West Seattle, Washington
25 Friday
Posted tonight on the Google mail group for the homeless encampment at West Marginal/Highland Park Way: They’re planning to move again at 10 pm tomorrow, but they won’t say till possibly the “very last second” where they will be going. They also say the city has threatened to fine the state unless it gives the campers the boot from the WSDOT land they’ve been on since last Friday afternoon’s city sweep of the original “Nickelsville” site next door. Just an hour before this update was posted, we’d asked the mayor’s communications director Robert Mak if there were any new developments, and he had said no, aside from the city maintaining its stance that the camp was a land-use violation.
We showed you this mural while it was in progress on the south side of Cafe Revo (Italian restaurant taking over the ex-Murphy’s space on Avalon in the Luna Park business district); now artist Glenn Case is officially done, and Revo’s Sofia Zadra Goff tells us they gave the mural a name: Zetta, the middle name of Sofia’s greatgrandmother. We also peeked into the under-construction restaurant space, where the bar’s being built out of a single piece of wood:
Revo’s hoping to open around November 1st. Meantime, we got e-mail late today from Spring Hill in The Junction, wondering if we would share some news, and since we know how you all love restaurant info, we’re happy to oblige:
That’s the cover of the late-night happy-hour menu that Spring Hill is launching next Tuesday, according to the note from proprietors Mark and Marjorie Fuller, who add: “Also, beginning November 2nd we will be opening at 5:15 pm rather than 5:45 pm for fall/winter. One last note: Brunch is coming soon! We are hoping to start brunch the end of November/early December. We would like to extend our thanks to all the people who have supported spring hill restaurant and look forward to seeing you all soon!”
While down on Alki checking on Lady Liberty’s new plaque (more on that later), we happened onto that lovely sunset. Minutes earlier, we had snagged a nice pre-sunset shot from Don Armeni:
Then we came home to e-mail from WSB’ers kindly sharing their beautiful sunset shots, like this one from Hopey (featuring all three Fauntleroy-Vashon-Southworth ferries):
And this one from Greg (note the Seattle-Vashon foot ferry):
Greg’s accompanying brief note seemed spot on: “After a couple days of financial stress it is always nice to see the beautiful sunset from the Fauntlee Hills area.” Or, as we put it … thank heavens the best things in life are still free.
More trouble for the OTHER new store Whole Foods was supposed to be opening in Seattle … our friends at MagnoliaVoice.com just broke the story that the Interbay project has now devolved into a lawsuit. So before anyone could panic about the West Seattle project again, we checked immediately with Eric Radovich from BlueStar, which is developing “the Whole Foods project” aka Fauntleroy Place (final design rendering above), as we did the last two times questions came up, and here’s what he replied: “All systems go!” … On schedule for a 47,000 sf store with a completion date of February 2010 (only 17 months away!)…Digging as fast as we can before the weather turns …” He also adds that the BlueStar proposal across the street at the ex-Huling Buick site, Gateway Center, should have “updated drawings” available in about a month – here’s the one that was released when that project was announced in March:
We mentioned the event this morning, and it’s continuing till 9 pm – a Zapotec weaver from a women’s collective in Oaxaca, Mexico, is exhibiting and selling weavings at Cafe Rozella on Delridge less than a block south of Roxbury; thanks to Ricardo Guarnero at Rozella for taking and sharing a few pix (he posted more info on the event and the weavers at White Center Now).
It’s usually not as easy to get information on major real-estate sales when they’re complete as it is to get information when the listings go up. Today, though, we have closure on one major listing we told you about — in May, we reported that Garden Terrace, a 32-unit building on Fauntleroy just south of the “Triangle” area (map), was up for sale for $4,650,000; this short article says it’s been purchased for close to the listing price by MorGro Investments LLC, which – according to a quick online search – also owns Harvard Market. 3:41 PM UPDATE: A tenant tells WSB the new owners have announced the sale to the tenants and told them that there are no CURRENT plans to turn the units into condos.
Just in from the Parks Department via Southwest District Neighborhood Coordinator Stan Lock, an update on the process to seek proposals for renovating and operating West Seattle Stadium. Bottom line, the Parks Department doesn’t have the money to fix up the stadium, so it’s looking for somebody else to do that, in exchange for “a multi-year contract that allows (the operator) to recoup its capital investment and support its own business.” First step: A draft Request for Proposal (RFP) has just been issued, and the department’s looking for feedback before officially circulating it. A public hearing then is planned before the Park Board on Oct. 23; board members are tentatively slated to vote in November, which then would trigger the formal process resulting in a January decision on who will be chosen to run the stadium. Tons of details in this document, including the draft RFP, the timeline, and specifics on what the agreement would entail; we’re still reading it but wanted to get you the link ASAP.
