Fire call in The Junction; traffic alert on Delridge
FIRE CALL: Address is 4719 California SW, which checks to Taqueria Guaymas but we’re hearing scanner traffic also discussing Husky Deli. En route to check it out. Traffic note – There’s only one lane open in that block of California, between Alaska and Edmunds. Avoid TFN. ADDED 4:12 PM: Apparently it’s a possible heater fire in Poggie Tavern, maybe on the roof. We’re checking on how, if, adjacent businesses are affected. (Just heard fire crews on the scanner say they’ve made it into the attic and can’t find signs of fire/smoke yet.) ADDED 4:19 PM: Poggie patrons tell co-publisher Patrick that it started with a smell of smoke detected in the tavern and in Guaymas – someone called the Fire Department, which continues to try to figure out where that’s coming from, but no one seems to have been evacuated, the businesses remain open.
TRAFFIC ALERT: Thanks to Bogie for texting to warn “people heading home” about a precariously positioned tree on Delridge near Dawson (map), “looks like a car may have hit it” … We’ll be checking that out too.
2 notes from West Seattle High School: Play tonight, 5/31 run
OPENING NIGHT: Thanks to those who’ve e-mailed us to say tonight’s opening night for the three-night run of West Seattle High School‘s student-directed plays “Reverse Transcription” and “No Exit,” 7:30 pm tonight, Friday, and Saturday in the WSHS Theater (tickets $5 at the door).
5/31 RUN – AND MORE? Checking the WSHS website, we noticed something that’s interesting for more than 1 reason:
Save the Date! WSHS PTSA 5K Fun Run/Walk on May 31, 2009
This fun community event will be held in partnership with the City of Seattle and their “Summer Streets” (car-free) day on Alki. Mark your calendars, tell your family and friends, and get ready for a healthy start to summer at Seattle’s most beautiful park, West Seattle’s own Alki Beach. Watch Westside Notes and this website [WSHS site] for more information about how to sign up!
First we’d heard of a date being set for a Car-Free Day this year (here’s our coverage of last September’s Alki Car-Free Day). Will be pursuing more information from the city; we had noted that a “Summer Streets” briefing was on the agenda for the February 12th Parks Board meeting. Meantime, discovered something ELSE – till February 6, you can take this online survey to tell the city what you thought of the 2008 Car-Free Days. THURSDAY NIGHT UPDATE: The mayor’s office confirms there is a “Celebrate Seattle Streets” event in West Seattle on May 31st. More details to come.
Welcoming a new WSB sponsor: Snap Fitness
Today we’re welcoming one of our newest sponsors: Snap Fitness, 
which recently opened in Jefferson Square. Owners Jim Flynn and MJ Benavente (left) – who live in Gatewood – say there’s lots of gyms out there you could join, but they think Snap is the best because of their philosophy that exercise should complement your health. MJ says her background in medicine taught her one thing – fitness is preventive medicine. She says a regular exercise routine is a proactive way to keep yourself in good health. That’s why she and Jim 
say that Snap Fitness has a numbers of ways to help you stay fit no matter how busy you are. Snap is a no-contract club, offering 24/7 access to the equipment. Snap also believes in reaching out to its members before they get to the gym. Free fitness assessments with a personal trainer are part of your membership package, along with online tips about keeping up good nutrition habits to go along with your workout. Also, Jim says you can get up to speed fast: Snap has trainers who can show you easy routines that you can do on day one. They also offer a 30-day money-back guarantee, and your West Seattle Snap membership lets you use any Snap Fitness center in the US. (Here’s where to look up its other locations.) Not only do Jim and MJ live in West Seattle, they also are members of the West Seattle Junction Association, they’ve volunteered for Community Harvest of Southwest Seattle, and they belong to the Seattle Audubon Society. Snap Fitness is in lower Jefferson Square (map), online at snapfitness.com/seattlewest, or you can call 206-299-1597. Thanks to Snap Fitness for joining the WSB sponsor team; see the full lineup here, same place to find information on becoming part of it.
