West Seattle, Washington
12 Monday
See the orange and blue on that map? It marks all the West Seattle streets where Seattle City Light crews will work over the next few months to clear tree branches from power lines. This was one of several maps shown at City Light’s open house at Hiawatha Community Center tonight. Only a trickle of turnout, but if you’re in the targeted area, City Light spokesperson Scott Thomsen says you will get direct notification — City Light workers have already started going door-to-door to tell residents what’s going on and what they can expect to happen; if you’re not home when they stop by, they’ll leave an info-card hanging on your door. The “blue” area will be tackled first, starting within the next couple weeks (loosely described, this includes parts of Seaview, Morgan Junction, Genesee Hill, and most of Beach Drive); City Light managers say the work will last about two months before they move on to the areas on the map in orange. The only significant section stretching east of California Ave is south of Fairmount Park; one spur that travels almost all the way to the eastern edge of West Seattle is along Brandon. If you have a tree that’s within 10 feet of a power line, you will be offered the option of pruning (which in most cases will entail fairly dramatic branch removal) or taking out the tree entirely (and replacing it with something unlikely to grow into the line). And it’s all in the interest of preventing further power-outage catastrophes like what happened around West Seattle in the December 2006 windstorm; trees too close to power lines, City Light says, are the number one cause.
Housing is a popular theme around here this week (and many weeks). Tonight we welcome a real-estate agent listing a West Seattle home, and we welcome an ad for new apartment homes in The Junction. First, the home: Jayson Cantu from Windermere R/E Wall Street has listed a home at 4415 SW Stevens — a sketch of it is part of his ad in our right sidebar. You can see a photo gallery at Jayson’s website (click here); you can call him at 206/851-1147. Now, the apartments — The MD is a brand-new apartment building “in the heart of The Junction,” now leasing 1-bedroom and 2-bedroom units; The MD too has lots of info online (click here). Thanks to Jayson and The MD Apartments for supporting WSB; if you’re interested in finding out how to join them and our other sponsors, here’s the page to see.
At least one community-group mailing list that we are on has just received a letter from the principal of Chief Sealth High School, John Boyd, in which he writes, “I feel like I cannot remain silent regarding my feelings about this issue any longer,” adding that he is “weighing the merits of options two and three” — two is the current project plus at least $5 million additional improvements to CSHS, three is a Denny rebuild on its existing site, with Sealth still getting some improvements. Here’s the letter as it was distributed; or if you have trouble with PDFs, here’s the text:Read More
Lora Lewis from Hotwire Coffee, WSB’s inaugural sponsor, just e-mailed to say: “We’ve just finalized a purchase of a coffee shop at the Pike Place Market; opening of the new Hotwire Pike Place Market will be the first week of March. My manager, Rena Poppell, has decided to jump into the world of small business ownership and will be opening this shop under the Hotwire name. This new location actually eclipses other Internet Cafes in the area and will make Hotwire the largest line of Internet coffee shops in the region. Also, by the middle of 2008 we’ll be set to offer Hotwire as a micro-franchise to people who are interested in opening their own Hotwire Online Coffeehouse.” Lora says you can find out more about franchising by checking the links on the lower-right side of the Hotwire home page (higher up the page, by the way, is the latest on the Hotwire Valentine matchmaking event).
The jury is now deciding the case of the two former Huling Brothers sales staffers. A court clerk says they got the case just after 2pm. That means defense testimony lasted just one day.
4PM UPDATE: The jury has gone home; they’ll be back in the morning.
For those following this internationally publicized case — according to the P-I’s Big Blog, Arbor Heights resident Edda Mellas, mother of tabloid-featured Italy murder suspect Amanda Knox, gave her first major interview to ABCNEWS, airing this Friday night.
In addition to the Seattle City Light tree-trimming meeting mentioned earlier, there’s another major event in West Seattle tonight — the second “open house” about the forthcoming RapidRide bus service, to replace route 54 in 2011. Though it’s three years out, several key decisions are being made now — with your input — including the route it will follow through and near The Junction, where its “terminals” (more than just bus stops, as shown above) will be, and where it will end (Morgan Junction? Fauntleroy? Westwood Village?) — and you can tell Metro what you think, as well as voice other opinions and ask questions, when you drop by the “open house” at the West Seattle Senior Center tonight, any time between 5:30 and 8:30. (Detailed WSB coverage of the RapidRide presentation at the last JuNO meeting is here; our brief writeup of last week’s RapidRide open house in Fauntleroy is here. If you miss tonight, you have two more chances — an “information table” at the Senior Center noon-3 pm tomorrow, and a meeting at the Southwest Library on Feb. 19th. You can also have a say by completing an online questionnaire here; deadline is this Friday.)