ZOMBIES, AKA “THRILL THE WORLD WEST SEATTLE”: An update from Hotwire Coffee (WSB sponsor) proprietor Lora Lewis and her Thrill the World/West Seattle corps of dancers practicing to join the world-record attempt on October 25th: For the actual performance counting toward the record, they’ve joined up with the Seattle Thrillers, and will be in the 200-plus crowd dancing that day at Westlake, with an encore to follow during Trick or Treat in The Junction the same day and at Admiral Theater later that night. You can still join the dancers at the next edition of what Lora calls the “newbie zombie” class – tomorrow (Wednesday), 8:15 pm, West Seattle Christian Church (the full list of rehearsal times and places is on the Thrill the World/West Seattle blog home page).
GHOSTS AND WITCHES: West Seattle-based The Anunnaki Project has announced its annual Halloween event: “The Ghost Game: Tales of 13 Witches,” 8:30 pm Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 at Youngstown Arts Center, described as follows: “This year’s production, which focuses on tales of witches from world folklore and mythology, features performances by members of The Cabiri performance troupe along with several guest artists including aerialist and butoh dancer Mary Cutrera and Courtnee Papastathis (aka Zita the Aerialist). Steffon Moody, an outrageously engaging humorist, physical performer and songster who has entertained audiences regionally and nationally for the past 20 years, will be playing Guto, the horribly charming yet sinister master of ceremonies. Steffon is a founding member of the UMO Ensemble (Vashon) and is currently a performer with the Big Apple Circus (NYC). Guests at the event will be woven into the evening’s festivities as storytellers, soothsayers, and supplicants as a procession of witches both entrancing and terrifying is presented. On Halloween night, the performances will be followed by a costume contest and reception with the artists.” Dessert too. Age 16 and up. Tickets are being sold by tables of 5, online via Brown Paper Tickets.
Thanks to Sage K for e-mailing first word of this: We’re checking out the scene at Delridge/Juneau (map), kitty-corner from the north end of Chief Sealth High School’s temporary campus at Boren, where at least half a dozen police cars are in view. All police will tell us at the scene is that they were “asked to respond to a disturbance.” There are no aid/medic calls on 911, so whatever happened apparently does not involve injury. We’ll update with whatever else we find out. ADDED 12:24 PM: Photo above shows part of the police presence. We also have a reader photo taken looking over the scene, showing a fairly large group of officers and people they appear to be questioning, but we’re not going to post that until and unless we can blur/cover faces, because (a) we don’t know who’s accused of what, and (b) they appear to be juveniles. Meantime, we had checked with Seattle Public Schools‘ communications office to see if this was related to anything on campus, and spokesperson David Tucker checked for us – whatever happened, he says, took place off-campus, so information will have to come from police. ADDED 1:05 PM: Sage K blurred the faces in one of the photos she took (which wasn’t closeup on anyone to start with):
LATE AFTERNOON UPDATE: Mentioned this in comments and working on a separate followup, but bottom line, from a conversation with Southwest Precinct Lt. Steve Paulsen – the big response was due in no small part to the fact that it was reported one of the participants (reportedly NOT a Sealth student) was believed to have a gun. No gun was found – one knife, though. And he confirms what we had perceived from the lack of an aid/medic call – no injuries.
Those big white signs have been up for almost a year now along California between Hinds and Hanford (city map at left), the section proposed for “upzoning” (archived coverage here), and you may wonder from time to time what’s up with the proposal, so we keep checking to see when the decision’s due. Last time we checked, a decision was expected to be published around the end of August. It’s now the end of September, so we checked with the city’s Department of Planning and Development again. Now the guesstimate is “about another three weeks” till a decision will turn up in the Land Use Information Bulletin, according to Bryan Stevens at DPD. (A decision is not the final word – potentially a round of Hearing Examiner and City Council hearings would ensue.) You can keep an eye on the official city project page here.
One month ago today, we told you about West Seattleite Addie Killam‘s plan to ride her new hand-operated bicycle (photo above) in a Wenatchee-area ride presented by the Mike Utley Foundation, to raise awareness of and money for spinal-cord injuries — Addie is fighting back from paralysis caused by a freak surfing-related injury. Now she’s back from the ride, and telling the story, including: “I can’t believe I never did a ride like this as an able-body.” Read her story at her Caring Bridge site.
