West Seattle, Washington
17 Wednesday
We met Jan Seidel (left) and Loretta Kimball on Saturday, when we stopped by Saturday’s Arbor Heights Block Party to find out more about a new “community playground proposal” mentioned on the party-promoting flyer. They are the force behind a proposal to create a playground on a plot of Arbor Heights Community Church land just west of the church (map). It’s not just a church project; they’re pursuing a community partnership – read on for more of what we found out:Read More
As the Democratic National Convention starts today in Denver, here’s the West Seattle lineup as we know it: For one, we know Mayor Nickels is there, because County Executive Ron Sims tweeted (posted to his Twitter feed) about it. Also, the 34th District Democrats had previously mentioned Chris Porter and Kimber McCreery were going (more on the 34th DDs’ home page), as well as a 34th DD’er who’s from Vashon, 18-year-old Nick Bordner. This is the culmination of a long process that started way back with those well-attended caucuses on February 9 and then the 34th District caucuses on April 5 (our in-person coverage stopped there); we’ll let you know if we find online diaries or blogs from any of the local attendees.
Thanks to David Hutchinson for new photos including that fisheye view of the in-progress Alki Statue of Liberty Plaza — which is scheduled to be done in less than two weeks, with the all-day dedication celebration scheduled for Saturday, 9/6. (More details on the celebration are now posted on the Statue of Liberty Plaza Project website, by the way.) Another big milestone in the past week – installation of thousands of pavers:
David says, “By Saturday almost all, including the 1503 with inscriptions, were in place.”
All WSB coverage of the Alki Statue of Liberty is archived here.
Meet Jim Flynn and M.J. Benavente of Gatewood. You might know Jim better as “JumboJim,” the handle he uses when commenting (or forum’ing) on WSB. Our archives show his participation goes back at least a year and a quarter – to a time when only about 25% of the current readership was stopping by – so we wanted to give his new business a special shoutout, once we found out he was behind it. It’s been mentioned on WSB before – a new fitness center coming to Jefferson Square, Snap Fitness, in the former West Seattle Animal Hospital space next to Subway (WSAH is elsewhere in JSq now); they’ve even posted jobs in the WSB “West Seattle Jobs Offered” Forum, but until a few days ago, we didn’t know who was behind it. Here’s a little more about what Jim and M.J. have in store:Read More
Thanks to Scott C for the tip that, while the upgraded signals at 35th/Raymond (previous WSB coverage here) still aren’t unbagged and turned on, a left-turn lane has just been painted onto 35th (a little hard to photograph in the monsoon, but we tried). Meantime, a little ways southeast, the Lanham/Morgan light isn’t unbagged yet either, though multiple sources had suggested it would start its week of blinking tests (here’s our 8/8/08 update; here’s an update on the High Point Neighborhood Association site this past week. Maybe a rain delay? We’ll keep watching – let us know if you see either one go into test mode before we see it!
Since Friday morning, when we first posted the story of Kate K and her dog Coco — who is recovering from being poisoned in her own yard — the comment thread brought two other nearby residents forward with stories about dog poisonings – and that has animal authorities investigating whether these cases might be linked (at Kate’s request, we e-mailed those two commenters to be sure they saw her note about contacting the investigator). It’s also brought two citywide-media reports – we want to thank the Times for crediting WSB and those commenters in its report today (here’s the link); the other report didn’t. Thanks also to those who shared advice on emergency vets.
John LaSpina sent that photo this morning — sunrise over the industry-lined Duwamish, with Mount Rainier in the background, hours before today’s Duwamish River Festival began. We saved it, knowing we would drop by the festival this afternoon:
Boat tours were offered, along with kayaking (we spotted the famous Alki Kayak Tours van on the street) from festival home base at Duwamish Waterway Park (map). Though that’s in South Park, the river is West Seattle’s eastern border, and nothing hit that home more than this signboard we spotted in the Environmental Protection Agency booth:
The folks there say that was just made up this week, as part of their public-information campaign about the cleanup, one of many past/present/future along the polluted waterway. The official address of the “Lockheed West Seattle Superfund site” detailed on that board is 3443 West Marginal Way (here’s a map); the timeline on the board displayed today says “construction” as part of the site cleanup is set for 2011. The site was added to the Superfund list about a year and a half ago; it has an official EPA subsite with buckets of information, including the official March 2007 news release that says in part:
Historic industrial practices at this former shipyard released contaminants into the bay, including metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and petroleum products. An NPL listing notifies the public that EPA believes a site requires further study and possible cleanup under EPA’s Superfund program.