We checked with Lt. Steve Paulsen @ the Southwest Precinct this morning regarding two things around midnight last night — 
one that we heard on the scanner, one that a reader asked about. First, a report of possible gunshots heard in the California/Stevens vicinity (map) — he says police got a couple calls, checked it out; couldn’t find any evidence of what it was (could have been fireworks, hard to tell). Second, police recovered a stolen car after an operation that was quite interesting to listen to on the scanner: a Mercedes originally stolen from Tukwila was spotted in High Point, then at the 7-11 at 35th/Avalon, then Lt. Paulsen himself — out on late-night patrol — spotted it on Sylvan Way — after setting up “containment,” officers caught one suspect near 42nd/Fauntleroy, then recovered the car near 36th/Graham.
UPDATED 9:50 AM: Better photo from Bob Bollen (thank you!), followed by 40 seconds of video we went back to get right around the peak tide (about quarter past nine).
ORIGINAL POST:
This photo’s from just after 8 o’clock, and the high tide won’t even peak till just after 9 o’clock. But if you go out to gawk, wear something waterproof – the spray will get you all the way across the street from the water!
No snow, but there’s a strong breeze buffeting trees around, at least where we are — and that, according to Seattle City Light, 
is the number one cause of power outages: trees vs. power lines. As first reported here last month, City Light crews are coming to West Seattle soon for what the utility says is the first extensive round of tree-trimming here in almost a decade – and if you have a tree that’s in the way, NOT cutting is NOT an option — so SCL really wants to make sure everyone understands what’s going on here, before the trucks show up, and why the cuts tend to be big and dramatic, not just a snip here and a snip there. Best place to find out exactly what will happen and when – and to see if your specific neighborhood is included in what City Light’s announcement two weeks ago described as “Alki and North Admiral west of California Avenue in the north end of West Seattle and Genesee, Gatewood and Fairmount Park neighborhoods in the south end of West Seattle” – is to go to tonight’s meeting, 6:30 pm, Hiawatha Community Center.
During our discussion of townhouse design standards last Friday, ignited by Southwest 
Design Review Board member (and West Seattle architect) David Foster‘s investigation of micropermitting (first report here; City Council President reaction here), it was suggested we should photograph some of the townhouse projects. So we did. Please keep in mind that unless otherwise noted, these are NOT examples of the practice he is concerned about – instead, the thought here was JUST to take a look at townhouse faces for some of the larger, newer groupings, for anyone interested in seeing examples of current West Seattle townhouse construction, somewhat side-by-side. Here’s a sample from a weekend morning drive: (PS: TUESDAY MORNING ADDITIONS AT BOTTOM OF POST)Read More
OK, doubters win on this one. National Weather Service is out with the new “forecast discussion” which pulls back the snow forecast for just about everywhere but Whatcom County and cancels the snow advisory. Sorry, West Seattle kids, looks like school tomorrow.
From the WSB inbox, sent earlier today by AlkiMac:
I found a dead full grown harbor seal on Alki’s south beach. It’s near the high tide mark at the Constellation Park & Marine Reserve at Richey Viewpoint. It’s partially decomposed. No telling how it died.
This gives us reason to remind you that there is a hotline to call if you spot a dead or possibly-in-trouble marine mammal — as we learned from Herongrrl‘s comment on this post — 206/526-6733.
From our latest review of reports at the Southwest Precinct (which, if you’re new here, is the “police station” for West Seattle, at Delridge/Webster by Home Depot): We start with a suspected drunk driver caught asleep at the wheel — in his Oldsmobile Cutlass, motor running, blocking an intersection. This happened after 3 am Saturday at 25th/Cloverdale. Officers woke the 26-year-old man up; one of his breath tests came in at two and a half times the level officially defined as DUI. Next — how a police car wound up with its back window smashed out:Read More
Problem #1: Stalled semitruck on westbound West Seattle Bridge just before 99, so if you catch the bridge from I-5, this may affect you.
Problem #2: Some southbound viaduct delays because of a car fire.
The weather, meantime, no problem at the moment …
This is unfolding in Magnolia but we suspect (given the comment tangent here) that many people in West Seattle are watching this — we certainly are — given the fact our peninsula is similar to theirs — large parks, greenbelts, wildlife including coyotes. No military housing here, though. Anyway, thought you might want to know there’s been a new development – no trapping OR shooting the controversial coyote for at least a week.