Look closely and you’ll see the broken window glass around the edges of that photo, e-mailed to WSB by Paul, who wanted to warn people in the area about what happened to him:
My vehicle was broken into at the corner of Fauntleroy Way SW and 35th Ave. The thieves broke my front passenger window and stole a portable GPS that was installed in the car.
10:06 PM ADDITION: Shortly after we posted this, we got a separate short note about a different wave of car-window attacks: “9/28 around 3 am, 4 vehicles had windshields broken on 13th Ave between Holden & Kenyon.” TUESDAY MORNING ADDITION: And one more report, this one from Melody: “On Sat, 9/27 between the hours of 12 am-3 am my neighbors on 13th Ave SW (between Holden and Barton) had a brick thrown at the back of their car. It dented the exterior (they missed the windows).”
Today’s vote brings the formal approval of what was announced at an event we covered four weeks ago – read on for the official county news release:Read More
Thanks to Sarah for posting this in comments following our coverage of the huge (1,000-plus participants!) Alki Beach Run for Northwest Hope and Healing (a West Seattle-based organization that helps local breast-cancer patients) — run results are now posted online.
With thousands of new West Seattleites on the way, the forthcoming Metro RapidRide line (dubbed the “C” Line as of June) to West Seattle gets mentioned a lot in development and transportation meetings. Between those meetings, though, a few questions keep surfacing. For one, in a few of those meetings, we’ve heard the year 2010 mentioned for RR’s start, rather than 2011. For two, some have wondered if the plan was still on to have the RR line end at Westwood Village, rather than Fauntleroy or even Morgan Junction, the other two options. We took those questions to Metro’s Jack Lattemann, and here are his answers:Read More
According to letters posted on the official website for the West Marginal/Highland Park Way encampment this morning – after a weekend spent on the state-owned site adjacent to the city land from which campers were rousted Friday afternoon – they’re promising to move “after midnight Wednesday,” but asking the governor for permission to set up at another state-owned site described as “500 yards southeast.” We just checked Parcel Viewer; the site most closely resembling that description is adjacent to Highway 99, parcel #5367202516. We don’t know for sure that this is the site they’re targeting, but whatever site they have in mind, if the governor’s office tells them not to use it, the letter says, they won’t, but they “will move together as a group … to another location,” though they aren’t saying where that might be: “It could be anywhere” (here’s their open letter to “property owners”). The letter goes on to thank the governor for treating the campers “like human beings” and invites her and her staff to visit, ending “… we will always have an open tent there for you.” We just called the governor’s office to ask if Gov. Gregoire has an official response to the request yet; they’re checking. 2 PM UPDATE: Talked with Ron Judd on the Gregoire staff a short time ago. He visited the site over the weekend but had not officially received today’s request yet. He also noted that the Wednesday deadline is not one set by the state, but by the city.
We’re checking on the West Marginal/Highland Park Way encampment daily TFN. Tonight’s bottom line: A few dozen tents are still there (photo above is from just after 5 pm). We stopped by early this evening after reading a note on the “Nickelsville” announcement site saying that campers planned a meeting to talk about what to do on Wednesday, since that’s how long the state has said – so far – they’d be allowed to stay on the state land adjacent to the city plot from which they were booted Friday afternoon. Their meeting hadn’t happened by the time we stopped by, and things were pretty quiet, no TV trucks or rabblerousers in view. We’ll check again tomorrow, and we’re keeping an eye on various related websites too; the organizer who was the first person arrested on Friday, Anitra Freeman, put a short post on her blog today, pointing to an Associated Press article about an increase in tent cities around the country.
Just three weeks after the plaza dedication, we’ve received a couple reports of vandalism on the new Alki Statue of Liberty pedestal – a missing plaque – but David Hutchinson of the Statue of Liberty Plaza Project Committee reports it’s not exactly what it seems: What’s missing off the pedestal is a placeholder plaque, with the real thing scheduled to be installed sometime soon. He adds that he “noticed over the past 3 weeks as the corners of the fake plaque were gradually peeled back and finally someone simply ripped the whole outer layer off. There have also been a few other acts of minor vandalism – scratching graffiti on an armrest and on some of the blank bricks.” (Thanks to David for the pedestal photo; he also sent photos of the armrest and bricks but since we don’t want to publicize the actual tags, we’re not using them.) MONDAY MORNING UPDATE: More information from Libby Carr of the plaza committee:
The plaque on the street side of the Statue was a temporary until
the new bronze plaque, containing the background story of our Statue, was
cast. It’s now done and will be permanently mounted very soon on the street
side of the pedestal.
