West Seattle, Washington
18 Monday
In our spot checks within the past 12 hours, Delridge Arco (left) is now matching Admiral/Cali Chevron at $3.17, the lowest posted WS price for regular that we’ve seen. Several others are close – Charlestown/Cali 7-11 is down to $3.18, and the Fauntleroy/Alaska stations were below $3.20 when last we looked.
In southeast WS, a sensor is tracking earth movement, and this story says that it’s moving northeast at a rate of up to four inches a decade. Scientists are keeping an eye on it and dozens of others around the NW in hopes they may get some clues about predicting earthquakes. If you want to know every geeky little thing about this site, including its latitude/longitude, go here and click on its log (symbol “SMAI”); you can also look at its charts here (choosing SMAI from the left-side menu). By the way, if you ever want to see a map of the most recent NW earthquakes (hours/days/weeks ago), keep this site handy.
You are, if you expect the ravaged roadway of Sylvan/Orchard (east of High Point and home to the sign at left) to be all good as new once the upcoming closure is through. Nope, just a short stretch, reiterates the project spokesperson in today’s Herald.
Just discovered that All the Best Pet Care has rented part of the former Alki Market space next to Cactus, and the locally based folks who own the chain confirm it. They say they’re hoping to open by mid-July, depending on how the permit process goes; owner/founder Susan Moss adds, “We are SOOO excited because West Seattle is such a vibrant community and the beach location we snagged is so lovely!” — and she says she has hired an Alki resident to manage the store. One more thing — Moss is looking for input on what would be ideal hours for the Alki store to be open; she says they were thinking 10 am-7 pm but wondering if the Alki-area lifestyle might be conducive to something different –leave comments on this post and we’ll make sure she sees them!
-Funny, we were just talking about Fauntleroy Place: A city council committee agenda that just landed in our inbox mentions a “possible vote” next Monday morning regarding the “alley vacation” that is a key part of the FP project.
-Another council committee has a briefing at 2 pm today regarding the latest version of the citywide skatepark plan. Two (updated from first version of this post; thanks to the reader who corrected us) proposed WS skateparks are currently on the list: Roxhill and Delridge.
-The city kicked off a push for low-flow showerheads today. If you haven’t tried ’em, you might be surprised. We converted to one during a remodel a few years back and it’s really not that dramatic a change.
A sign for Heliotrope Architects just turned up in the window of the future Spring Hill (north end of The Junction, ex-In Bloom). That led us to a page on Heliotrope’s site providing a peek at what’s in progress (it’s a flash site so no direct link; go here, click IN-PROGRESS, then click SPRING HILL RESTAURANT). Further investigation of info from that site led to another one declaring Spring Hill seeks to “redefine the French bistro in Seattle.”
Feels like West Seattle’s resident bald eagles have been more visible this year than ever. And tonight, a couple examples of photographic proof: First, a photo sent to us by reader Marci, taken recently just west of The Junction:
Second, Rhonda @ Beach Drive Blog posted some great eagle pix (and heron pix too) from her neck of the woods shore. These beautiful birds’ prevalence here is still a miracle, given the state of their species not that long ago.
New paving alert just out from the city for tomorrow and Friday, 9 am-4 pm each day, in the vicinity of West Marginal/Chelan.
A WSB reader wrote with this alert for everybody else out there — gas-siphoners were at work sometime overnight in the 46th/Brandon vicinity. Even with prices dropping, guess it’s still a temptation … if you don’t have a garage, a lock-equipped gas cap might not be a bad investment.
Which we have been, extensively … Here’s an ad for a single-family home in WS, less than $300K — with a furnace that runs on biodiesel, even! Open house this weekend but you gotta wonder if it’ll last that long. (And here’s one even cheaper.)
Put “Rat City Rollergirls” and “rummage sale” in the same sentence and you just know it’s gonna be something good. Not only are they having one at the Alki Bathhouse this Sunday, but right this very moment (or any time between now and then) you are invited to donate items for it … the dropoff address (in White Center) is in this LJ post.
This Times article about a shelved QFC project in North Seattle got us thinking, again, about the pending supermarket projects here in WS. We dug back to last July to revisit this P-I article that included developers’ hopes that both the 4100 Alaska project (reportedly with QFC) 
and the Fauntleroy Place project at the Schuck’s/Hancock corner (left), with Whole Foods, would both have begun construction by now. In reality – 4100 Alaska has gone through demolition, but the rest of the pre-construction process isn’t done yet; the next Design Review Board meeting about it is one week from Thursday. And Fauntleroy Place is still making its way through the city-permitting process; its website now says construction is expected to start by “mid-2007” (late summer/early fall was mentioned in this Herald story a few months ago).