The Lockheed West Seattle site is one among several other contaminated sediment sites in the Harbor Island area that require remediation. Successful cleanups have already been completed at the Todd Shipyard facility and another Lockheed shipyard. At these sites, 330,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediments were dredged and removed from the sites, 7800 pilings were removed, and over 5 acres of fish-friendly inter-tidal habitat were created. Sediment cleanup projects like these are a significant part of the EPA’s continuing efforts to the remove toxins from Puget Sound.
In addition to information about Duwamish cleanups, plus the boating and kayaking we mentioned, today’s festival also offered information on everything from “clean car washes” to keeping pollutants away from storm drains to kids’ activities, including a bouncer — sporting the face of, of course, aquatic cartoon star SpongeBob SquarePants. Then as we left the park after browsing the booths, steel drummer Stanley Alleyne launched into a tune that seemed to fit: “Let Your Love Flow.”
Based on this report and the comments that followed, Steve made the map you see above and asked us to share it – it’s open to collaboration (if it happened to you, go here and add your location). Unfortunately, he has extra impetus to see these guys get caught, as he wrote:
I decided to map out the locations of casings and thefts as suggested by the poster “Jana.” In the middle of typing a reply to the post, inviting Jana and other WSB’ers to view the Google map I created, I received a call from home to let me know that we had been hit (Thursday night).
If you aren’t familiar with how to use Google Maps, here’s the user guide. Meantime, we’re sorry to hear about Steve getting ripped off, but grateful for his generosity in making and sharing the map!
It’s been three months since we took that photo on the first ’08 day of operations at Colman Pool in Lincoln Park … and now, a note from Alison wisely advises us it’s time to remind you that Colman Pool is going into its last full week of the summer. Monday 9/1 (Labor Day) is its last weekday of the year; after that, it’ll be open for one “post-season” weekend 9/6-9/7, and then the plexiglass gets boarded up again till May 2009. So soon! Remember, this also means about two months with no city-run swimming facilities open in West Seattle, since Southwest Pool‘s renovations are now expected to last into late October, with 11/1 the target reopening date (latest WSB update here). (The West Seattle YMCA [WSB sponsor] and Allstar Fitness both have pools, however.) One more Seattle Parks and Recreation-related note — if you can’t resist thinking holidays already, the fall “combined brochure” for all West Seattle community centers (plus South Park) is online and it’s even got the dates for the Christmas ship (12/13-12/14).
West Seattle’s biggest community cleanup in a long time is exactly three weeks from today, and if you’re not already signed up, there’s still room for you to prepare to pitch in. We’ve been telling you about this — targeting the “gateway” area at the Fauntleroy end of The Bridge, from Walking on Logs to 35th/Fauntleroy — since the date was set in early June; today, we have the latest information from organizer Nancy Driver of the Fairmount Community Association:
First of all, thanks to the many volunteers who e-mailed since the last update and signed up for the cleanup – the community response has been great so far. Mars Hill Church (West Seattle campus) has joined us as a co-sponsor – they will be recruiting more volunteers, distributing flyers and assisting with other organizational tasks – we are glad to have their help. Dixie Dokken, a former Executive Director of the West Seattle Chamber of Commerce, is now helping us with fundraising, as are Catherine Barker (also recruiting volunteers) and Sharonn Meeks (Fairmount Community Association). We are very glad to have their help because we have a long way to go to pull together all the money to cover the tree work that needs to be done.
We’ve been asked about who will make the decisions on the tree work and who decides which shrubbery might be removed. The cleanup area is a public right-of-way and SDOT (Urban Forestry) has the say so on whether any trees or shrubs are removed. SDOT requires that the tree company be a licensed, certified arborist and will supervise the company that does the tree work.
We are looking for four to five groups and/or businesses that are willing to “adopt†a portion of the clean up area so that it can be maintained in the future. It would be similar to commitment under the “Adopt-A-Street†program. If you are a member of a group or work for a business that might be interested in making this commitment to the community, please contact me at ndriver@quidnunc.net or Stan Lock at Stan.Lock@Seattle.gov
We’ll have another update for everyone next Saturday with all the details about where to meet for the cleanup and details on when and how to check in. Thanks again to everyone in the community who is supporting this effort.
Nancy/Fairmount Community Association
To see the latest version of the official flyer for the September 13th cleanup, click here.
