West Seattle, Washington
12 Friday
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.
(WSB photo taken on Alki, November 2007)
Two more notes this morning on the still-smoldering re-emergence of the notion of banning beach fires on Alki (and at Golden Gardens) — First, City Councilmember Sally Clark has posted a blog entry panning the prospective ban, writing in part:
Let me just say that if there’s one thing I believe it is that we have a God-given right to have bonfires on the beach. Yes, I care about global warming and I believe that we all must make changes small and large in our lives to keep the planet alive. However, I cannot support extinguishing beach bonfires. Beach bonfires are not killing the planet. Hummers, coal-fired power plants, routine air travel, and single-occupancy car commutes are killing the planet.
Second, we’ve now read through the document that’s part of the “briefing” that park commissioners will get this Thursday (read the full document here). Here’s one point that didn’t get much play before Superintendent Tim Gallagher‘s “clarification” announcement late yesterday saying “no action this year”: The list of possible restrictions includes the idea of requiring people to pay for permits to have beach fires. The memo says Parks spends $60,000 a year to manage the beach-fire program and didn’t expect much immediate cost savings even if a ban were implemented: “Even with the cessation of the beach fire programs, park resources maintenance staff will still need to respond to illegal fires with cleanup until the public understands and accepts a no beach fire policy as a logical element of the CAN Initiative.” We sent a note late last night to Superintendent Gallagher to double/triplecheck that his “no action this year” statement meant NONE of these changes would be put in place this year, meaning COMPLETE status quo — he e-mailed back early this morning, “No change this year.” As for what happens for next year and beyond – we’ll keep watch.
Full list in the West Seattle Weekend Lineup; couple of highlights — Freedom Church (35th/Roxbury) is throwing a party 10 am-4 pm and you’re invited — there’s a lot percolating at the ex-Safeway-turned-church site as it builds a “Village of Hope” that eventually is envisioned to include housing and community services; today’s event celebrates their ownership of the site and vision of the future. Meantime, another notable event happens outside West Seattle — City Councilmember Sally Clark (whose recent Junction walking tour was covered here) convenes her “Townhomes – Can the Patient Be Saved?” forum on Capitol Hill at 10 am today (original WSB report here; details from Clark’s site, including location and map, here). Our favorite excerpt from the description on her site — “The morning will start with a few examples of the good, the OK and the fatally wounded.”
L to R in this photo from Seattle Public Schools‘ “School Beat”: Zenaida Lopez and Nita Tino (West Seattle Elementary); Cynthia Linder (Cooper Elementary); Pauline Hance (Highland Park Elementary); Carmen Maymi O’Reilly, Family Support Worker and parent leader trainer; and Ayaan Aden (Cooper).
We often get – and share – info from Seattle Public Schools celebrating achievements by students and teachers. SPS’ latest newsletter also includes this bit of news about what a group of parents — most with ties to West Seattle schools — is doing:
Ten parent leaders at five elementary schools coordinated and implemented more than 22 family engagement events this school year which impacted more than 2,360 family members. Seattle Public Schools’ Readiness To Learn (RTL) project began training parent leaders in 2006 and will have trained 24 by June 2009. Parent leaders are identified by principals and staff, and have natural skills in connecting with others. They receive training in cross-cultural communication, effective leadership, how to help others navigate schools and the critical things parents and families can do to support their children’s school success. Schools with active parent leader programs are: Cooper, Dearborn Park, Highland Park, T.T. Minor, and West Seattle elementary schools. The RTL program is exploring ways to expand to additional schools next year.
When new sponsors join WSB, we offer them the chance to share a little more information than you’ll find in their ads. Tonight, we welcome Lori Wright, who’s advertising her tutoring service — The Inquisitive Mind — just as summer break is about to start. Here’s more about it: “When Lori Wright went to Whitworth College she intended to become a school counselor. Her advisors guided her toward teaching. After completing her education degree Lori started tutoring at a Bellevue agency. She enjoyed the tutoring so much that she has stayed with it for the last 16 years. Lori started her Masters in School Counseling at SPU but eventually stayed with individualized tutoring. After management experience with two different tutoring centers, Lori started tutoring privately as The Inquisitive Mind in 1997. After moving to West Seattle in 2006, she closed her office in North Seattle and began tutoring out of her new home. Her husband John is a math teacher. Lori’s focus is on working directly with students, she does not have any staff, so when you call The Inquisitive Mind you know you are working directly with Lori. She collaborates extensively with parents, teachers, school counselors, academic testing centers and others as requested by families to help assure the best opportunity for her students. This collaboration is an integral part of her tutoring service for many families. Lori considers her tutoring as the best blend of both worlds of interest to her, part-teacher and at times part-school-counselor.” You can reach The Inquisitive Mind by calling 206-763-3424 or checking out the website at theinquisitivemind.com. Thanks to Lori for choosing to sponsor WSB; if you would like to look into the possibility of doing that too, here’s the place to start (that page also includes our full current list of sponsors, all of whom thank you — as do we — for your support!).
Pardon the tardiness — here are the West Seattle weekend highlights, 43 of them:Read More
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