Last weekend, we mentioned the jump-started campaign of Steve Sundquist for the WS-district Seattle School Board seat that Irene Stewart is relinquishing. The online campaign-filings list (which will be updated all week till the filing deadline Friday afternoon) now shows Sundquist has a challenger, Dan Dempsey. Can’t find an official campaign site for him but this appears to be a site he maintains. Meantime, the other WS-centered political position we’ll be voting for this year is King County Council District 8; incumbent Dow Constantine appears not to have filed papers as of this evening but had a campaign kickoff lunch today, so it’s a good bet he’ll be back on the ballot.
Just saw channel 7 in The Junction outside West 5 to present coverage of tonight’s City Council nightlife-ordinance hearing; the story’s not on their website as of this writing, but you can read about what happened (minus the WS angle) at the P-I site. Also at Slog, where Skylark gets a shoutout.
We’ve mentioned both of these before but now they’re almost here, both happening tomorrow night, and in a time frame that easily facilitates a visit to both:
– “NEIGHBORS IN BUSINESS” OPEN HOUSE: It’s your one-stop-shopping chance to find out more about dozens of businesses in the West Seattle and White Center area. Reps from more than 40 local businesses will gather at the Brockey Conference Center of South Seattle Community College (which really is in WS; here’s a handy campus map) from 5-8 pm tomorrow. Door prizes and food, too!
– CHIEF SEALTH IB ACCREDITATION CELEBRATION: If you drop by “Neighbors in Business” early enough, you can make it over to this event at Camp Long from 7-9 pm tomorrow. It’s a community celebration of Chief Sealth High School’s accreditation for the prestigious International Baccalaureate program, with music by the Sealth mariachi band, and dessert.
Progress on two in-the-works coffee shops within a mile of each other on Delridge: First, the coffee-shop-in-progress at 5605 Delridge now has a name on its awning – “Pacino’s Coffee.” Second, at 4800 Delridge, exterior work is mostly done (photo below) at the sister shop to Bubbles on Alki; a WSB reader tells us she stopped in recently and heard they hope to open by month’s end, offering savory treats (crepes, sandwiches) as well as coffee & bubble tea.
At least two WS gas stations are down below $3.20 this morning: Admiral/Cali Chevron (left) at $3.17/regular, and Delridge Arco, which had a worker out changing the signs (all four of them; tough job to have to switch numbers on up to twelve displays every time there’s a price change!) to $3.19/regular as of about half an hour ago.
There is a problem with people making illegal U-turns on Harbor Island near the “low bridge,” according to the P-I traffic troubleshooting column. (We had trouble placing the location so here’s a better map.) If this is something you do regularly, you’ll want to know that the city says, in the P-I column, it’ll be changing the curbing again soon to try to stop the U-turners.
… an hour or so after that evening cloudburst, this oddly creased cloud formation turned up in the eastern sky (view from Westwood). Can’t find any clue as to its meteorological backstory.
Just 3 weeks ago, we mentioned it looked like Seattle Music Fest at Alki would return this year; its website indicated dates were set. Now (thanks to reader e-mail for the tip), it’s suddenly off again (though the SMF website insists dates are set for 2008). However, fans of live outdoor music should still get a treat during Summer Fest in The Junction in mid-July (in fact, tomorrow is when they’re supposed to start notifying acts accepted for the festival).
If you haven’t checked out the comments on our post below – note that readers have revealed a brand-new, huge condo conversion in the works at the Graham Street Apartments just north of Morgan Junction, on the southeast corner of Cali/Graham. As first posted by Sue, here’s the property sale record (almost $9 million) finalized just a few days ago; here’s the condo conversion application noted on the city site.
Meantime, for those joining us in keeping track, here are a few of the other “multifamily” buildings currently listed for sale in WS, with links to the listings:
–West Aires, 6001 Cali, $2.2 million
–Riviera West, 7100 Cali, listed as “pending,” with “condo declarations in place,” $1.9 million (next to SeventyOne)
–Apartment/commercial building on Cali, south edge of The Junction, (with some units described as “condo quality”), $1.3 million
–5000 Fauntleroy, “pending,” $1.2 million
We usually find out about impending teardowns-to-townhomes by watching the city permit process. Today, though, we’ve got one that came to our attention from the people who are getting the boot before the backhoe shows up: the current renters of a doomed brick duplex along Fauntleroy, a couple who moved here from back east last year, and like so many of us, fell madly in love with WS. They aren’t ready to buy; one of them is in grad school. But now they’re on notice they’ve got to be out by the end of this month. There’s one instructive thing about their story; first, here’s a photo they kindly sent of their soon-to-be-ex-duplex …
The tenants note in their e-mail to us: “We rent through a property management company and didn’t know, till now, who the owner was — it’s Soleil Development.” (Which has other WS projects, including this one.) We checked property records for their address; Soleil technically didn’t take ownership till last winter, after these tenants moved in; but before their arrival last August, it was purchased last June by Dan Duffus, Soleil’s owner. So perhaps it would be worthwhile for would-be renters to use this site to check who owns their prospective new home; if it’s a development company, or someone you can easily see in search engines is linked to one, know you might not live there for long.
| 2 COMMENTS