Seems the Charlestown Cafe/Petco project (most recent WSB update here; we checked directly with Petco a few weeks ago and they had nothing new to report) isn’t the only thing proceeding at a snail’s pace at California/Charlestown. That’s also the case for the determination of the fate of the brick apartments (file photo above) at 3811 California, which were pre-mourned by us and others when we first reported the surfacing last April of a proposal to replace them with a mixed-use building. A tenant’s tip back in October (WSB coverage here) revealed that the city Landmarks Preservation Board would have to evaluate the buildings before the proposal could advance. We just checked back with the Landmarks Board and the status of that part of the process hasn’t changed since October — Beth Chave tells WSB they “do not yet have a complete nomination application for this property, so it has not been scheduled for a review by the Landmarks Preservation Board.” (If and when the nomination paperwork is done, the site will eventually turn up here.) And the city planner assigned to the proposed mixed-use project, Holly Godard, says the final land-use decision on this site can’t be issued till the Department of Neighborhoods (parent of the Landmark Board) review is done.
Just out of the WSB inbox, from Mark in the Admiral District:
Last week, a contractor of mine was doing some work at my house noticed a red Ford F-350 extended cab, with Oregon license plates (starting in 101) stop in front of my house with 4 people in it. One of them was inspecting my contractor’s truck and detached trailer when my contractor asked what they were doing. They pretended to be an “automobile dent repair company” and asked if he was interested in getting a dent removed from his truck, when they were clearly looking at possible ways to take his trailer. Please keep a close eye out for this truck.
Obviously, these folks could have been legit (so we have not included the entire license # from Mark’s note) but he was concerned enough to want to let others know, so we are passing it along.
The National Weather Service updated its forecast late this morning; a “snow advisory” is now up for the entire metro area through 7 o’clock tomorrow morning. The “forecast discussion” suggests there’s a chance the commute could be messy – we’ll keep eyes/ears on viaduct/bridge/WS conditions so you can check here before leaving work.
Went to the King County Courthouse this morning to check on the trial of ex-Huling Brothers sales staffers Adrian “AG” Dillard and Ted Coxwell, 
since we hadn’t heard anything since testimony began 10 days ago. While we were in the courtroom, the prosecution rested its case; the defense planned to start calling witnesses later this morning. DETAILS ADDED @ NOON: The last two prosecution witnesses, called while we were there, had testified earlier, but were brought back for more questioning — one was a former Huling employee, the other a Seattle Police detective. Fairly technical stuff — the ex-employee was asked this morning to identify various spots on photographs of the then-Huling dealership property and the apartment building where the victim in the case lived; the detective was asked about records showing vehicles owned by co-defendant Coxwell. We’ll keep checking on the trial as it proceeds in the courtroom of Superior Court Judge Nicole MacInnes in the days to come.
As some comments have pointed out here, parts of West Seattle got a dusting of snow early this morning. Certainly a spotty snowfall — the photo above is barely a block east of us, along 42nd in Upper Fauntleroy, but there’s nothing on our street surface, just a thin layer on the car tops. Forecast calls for more tonight. 8:55 AM P.S. Looking ahead — a city news release reminds us that if you have a “street-condition emergency,” the number for reporting it is 386.1218.
SUMMER THEATER SIGNUPS: ArtsWest’s Musical Theater Conservatory for 12-16-year-olds is doing “Pippin” this year; signups start today.
SUSTAINABLE WEST SEATTLE: Annual meeting, 7 pm @ Camp Long. More info here.
To see what’s happening later this week – such as the City Light meeting tomorrow about where crews will soon be trimming MANY trees in West Seattle — check the WSB Events list.
This time, it’s not another mixed-use development — it’s the West Seattle Christian Church (WSB sponsor) multipurpose building, which will be available for community use as well as church functions, with auditorium, gymnasium, and banquet-type space. Construction begins Wednesday, but the first symbolic shovel of dirt was turned at a brief ceremony today:
Participants in today’s ceremony included representatives of several generations of WSCC church members, from someone who just joined 2 months ago, to someone who’s been attending for more than 60 years. And the project’s been a while in the making, according to Allan Weber:
You can find out more about the project here; the city project page has the bullet-point facts (height, square footage). WSCC is on the southeast corner of 42nd and Genesee (map).
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