West Seattle, Washington
27 Saturday
Online and in “ballot boxes” placed at West Seattle businesses, hundreds of people offered suggestions for the Sidewalk Cinema Movies on the Wall series in The Junction coming up in July and August — now Lora Lewis, proprietor of Hotwire Coffee (WSB sponsor), which is next to the courtyard with the big screen you see above, confirms the slate is set — read on:Read More
#1: Delridge Library is a “homework help” hotspot all school year long. 5:30 tonight, you’re invited to go thank the volunteers who’ve provided that help, and celebrate the impending end of the school year.
#2: Westwood Neighborhood Council gets a Denny/Sealth project update tonight, 7 pm, Southwest Community Center, and also plans to take up the issue of those two city-jail sites proposed for southeast West Seattle.
#3: Admiral Neighborhood Association gets updates on projects including a potential playground proposal, 7 pm, Admiral UCC.
#4: Fauntleroy Community Association — monthly meeting night for FCA too, 7 pm, Fauntleroy Schoolhouse.
Many more West Seattle events, stretching from tonight well into next year, are on our frequently updated Events page.
That’s Matt Swenson from the Pigeon Point Neighborhood Council, presenting a check Monday night to Cooper Elementary principal Cathy Rutherford during PPNC’s monthly meeting at the school. As reported in this month’s edition of the Pigeon Point newsletter (read it here), the Pigeon Point sale that was part of last month’s WSB-presented West Seattle Community Garage Sale Day brought in almost $800 to be donated to Cooper. Next WSCGSD is May 9, 2009; long before then, Pigeon Point will be inviting you to a big event of its own — its first Fall Festival, on the drawing boards now for a September Saturday TBA.
(scroll down/refresh for the latest, we are adding updates and pix to the bottom of this post)
(added 9:35 pm: photo of Admiral Safeway service station, which is dark though the nearby store is not)
ORIGINAL REPORT: Just collecting info on this – Seattle City Light has very broad boundaries for what it describes as an “Alki outage,” while e-mail we’ve received describes it as North Admiral. More to come. 9:10 PM UPDATE: City Light says this is one of several outages affecting more than 10,000 homes and businesses in different areas of the city – here’s an excerpt from a news release received minutes ago:
Seattle City Light repair crews were responding to several scattered power outages throughout the utility’s service territory … after steady winds approached 35 mph.
By 8:30 p.m. about 12,000 customers were affected by the outages in Tukwila, unincorporated King County, Alki Beach and the Sacajawea neighborhood of northeast Seattle.
The specific causes of the outages were not immediately known. Until crews discovered the cause, it was impossible to provide an estimate for when power might be restored. Additional crews were being called in to
help restore power.
A WSB team member is heading north to report back on who’s out and who’s not; we’ll also be checking with City Light for progress reports. 9:20 PM UPDATE: We’re collecting weather links too. Here’s the hourly observations from the National Weather Service — “K91S” is Alki Point, with 34 mph sustained at 9 pm. Thanks to Lou for including this live weather link from Our Lady of Guadalupe (near High Point) in comments. 9:22 PM UPDATE: On California, the outage starts north of Admiral Safeway (which has power), and continues north to Walker (map). We’re checking east and west boundaries – stand by — to the east, Jack in the Box is dark; more to come. 9:27 PM UPDATE: Power is out along Admiral all the way downhill to The Bridge, according to our roving reporter, who is now heading west on Admiral to see how far it stretches toward Alki/Beach Drive. Keep the updates coming in comments – where Pete has reported downed-tree trouble in Pigeon Point – thanks! 9:33 PM UPDATE: On the west side, the outage ends at about 45th SW/Admiral – if you know of any pockets west of there that are out, please post a comment or e-mail us. Note that in the outage zone, businesses that are out include Metropolitan Market and the Admiral Theater. 9:43 PM UPDATE: Avalon is out of power too – up to Genesee (map). That includes the Luna Park Cafe area. 9:50 PM UPDATE: North of Fauntleroy on 35th, power is out on the east side of 35th (and downhill from there), but the west side seems OK. 9:55 PM UPDATE: City Light has put up its webpage with outage info – but the West Seattle boundaries are the same ones listed in the news release which are not the same ones we’ve verified (it mentions Alki Ave but we’re told Alki is OK, for example); it says almost 3,000 homes/businesses are out in West Seattle. Still no estimate on restoring power. 10:03 PM UPDATE: This photo just in from Elena Daly (thank you!), who photographed the seawall wave action at Constellation Park south of Alki Point about an hour ago:
10:12 PM UPDATE: City Light outage hotline has an update of sorts on the West Seattle situation – but there’s no new info – just “no known cause and no known time for restoration.” 10:27 PM UPDATE: Just uploaded this video from Admiral – camera sat on the dash as we drove from the outage zone (alley by Admiral Library, past Metropolitan Market, toward Admiral Safeway gas station) and into the not-out zone (Admiral Safeway itself):
11:04 PM UPDATE: City Light just sent another update but there are no West Seattle specifics; the utility reiterates that it’s called in extra crews and will work through the night as needed. We will continue checking for updates and will also head back out in a bit to see if anyone’s gotten power back in affected West Seattle areas yet. 11:37 PM UPDATE: No new outage info, but the “forecast discussion” promises things will calm down overnight. 12:06 AM UPDATE: Comments probably beat us to this report, but we’re just back from a quick spin through the FORMERLY blacked-out zone, and looks like everyone’s back on.