Seattle school-closure vote tonight: District says it’ll be on TV
If you can’t make it to Seattle Public Schools HQ for tonight’s special school board meeting to vote on the closures/changes plans (and the amendments announced yesterday), district spokesperson Patti Spencer just confirmed it WILL be live on cable channel 26 (no live online stream, though; archived video is posted here later). Live broadcasts are not always availabe for meetings held outside the regular first/third Wednesday framework, so we checked. This meeting will NOT include public comment – the board will consider the amendments, then the plan (whether amended or not) and associated policy changes that would be required for certain proposals to be allowed. The meeting starts at 6 pm; we’ll be posting updates live from district HQ (covering the entire plan, not just the WS aspects, since WS families are involved in other elements such as the APP split too).
Fauntleroy Place update: Project’s being sold
Thanks to Robert for the link – Times reports Fauntleroy Place project is being sold. May explain why BlueStar hadn’t been returning our phone calls/e-mails (though a rep replied Tuesday he’d call Wednesday, and didn’t). Will add any additional details we find; we have a call out to Seattle Capital (described as one of the current co-owners, though county records still list Fauntleroy Place LLC, with BlueStar‘s address, as site owner). As we reported Tuesday, Whole Foods reiterated its commitment to the West Seattle project (but of course that didn’t necessarily imply the developer would remain the same). ADDED 12:51 PM: King County online records show 8 liens related to the property filed in the past month and a half, with parties including construction and engineering firms. Details of the liens are not available online, just the names and dates. ADDED 1:12 PM: For document-reading fans, here’s a copy of the 10-page lease agreement filed last March, between Whole Foods and Fauntleroy Place LLC. ADDED 1:46 PM: Here’s a document that shows FP transferred the Deed of Trust and other key interests to Seattle Capital last June. 3:49 PM UPDATE: Have just heard back both from Seattle Capital via e-mail and BlueStar by phone, writing a separate update, will post the link in this report when it’s done.
West Seattle Crime Watch followup: Burglar’s plea, sentence
Last November, alerted by a hovering helicopter, we reported on the search for, and arrest of, a man who had broken into a Lincoln Park-area home — where a woman and her two children were asleep — shortly after trying to break into the Colman Pool complex in the park. He turned out to be 41-year-old Richard Lovejoy, a registered sex offender (for rape convictions; photo at left was from his page on the sex-offender-search website) from Arbor Heights who also had been convicted previously of burglary, harassment, and drug possession. After covering the original court action in the case in November (WSB report here), we hadn’t followed up till now — and discovered that Lovejoy pleaded guilty to 1 count of burglary (the second was dropped) on December 31st and was sentenced last Friday. Court documents confirm that Lovejoy was sent immediately to prison to begin a sentence of 5 years, 3 months (the lower end of the “standard range” for the crime, 63 to 84 months, per court documents).
Police arrest man for trying to pimp teens at West Seattle motel
Thanks to Trick for pointing out this Times article about prostitution-related arrests in West Seattle earlier this month. Here’s additional information we’ve found on the case: We checked the jail register, and the 33-year-old man arrested for trying to pimp two 15-year-old girls at Seattle West Inn and Suites in the Triangle (West Seattle’s only motel, aka the former Travelodge), Toda M. Robinson, is still behind bars, with bail set at $100,000. We also downloaded the court documents for more details; he is charged with two counts of promoting sexual abuse of a minor, and the documents note that Robinson has an “extensive criminal history” including “at least six crimes of violence.” (The state court-system search engine has 110 results for his name, dating back to 1991, when he would have been as young as the two girls involved in this case.) The court documents say police arranged the location for the sting, booking a room at the motel after answering a CL ad, and made the arrests after Robinson dropped the girls off – they tracked him down in the parking lot of the 35th/Avalon KFC with a 16-year-old girl in the car, which was described as emanating “a strong odor of marijuana.” One of the girls told police that he usually gets half their money and has at least 3 other teenagers and 10 adult prostitutes working for him.
West Seattle Garden Tour: Sponsorship search sprouts
It’s that thrilling time of winter – halfway between last summer’s big events and NEXT summer’s big events. And it’s never too soon to start planning the latter – in fact, it’s sponsor-search time for the West Seattle Garden Tour (photo above is from one of last year’s stops), coming up July 19:
We are actively seeking sponsors for this year’s tour, which will be the 15th Annual Tour, featuring Ciscoe Morris as the guest lecturer. The success of the tour is dependent upon the financial aid and in-kind donations from all of the sponsors, and we hope to make the 15th Annual Tour the most successful yet.
