Read More
The folks behind the Four Aims Center, at the site of the ex-Cat’s Eye Cafe just north of Lincoln Park, just sent word their grand-opening party is now set for Feb. 11.
Spotted this afternoon on the curb in front of The Kenney along Fauntleroy, the best West Seattle snowman we’ve seen. However, we’re wondering, what is it supposed to be? Snow squirrel? Snow raccoon? Snow rat?
The wires have been spliced, the trees have been removed, but the Upper Fauntleroy sinkhole lingers. Two weeks ago, we wrote the city DOT to ask about its fate. After twelve days, a sort of reply came – from someone at SDOT who wrote, “I was told … you should contact (name) at Seattle Public Utilities. By way of this e-mail, I am forwarding your concerns to (name).” Mr. (name), who was cc’d, has yet to weigh in. (And why is this his project — the neighboring stairway, out of commission because of all this, is an SDOT responsibility.) Meantime, the sinkhole gapes, beyond just the barest of cordoning:
Early this morning, work crews arrived in the vicinity of the Upper Fauntleroy sinkhole, which now is graced by a sign about the adjacent stairway being closed for repairs.
Can you believe it’s been exactly two weeks since we all woke up to the aftermath of 2+ inches of rain and 60+ mph wind? For many of us, the nightmare ended when the power came back. But for others, the damage lingers — these WS folks say it’s not all Ma Nature’s fault.
The lights are flickering; the Internet connection is wavering … Sounds out there like This Is It — the wind wallop the weather experts warned about. The National Weather Service “current observations” say it’s gusting to 58 mph at Alki Point! (Look for “K91S” here, under the “GS” column for gusts, “SP” next to it for ongoing wind speed.) E-mail and online reports mention a variety of problems around WS already, including some sort of sinkhole at Northrop and Thistle, up the hill from Lincoln Park, and power outages in Westwood and at the Fauntleroy end of the WS Bridge. We might be too powerless to post later, so to speak, but please keep everyone updated by adding a comment to this post with a report from your ‘hood. (And if you want to know what’s up elsewhere, the RPIN appears to provide decent updates.)
The Fauntleroy Community Council reports zero coho returning to their creek, for the first time in more than a decade. The watershed watchers cite possible reasons ranging from global warming to tribal fishing.
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