(photo courtesy Friends of Ercolini Park)
Two updates – first, Friends of Ercolini Park confirms that the official city-involved event to celebrate the park’s opening is now set for 10 am July 12 (but as we’ve reported before, the park and its playground are open now; the city’s working to fix the one last loose end, getting play sand for the pit). Second update — One agenda item for tomorrow night’s Admiral Neighborhood Association meeting involves “a potential new playground on a Parks-owned piece of land at California & Hill immediately adjacent to the UCC Church.” (That church is where the ANA meets tomorrow, 7 pm.)
When last we updated you on the repair work to get the Charlestown Cafe open again — it’s now been four months since fire forced it to close — co-owner Larry Mellum was hoping for a reopening around June 10th. We just checked back with him today, since that date’s almost here; here’s his reply, with two bits of news:
Things are progressing well on our construction. I will try to give you a more specific “reopening” date later this week but we expect to be open before the end of June.
I know many people have asked about our staff and what will happen with them. Last week we held a meeting to get an idea of how many people we will have to replace. Everyone attended!!! So, it looks like we will have a good staff to “reopen” with.
If you want to catch up on all our WSB coverage of the Charlestown Cafe — both the fire situation and the development proposal that had been tabled just before the fire hit — check out this archive.
You’ll hear about this in citywide media but with so much park land and other city property in West Seattle, it seems important to link here too — Mayor Nickels just announced a proposal “to prohibit firearms on all property owned by the city of Seattle, including parks and community centers,” according to the official city news release; read it here. The announcement says a public hearing is planned, but also notes that City Council approval is not required for the rules the mayor wants to put in place. You can send comments to the mayor’s office here.
Caught this photo around noon while heading to the West Seattle YMCA (WSB sponsor), where we had the chance to chat with a great group of seniors interested in hearing the latest on WS development and other happenings. (When we headed back the other way, the lights themselves were back under wraps.) Previous WSB coverage of the Fauntleroy/Dawson signal is here and here.
Never mind the clouds and mist and drizzle, Pathfinder K-8 students were out walking laps this morning on their Genesee Hill campus to show support for PE teacher Lou Cutler (left) as he celebrates his birthday the same way he does every year – doing those laps to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which helps grant wishes for kids with life-threatening illnesses. He does one lap for every year he’s been alive – that’s 57 this year, about 10 miles! This year’s run is also a tribute to 9-year-old Maddy Murakami, a West Seattle girl who died in April; Pathfinder PTSA co-president Eric Baer says, “Lou worked with her and managed to get her wish granted – she wanted to meet Ashley of High School Musical.” We’ll share the results of today’s walk – past editions have raised thousands of dollars for Make-A-Wish — when we get the word from Pathfinder.
Just in case you were wondering: Middle College High School, which is based at South Seattle Community College, has its graduation there at 7 pm Wednesday; West Seattle High School‘s ceremony is at 5 pm Thursday (at Memorial Stadium); Seattle Lutheran High School‘s graduation is 7:30 pm Thursday; Chief Sealth High School‘s ceremony is scheduled for 1 pm Saturday.
We usually crop the rear-view mirror out of “taken from the car” photos. However, the above shot seemed to capture the flavor of our drive-by survey of West Seattle gas prices late last night. It shows the station that now has the highest WS price for regular – $4.33 @ 35th/Barton Exxon. Just ahead – the full West Seattle survey, which now includes a map as well as the text list of current and past prices:Read More
As the WSB Forums have continued to grow in the past few months, thanks to you, we’ve become increasingly aware of — and embarrassed by — one pesky problem: 
The on-site search function just wouldn’t bring up forum posts along with items from the rest of the site. And the more great stuff you contributed to the WSB Forums, the more intolerable this problem became – so we’re trying an interim fix: a search widget we just put up in place of the old search box. You’ll see it right where the old search box used to be — atop the right sidebar on every WSB page. It uses Google Search to search all WSB pages, forums included, and the search result page will look like Google, except that you’ll see a small WSB logo atop the page; if the search results don’t point you to the page(s) you’re looking for, click that logo to get back to the WSB home page. We’re not so sure this is the perfect permanent solution, but since it definitely searches forum pages as well as the rest of the site, that means you have a better chance of finding what you’re looking for, which is what really matters. Thanks again for being part of WSB; we’re continuing to work on other features to better serve your West Seattle-related online needs, too.