Begun in 1995 as a fundraising event for ArtsWest, the West Seattle Garden Tour has evolved into an annual fundraising event for a variety of non-profit and educational organizations in West Seattle and surrounding communities. The 2008 edition of the West Seattle Garden Tour was one of our most successful, attracting more than 650 tour-goers as well as raising $21,000 for ArtsWest and our specially selected beneficiaries, Multifaith Works, Ethel Dupar Fragrant Garden, Lighthouse for the Blind, Seattle Chinese Garden, and Elisabeth C. Miller Library University of Washington Botanic Gardens.
This year we are offering a variety of levels of sponsorship ranging from $50 to $2500 (event sponsor), details for each of the sponsorship levels can be found on the WSGT website (see those details here).
We hope to secure our major sponsors by March 10, 2009.
The “sponsorship commitment form” can be found here.
West Seattle snow aftermath: Plows on power trucks?
Just back from City Hall, where we tried our best to represent Seattle’s growing online-neighborhood-news industry on a City Council panel discussion (not archived on SeattleChannel.org yet but should be soon), and there’s more post-storm council action to relay: Tomorrow at 2 pm, the Energy and Technology Committee will focus on this aspect of snowstorm response past and future:
Winter Storm Response — Discussion of City Light’s participation in the winter storm response and purchase of snowplow equipment for mounting on existing Seattle City Light trucks. It is in the interest of public safety to improve the City’s ability to clear city streets of snow so that City Light vehicles, fire apparatus, emergency medical units, police cars, ambulances, and other emergency vehicles are able to navigate city streets.
Here’s the full agenda; some interesting technology items too, led by the city’s tech boss Bill Schrier (a West Seattleite). Meantime, Seattle Channel sends an alert that three councilmembers can be seen criticizing the city’s response to last month’s Snowmare during a show that’s available online now or premiering on Cable Channel 21 tonight at 7.
Seattle school-closure-vote countdown: “Amendments” revealed
As first reported during the School Board meeting a week ago, board president Michael DeBell asked his fellow members this: If you’re going to propose any changes to the “final recommendation” for school closure/changes, get them in by yesterday, so they can be made public today (and voted on during the special board meeting tomorrow night). Caveat, board members still COULD propose amendments during tomorrow morning’s meeting, but for now, here are the ones just revealed. They include a proposal to take Genesee Hill off the recommendations, keeping Pathfinder K-8 there, and leaving Cooper Elementary as is; that proposal, included in this document, comes from board member Harium Martin-Morris. West Seattle board member Steve Sundquist has an amendment on the agenda too; it would continue with the move-Pathfinder-to-Cooper plan in the original “final recommendations,” but would set conditions on where the majority of current Cooper students would be reassigned – he proposes splitting them among Gatewood, Highland Park, and Arbor Heights. Of interest to APP families citywide, board member Mary Bass proposes keeping the elementary-level program at Lowell, instead of splitting half (including West Seattle APP elementary students) to another school. The amendments will all be voted on during tomorrow night’s special board meeting, 6 pm, district HQ in Sodo. (In addition to discussion here, there’ll be citywide comment ongoing at saveseattleschools.blogspot.com.)
A name for The Bridge? Proposal to honor Jeanette Williams
Three months ago, former City Councilmember Jeanette Williams 
(seen at left in a city archives photo from 1973) was remembered for accomplishments including fighting to secure federal money to building the high-rise West Seattle Bridge. Now, there’s a campaign to name the bridge in her honor as the Jeanette Williams Memorial Bridge; a resolution supporting the proposal was adopted unanimously at last week’s Seattle Community Council Federation meeting and is circulating among other councils in the city as well (here’s the wording as also recently endorsed in View Ridge, according to SCCF chair Jeannie Hale). City Council approval would be required; no word yet of a timetable for a formal proposal coming before the council, but we asked Councilmember Tom Rasmussen – who got his political start working with Ms. Williams – and he told WSB he’s all for it. We’ll keep you posted. (Maybe it’ll happen in time for the bridge’s 25th anniversary this summer?)
