Early warning
High Point-to-Delridge drivers, beware: Cindi from the Morgan Community Association alerts us to more upcoming traffic woes; this excerpt is from the latest Morgan Junction e-mail newsletter, quoting the major construction company on the High Point project:
“SW Morgan / Sylvan Way will most likely be closed for a short period (one to two weeks) during late February/early March. This closure is being planned in conjunction with work taking place on an unrelated development east of High Point. This coordination will minimize the impacts to the neighbors and surrounding area. SW Morgan / Sylvan Way will then be temporarily closed for a longer period (several months) this summer to allow for complete rebuild of the roadway and utilities associated with our project. We will provide notification to local residents and businesses and will have a detour route well-indicated. Every effort will be made to minimize the duration of street closures.”
We’ve been asked before about the deplorable condition of Sylvan Way closer to Delridge; Cindi is checking on whether repairs to that stretch might be included in those summer closures.
This one may hit home
Also from the P-I: a little hand-wringing about the teardown trend — not homes-to-townhomes, which seems to be West Seattle’s most popular flavor, but homes-to-bigger-homes. Our favorite quote in the story (which doesn’t feature WS but still seems relevant) is an explanation of why people are moving from the burbs back to the city:
“It’s the commute,” he said. “If you’re not working at Microsoft, why would you want to live in Issaquah?
(For us, the commute is only one of about 6,955 reasons we don’t want to live in the burbs, but that’s another post.)
Another history lesson
A list of great/not-so-great moments in Seattle transportation history that’s in the Times today includes this line:
1984  Scandal-plagued high-level West Seattle Bridge survives referendum and opens.
Had no idea, about the scandal OR the vote — just the freighter crash that accelerated the bridge work. Online, we found a little bit about the scandal (design problems, city employees getting fired over them), but can’t find more about the vote. Old-timers, any enlightenment? (We weren’t here in the eighties.)
Your favorite Junction shop?
Quiet night, weather’s turned miserable again, nothing in WS seems to be making news right about now. So how about a little discussion? Tell us about your favorite shop (non-food/beverage, please, we’ve talked about all THAT enough for a while) in The Junction. We’ll start — Pegasus Book Exchange. You can take in books to sell, and you get credit applicable to part of the price of anything there you want to buy, same day or even years into the future. So what’s your fave? Leave a comment!
WS this weekend
We’ve been slacking lately on our previously reliable Friday roundups of weekend events. Luckily, today, Alki’s contributor to Metroblogging Seattle, C Ro, did it for us — although with a lot more drinking opportunities!
Taking a BIG bite out of crime
Two bits of good news:
–The P-I says (opening with a couple of West Seattle anecdotes) car theft is way down.
-The minutes from the last SW District Council meeting say tagging is way down because cops have recently nabbed no fewer than 10 graffiti vandals.
Best time to avoid the crowds
So we show up at Thriftway a little while ago — right around 9 pm — look around at the nearly empty parking lot, and exclaim “where IS everybody?” Slowly a vaguely-aware-of-pop-culture light starts to flicker to life … Seattle’s favorite TV show (starring a ferry catastrophe this week, to boot) is on. Next Thursday at 9, we’ll pick some hot restaurant to try to crash …
Viaduct Vote’s still on
Sorry, we know we should just subtitle ourselves The Viaduct Blog these days, but really, several other blogs are doing a much better job of that — however, since so many of us use the darn thing, it seems important to track the crazily twisting tale here too. That said, here’s the latest: We’re voting, and that’s final.
Help WSB make it to the Elite Eight
Yet ANOTHER voting matter: That blog popularity poll we somehow wound up in has moved on to the third round … it’s styled after the NCAA Tournament so it’s dragging on a while longer. Let’s win one for the West side! Please click here. And you can vote again at least once a day, apparently. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now back to the search for more West Seattle news ‘n’ info ….
A sudden sign
The controversial construction site on ex-Gatewood Church property (across Cali from the still-for-sale church) suddenly, belatedly, has one of those big white city land-use-notice signs on the chain-link fence. The sign only mentions part of the development, however — five units — not all the permits that have been issued, totaling more than a dozen units. (By the way, the city seems to be reworking the permit status pages to make direct linking tougher, so some of our older links on this project are broken. We’ll find a way around it! Meantime, two recent complaints about the project/s have been dismissed — here and here.)
Goodbye, guacamole; farewell, fajitas
The “hard copy” version of this week’s Herald has something you won’t find online — a big color ad from the folks who run Guadalajara Hacienda, on Cali between Morgan and Alaska Junctions. Says the restaurant’s closing as of this Sunday. We checked the city land-use system; you probably don’t even need to click this link to guess what’ll be built at the site.
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