Two notes on the fight over whether the city will build a new misdemeanor-offenders jail on one of 2 sites in southeast West Seattle, a site elsewhere in the city, or not at all: First, the mailing list for project info got an update today, noting that the city’s Municipal Jail web section has several new links. We’ve already told you about two of them — a summary of interviews with community leaders before the four “finalist” sites were chosen, and the announcement of upcoming public meetings. The others include: Collections of comments the city already has received online (broken out by day); questions city reps have been asked at meetings including May 20 in Highland Park (no answers yet, those are promised later; here’s the WSB coverage of that meeting); an aerial photo of the King County Regional Justice Center in Kent which the city calls “an example of how a jail can be a good neighbor”; a federal study of crime rates in neighborhoods with jails. Meantime, the next West Seattle meeting to take up the jail issue will be the 34th District Democrats‘ monthly meeting this Wednesday night, 7 pm, The Hall @ Fauntleroy.
Noticed these signs along the west side of California SW just north of Morgan Junction – between Graham and Raymond (map). The “no parking” warning kicks in tomorrow and the project is described on the signs as “sidewalk restoration.” (There’s also a stack of “businesses open during construction” signs ready to go, too.)
This is just across the city-limits line, which is usually the line for our coverage, but we and many other West Seattleites do business in White Center too — so when this just turned up in our inbox, trumpeting the forthcoming opening of Full Tilt Ice Cream at 9629 16th SW (map), we thought you might be interested — read the business owners’ full news release ahead; they also have a MySpace site (more details there on vegan offerings):Read More
In late April, we showed you those early designs for “wayfinding kiosks” as part of the West Seattle Trails project; it’s been about a week since distribution started for the walking map that’s also part of the project. This weekend, Chas Redmond confirmed to WSB that he’s just received a letter from city Department of Neighborhoods director Stella Chao with notification that the first phase of the project “has been recommended for an award of $99,916” from the Neighborhood Matching Fund – the full amount that was being sought for the first round of kiosks. The City Neighborhood Council will review that recommendation at a meeting down a week from tomorrow; the mayor’s office then review it before forwarding it to the City Council for approval, which should happen by the end of September. Redmond says this “is a very big plus for the project.” (More background here.)
Sunday morning means time for the West Seattle Farmers’ Market fresh sheet — here you go:Read More
That’s a quick video pan of the lively crowd tonight at South Seattle Community College‘s Brockey Center, where almost 300 people gathered for the annual ArtsWest Gala. We dropped by just in time to hear the big news – AW is “debt-free” for the first time since opening in fall 1999. And its newest capital campaign is already three-fourths of the way to its goal — “Full Speed Ahead” has received more than $460,000 from city/county/state government and foundations, and just needs $166K from the public – here’s the slide shown to the crowd:
The money will go toward capital improvements like new seats, infrastructure improvements like a full-time box office, and “artistry” endeavors — in particular, ArtsWest leaders said, “a living wage for artists.” If you want to help ArtsWest reach its goal, you can make a donation through this page on the AW website.
That’s the sign on the sidewalk outside Skylark, which is throwing itself a 2nd-anniversary bash tonight (live music started at 9; we’ve always got the acts listed on each week’s West Seattle Weekend Lineup). Also worth noting, Capers in The Junction (which joined the list of WSB sponsors this week) is celebrating its 23rd anniversary with a major sale that kicked off yesterday.
(the street view of some of the townhomes that are almost complete on the ex-Guadalajara Hacienda site)
… if they can evolve from the form shown above. By most accounts at this morning’s townhouse forum, an official meeting of City Councilmember Sally Clark‘s Planning, Land Use, and Neighborhoods Committee held at the Capitol Hill Arts Center, townhouses themselves are not inherently evil. “There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with” them, Clark said in her opening remarks. However, the current form so many of them take — and if you think West Seattle has its share, it’s nothing like some of the photos shown of sprawling blocks of them in the North End — is primarily blamed on the city code, which as reported here and elsewhere, may soon be changed. Clark half-joked that the topic was a sneaky way to engage citizens with those upcoming revision proposals, saying at the start, “this is a way to keep people from getting narcoleptic about the Multifamily Code.” Definitely not a sleep-inducing event. Our full story, ahead:Read More
Thanks to “dq” for sharing that photo taken Thursday near Seacrest … a welcome sight to those who are not necessarily fans of the relentless grayness. (“Partly sunny” is in tomorrow’s forecast right now, but we’ve heard THAT before …)
Till 3 pm today – those are some of the adoptable heart-stealers King County Animal Services has brought to the Furry Faces Foundation plant sale at 3809 46th SW (map). The sale’s continuing till 4 and is running again tomorrow, but the critters are only there today, and only till 3.
We’re at the Capitol Hill Arts Center for the “Townhomes: Can the Patient Be Saved?” forum. Glad we’re here, definitely some West Seattle-related players on the roster — local architect and Design Review Board member Brandon Nicholson, developer Dan Duffus (whose name has appeared on many a townhouse permit in WS), several councilmembers including of course Sally Clark who called the event and West Seattle-dwelling Councilmember Tom Rasmussen. Not planning to liveblog it – will add a complete report later – but if anything incredibly newsworthy happens, we’re online and will add here as it happens. 1:52 PM UPDATE: The forum wrapped up around quarter past twelve; we are working on our article – no stunning revelations but quite the range of viewpoints about how to “save” the “patient” (and a couple suggestions to “kill” it, as Clark joked at the start of the session), including thoughtful and thought-provoking proposals for what Townhouses, The Next Generation might and should look like. More in a bit.
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