West Seattle Crime Watch: Window followup; another car gone
We showed you that photo Monday, while reporting that West Seattle firefighters helped clean up and secure the area around a big broken window on the west side of a former Huling/Gee storefront on SW Alaska east of Fauntleroy Way. We subsequently checked to see if it was a case of burglary or “just” vandalism; this morning, we have followup information from Southwest Precinct Sgt. Mike Teeter, who summarizes that “a large rock was thrown through the window, but no entry was made.”
Meantime, a new Crime Watch report this morning, from Amy in Gatewood:
My car was stolen from my driveway yesterday sometime between 10 pm Monday evening and 6 am Tuesday morning. I live on the corner of SW Myrtle street and 36th Ave SW [map]. I filed a police report and thankfully my car was found yesterday around 5 pm by the King County Sheriff’s (Office). It was recovered in the South Park area and towed to a Burien lot. They said they had just recovered a similar Honda Accord like mine stolen from the same area. This is the second time my car has been targeted in my neighborhood. Two years ago my stereo was stolen. I think it’s a group of punk kids going for a joy ride. They didn’t take any car parts, just valuables that were in the car, punched out the ignition, stole my stereo again (luckily I carry the face plate with me so it’s useless to them now), and trashed the inside of the car. Just thought people should know about this in case there is anyone else out there who has had the same thing happen around the area.
We’ve received reports both official and unofficial of more than a few car thefts lately, including a “huge spike” in the unincorporated area south of WS, as described by King County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeff Hancock at last week’s White Center Crime Prevention Coalition meeting, but the Southwest Precinct says numbers on this side of the line are not currently higher than usual.
DPD: California Ave “upzone” recommendation finally almost done
When we reported last week on Prudential Northwest Realty moving out of its California SW location, merging with the same-ownership office at Jefferson Square, we got a new round of questions about the “upzoning” proposal for the area in which the now-empty office sits (which also was invoked in the real-estate listing for the Shamrock apartment building, as we reported days before the Prudential story). That proposal to change the zoning along California between Hanford and Hinds (and a bit further south on the west side of the street) to NC2-40 has been in the works for almost 15 months (we broke the story 11/8/07), and it’s been more than half a year since the city started telling us the recommendation was almost ready. And that’s what the city says now; planner Malli Anderson tells WSB, “I expect to complete a draft of the rezone recommendation this week.” Two of her supervisors then review it, including Bob McElhose, who told us, “When we have agreed with the decision and the final edits, it will go to the Hearing Examiner for the open record pre-decision hearing and recommendation, for which there will be notice. Depending on the review of the draft, the notice could go out as early as this Thursday or possibly next week.” (The city’s Land Use Information Bulletin is published Mondays and Thursdays; you can see the latest one here.) Anderson said the notice will “be sent to those who sent comment letters and e-mails or signed the sign-in sheet at the public meeting.” (That’s the public meeting we covered in late November 2007; a month after that meeting, longtime local businessmen Mike Gain and Roger Cayce talked with us about their vision for the area.) No explanation of why it’s taken so long, although planners told us at one point along the way that it’s not unusual for rezoning requests to take more than a year; since the decision here will trigger hearings and comment periods, it’ll be months before anything’s final.
Happening today/tonight: Appraisals; WSB on TV; Morgan meeting
APPRAISALS: Wondering what your treasures are worth? Merrill Gardens at Admiral Heights has an appraisal event today – just about everything but jewelry. 1-3 pm. Check to see if there’s still room to RSVP: (206) 938-3964.
WSB ON TV: Much discussion these days about the evolution of news media, in Seattle and elsewhere, particularly since the P-I’s plight came to light. Today, the topic is tackled by the City Council’s Culture, Civil Rights, Health and Personnel Committee, chaired by Councilmember Nick Licata (vice chair is West Seattle-residing Councilmember Tom Rasmussen). Your editor here is on the panel, to discuss what local independent online neighborhood-news organizations like ours are bringing to the table. It’ll be live on Seattle Channel starting around 2:15-2:30 pm, after a few other agenda items when the committee meeting starts at 2 pm (cable channel 21 or online at seattlechannel.org). Read the latest version of the news release, with the full list of panelists, here. (If you can come to City Hall, a public-comment period is scheduled during the meeting, too.)
MORGAN COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION: Lots on the agenda for the quarterly meeting tonight – 7 pm, The Kenney; see the agenda items at the MoCA website.
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