Alki resident Steve Sox is getting the word out about the bike he lost despite a lock, explaining in his e-mail to WSB: “While I am interested in recovery, but don’t have much hope, I am also interested in alerting people to the danger of trusting your expensive bikes to bike rack locks on your vehicles.” Here’s his alert:
My mountain bike was taken from the locked rack on top of my car Thursday night/Friday morning near Alki Beach. They did NOT get the front wheel. So be advised that if you see bike as described below with no front wheel or a mis-matched wheel set that it might well be stolen.
I can positively identify the bike beyond the serial number.
If anyone happens to see the bike for sale at a yard sale, pawn shop, where ever, I would appreciate a phone call. My cellphone number is 206-719-2158.
Gary Fisher Sugar 2+ Full Suspension Mountain Bike
Colors: Black w/ grey and silver
Fox front and rear shocks
Cateye computer
No front wheel or a mis-matched wheel set.Yes, I will offer a reward for information leading to the return of the bike.
Thanks, and please take a lesson from my stupidity. Do not overly trust bike rack locks to protect your property.
This morning’s Great Cross-Sound Race, 7-plus miles round trip from Alki, ended with a three-peat for Evan Jacobs (shown above close to shore post-race): He also finished first last year, solo, and finished first in 2006 with a partner. One thing very different this year compared to a year ago — the weather (as you can see in the photos from our coverage last year) — brilliant sunshine this time around. Full results will eventually be posted on the Sound Rowers website.
That’s the trailer from “Galaxy Quest,” the sci-fi spoof that’s closing out this summer’s West Seattle Movies on the Wall series of Sidewalk Cinema presentations on the big screen next to Hotwire Coffee (WSB sponsor). The weather looks great tonight; as usual, the show starts at dusk (probably 8:30-ish), and it’s free (the entire six-movie series is brought to you courtesy of West Seattle business sponsors including WSB) — but you’re encouraged to bring nonperishable food for the West Seattle Food Bank, which is also the beneficiary of concessions presented by West Seattle Christian Church. Bring a few $ for fundraising raffle tickets, too – there’ve been cool raffle prizes every single show we’ve been to (we only missed one; see you there tonight!).
When we got the news last night about the safe return of the stolen Arbor Heights pugs, we asked owner Marsha Lubetkin if she could send a photo when she got a chance to catch her breath. The photo you see above just came in tonight, along with this note explaining more about the circumstances of the pugs’ return:
I wanted to thank your blog and everyone who helped us search for our pugs, Bandit & Pippin. It is such a happy ending and they are both fine and very glad to be home.
I do want to let everyone know that today I spoke with the woman who took them to the King Co Animal Shelter and she really was a good samaritan. She lives in the Skyway area near Renton and returned home from shopping about 5:00 yesterday with her brother and cousin and found 2 pugs in her yard. She had not watched the news or read the newspapers, so had not heard about Bandit & Pippin. They checked with all their neighbors and no one knew who owned the pugs. Her father told her to take them to a shelter, so she and her brother googled where the nearest shelter was and took them to Kent. She just wanted the dogs to get back to their owners, but felt the staff at the shelter were very suspicious of her and wanted all kinds of ID and she felt she was treated with disrespect. I think it was all a misunderstanding on each side. … After talking with her, I do believe her and thanked her for getting our pugs back to us. She did exactly the right thing and without her they could still be missing. She refused the reward, but I told her I was sending her a check anyway. She is the reason our pugs are home tonight. Thanks for spreading the word.
As for how the dogs got into that yard — still a mystery.
You have to look closely to notice, but there’s a sign down and a couple of those newly planted trees snapped in that median directly across from the Admiral Viewpoint. We checked this out on a tip from Robert a couple days ago but didn’t get too far – here’s a slightly closer view from our visit:
Then it came up in the WSB Forums today, and we pursued it with SDOT, whose communications boss Rick Sheridan tells us there’s no record it had been reported, but now that we’ve passed the word along (thanks, WSB’ers!) the Urban Forestry team will get over to check it out. (First photo is courtesy Meredith K. Hailey, whose guess is that a driver “straddled” the median — though you can’t tell from the photos, looking at it closeup, you’ll notice the soil isn’t disturbed.) We covered the original tree planting just eight months ago, by the way, including this photo taken 12/20/07 to the northwest of the photos above:
FANNA, the group proposing a “play area” and/or expanded “beautification” in the area of California Place, the Admiral District mini-park shown above, just got word of city grant approval – here’s how it was announced on the official mailing list:
We’ve just received word from the Department of Neighborhoods that our application for funds to plan improvements at California Place Park has been approved! We’ve been awarded $15K to hire a landscape architect to help take us through the planning process. Along with our letter was a personally written note from Mayor Greg Nickels who said, “As a neighbor, I’m looking forward to seeing your project!”