We also wanted to let folks now about our concerns about some of the
bricks in the plaza floor. We are having a meeting this week with the brick
engraving company to determine what the problem is with about 100 of the
bricks having what looks like faded lettering. We are not sure what the
cause is, so we are having a meeting to discuss it and find an acceptable
solution. We want brick owners (and potential brick buyers for the
remaining) to know that we are addressing this problem and will be fixing
it.
Also, since many people didn’t have a chance to see Ken Burns
documentary “The Statue of Liberty” on the day of the Celebration event, we
are showing it again at the Log House Museum (61st & Stevens) on Saturday
October 11 (at 1:00 & 3:00 PM) and again on Sunday at 2:00 PM. We will send
in more info as the time approaches, but people may want to put that on
their calendar. People who have seen this thought provoking and informative
historical film have been very impressed with it.
(if you’re looking for someone in the crowd, here’s a slightly larger version of that clip)
Last night, we told you West Seattle-based Northwest Hope and Healing had 750-plus people signed up for today’s Alki Beach Run 5K run-walk to raise money for its mission of helping breast-cancer patients. Today – just take a look at that first video clip atop this report; we had a great eagle’s-eye view of the start of the race, and in our video, you can see all ONE THOUSAND-PLUS participants stream by – huge turnout! We talked to Northwest Hope and Healing director Shari Sewell during the run/walk, and she told us they had printed up 900-plus bibs, but ran out during registration this morning! Now – did you notice the flag in the video clip? Read on to see what it symbolizes, see a clip of what the flagbearers did just before the run, and hear from the person they walked in honor of – oh, plus, see the first finisher, all ahead:Read More
Just north of The Junction, quite a sight this morning outside one of West Seattle’s historic churches: First Lutheran Church of West Seattle marked its 90th anniversary with a bagpipe-led procession, beginning from the original 1918 church site (photo here) behind the current one, heading along Dakota to the 1950-opened sanctuary — designed by a member of the Seattle-founding Denny family — front. The video clip above shows the start of the procession (which FLCWS’s pastor, the Rev. Ronald Marshall, previewed in this article we published earlier this week), led by Tyron Heade, Pipe Major from St. James Cathedral downtown; just ahead, three more clips as the ceremony moved to the church’s door:Read More
From the “when bad things happen to good people” file: We last heard from massage/aromatherapy purveyors Chill, in Gatewood/south Morgan Junction, when they were raising money this summer to help Jan’s Salon next door recover from this eyepopping crash. Now, Nicole at Chill just e-mailed bad news of their own:
Last night 9/27/2008, someone stole the bench (wrought iron and wood) from out front of Chill at 6969 California Ave SW. It’s a shame – people in the neighborhood really seemed to like having it there. Any sight of it, contact Nicole at Chill 206-724-9555 – thanks.
12:02 PM ADDITION: We asked Nicole for a photo of the bench:
Thanks to David Hutchinson for that photo of the Alki Beach Run 5K this morning to raise money for West Seattle-based Northwest Hope and Healing. More than 900 people participated – not even counting those who lined the route to cheer. We have a full report coming up with video and more photos, plus an interview with the breast-cancer patient for whom the Seattle Lutheran cheerleaders were marching (note the flag in David’s photo). Also this morning:
That’s the end of a ceremony this morning outside First Lutheran Church of West Seattle, celebrating its 90th anniversary. We also will bring you a full report on that, including video of the bagpipe-led procession and rededication ceremony. On the way back to WSB HQ after both those events, we stopped for this solemn scene:
Fresh hydrangeas rest at the bottom of the utility pole at 35th/Graham, two years and one day after the crash that killed bicyclist Susanne Scaringi. We also photographed the pole on the anniversary last year. Next year, those who want to pay tribute to Susanne on the anniversary probably won’t be able to do this, as this will likely be a construction site – proposed for three mixed-use buildings (next Design Review session coming up October 9). On the back of the pole, by the way, an artwork – we don’t know if it’s related to the memorial, or just there for whomever passes by:
We’ve been telling you about West Seattle-based Northwest Hope and Healing‘s Alki Beach Run tomorrow, to raise money to help local women diagnosed with breast cancer. Should be a busy morning at the beach – we got word tonight that more than 700 participants are expected, more than triple last year’s turnout (the race format and location were different), for the 5K run/walk. But there’s still room for you to join in – register starting at 8 am at Alki Bathhouse; get details on the official website.
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