Next steps are to align with our Project Manager at the Dept of Neighborhoods and our representative at the Parks Department to define scope and refine our work plan.
That’s the second West Seattle park/play project in less than 15 hours to get word of a $15K grant — we told you last night about the approval for the Cottage Grove Park “tot lot.”
That’s Coco the dog, wearing bandages where she needed IV treatment for medications and fluids after an apparent poisoning right in her own yard in the 47th/Genesee vicinity (here’s a map). We first heard from Coco’s owner Kate K very early this morning, and then a followup after they visited the vet – she’s also put up flyers to get the word out (we just got e-mail about one of them) – here’s her story:Read More
We’re checking to confirm this but West Seattle CoolMom.org leader Abby Suplizio tells WSB there’s word the grocery/chemical-industry-backed (references here and here) bag-tax referendum petition drive already has enough signatures to get it before voters next year, 
less than two weeks after they started circulating petitions (here’s our report from the Thriftway sighting August 10th). We’ll update this item when we hear back from the organizers. The bag-fee battle was featured on National Public Radio yesterday (Suplizio gave us this link, where you can find the audio) — says the Sierra Club “is organizing a campaign about the petition gatherers misleading people all over Seattle” and asking people to send their stories to bradym@balestra.org – here’s what she sent about a West Seattle encounter (followed by some other info we found):Read More
We told you last month that Mars Hill Church was planning water baptisms at Alki again this year. Tonight the church has posted an update on the event planned for next Tuesday night, including an FYI that “This event pertains to the West Seattle campus only and is not an all-campus event like last year.” The update also says the event will include “BBQ, epic beats via DJ Sandman, a brief message, testimonies.” (Here’s our coverage from last year.)
News tonight from the North Delridge Neighborhood Council e-mail list: The project to add play equipment for small children to Cottage Grove Park (map), creating a “tot lot,” has won a $15,000 matching-funds city grant, according to Betsy Hoffmeister. (This is the project we’ve told you about several times in the past few months, including this springtime request for input on three play-equipment options, and the architect search earlier this summer.) Organizers promise info soon on what happens next.
Just talked to Marsha, owner of the stolen pugs, and she confirmed what had been left as a comment on one of our earlier posts a short time ago: The dogs are safe. Here’s what happened: They got a call from the Kent Animal Shelter around 5:30 pm, thanks to the information on the pugs’ microchips. A woman apparently brought the dogs in this morning, said they had been in her yard and she was turning them in, and she left. They are in good health and appear to have 
been kept indoors since they were stolen back on Monday. Marsha says THANKS SO MUCH to everyone who helped look for them and expressed hopes they would be found safe – she told WSB, “That’s one good thing that came out of this – seeing how caring and supportive everyone was.” She told us about bumping into a young woman who was out in the Fauntleroy Park ravine area this morning, looking for the dogs because she’d read about it here on WSB and wanted to help. (Apparently the pug spotted in the 35th/Barton area earlier today is someone else’s dog.) That’s the second happy ending today, hooray. We asked her to send us a photo of the dogs back safe at home (Pippin, above left, and Bandit at right), so we can share that with you, once she gets a chance.
We’ve mentioned the “Skiffle” show and auction tonight at Youngstown Arts Center, to raise money for All-Access afterschool programs, free to their young participants; the auction will include original works of art created during group sessions this afternoon, and we stopped by in the middle of the work to take a peek, emerging with photos including the ones you see above. Last reminder, doors open @ 6, show @ 7, suggested donation $25 at the door.
This note came in from Marsha, owner of the stolen pugs:
“Pippin [left] has been seen within the last few hours running. She is freaked out and will not come to anyone. She was seen at 35th & Barton (people at Tony’s Fruit Stand saw her), she’s been seen on Roxbury & 34th and also heading west on Barton. Dic is helping us search and he said she appears to be heading north. If she is west of 35th, she may be in more familiar territory since we walk that area a lot. I walked through the ravine (where we also walk) but didn’t see her. My husband, Barney, and I are out searching. Please call our cells if you spot her and can’t catch her. If you can get her, please do and call us. Barney’s cell is 206 730-0143. Marsha’s cell is 206 915-3308. Thanks for all your help on getting our pugs back.“
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