Extra traffic is expected on Mercer St. this weekend. SDOT crews are going to be laying a thin layer of asphalt on Mercer between Fairview and Westlake avenues on Saturday, March 20, blocking off up to two lanes of traffic from 6 a.m. to no later than 4 p.m. At least two lanes will be open to traffic, along with the sidewalks.
According to SDOT, the thin layer of asphalt will serve as a “patch” on Mercer St–in desperate need of repaving to remedy the pothole problem–until the street can be rebuilt as part of the upcoming Mercer Corridor East project.
Alongside the new four-way stop at Queen Anne Ave N and W Crockett St, a representative from SDOT says they will be painting new crosswalks on all four sides of the intersection either tomorrow or Saturday, March 20.
SDOT anticipated that the new crosswalks will help motorists get more accustomed to the new stop.
“I know some people have been accidentally speeding through, even though the street is marked with stop warning signs,” one SDOT representative said.
But this isn’t the only intersection to get a face lift this week. A new marked crosswalk has also cropped up today just down the street at Queen Anne Ave N and Garfield.
Though one reader, Anna, admits the new crosswalk will help people going to and from the gym to their cars and other businesses along the block, she wonders if the new stops and crosswalks aren’t getting a little excessive. She wrote,
I am all for pedestrian safety, but isn’t this getting kind of ridiculous? It seems like all the drivers up here are cautious and aware of all the pedestrians. I live on QA Ave and the only problems I run into are the people who don’t know where they are going so don’t realize they have to drive 15 mph down the Ave. What’s next – making QA Ave into a pedestrian boulevard?
What do you think? Should SDOT relax their recent pedestrian safety efforts and trust drivers to look out, or should they continue to line Queen Anne Ave with marked stops and crossings? Comment below.
At approximately 3:32 a.m. this morning, Thursday, March 18 the owner of a business located in the 400 block of Dexter Ave N called police to reports that a burglary suspect had entered his business and attempted to take the cash register. From the SPD blotter:
Unbeknownst to the suspect, the victim is currently a self defense instructor. The victim saw the suspect and made a grab for him before the suspect could escape with the cash register.
The suspect dropped the cash register and briefly struggled with victim before running away.
According to the report, the suspect left behind his bicycle and cell phone when he fled the scene. When officers arrived they set up a containment for a K-9 track, but it was unsuccessful.
A few hours later, at approximately 4:49 a.m., an officer caught up with the suspect at 4 Ave W/W McGraw St. He was positively identified by the victim and booked into King County Jail for Investigation of Burglary.
At approximately 1:25 a.m. this morning, Thursday, March 18 officers were called to the Seattle Center groups by the campus security personnel to address two men that had been detained for “crashing through several bollards that are meant to keep vehicles from entering onto the Center grounds,” according to the SPD blotter. From the blotter:
Both subjects were clearly intoxicated, officers attempted to take one of the suspects him into custody for DUI, when he immediately began to resist. The suspect refused to comply with orders to stop resisting. He bit one of the officers on the hand and repeatedly kicked at them.
The suspect was finally taken into custody, and as officers were putting him in the back seat of the patrol car for transport, he rolled onto his back and kicked them. He grazed one officer’s chest and kicked the other officer in the leg.
The suspect was arrested and transported to the North Precinct. At the Precinct, the suspect who is active duty Navy, continued to be belligerent, repeatedly asking, “This is how you do the Military?” & “What? So now I’m some kind of —— terrorist? I blow —— up?”
The officer asked the suspect how he thought he Navy would feel about his actions, and he replied, “—— the Navy!! I don’t give a ——- about the Navy!!”
The suspect was booked into King County Jail on Investigation of Assault, and additional charges of DUI, Reckless Driving, Hit & Run & Trespass are currently being requested.
Spring break is just around the corner, and for many parents that means looking for fun and safe activities to occupy their kids during the week off. John Hay Elementary has decided to make the search easy by reprising and extending one of their most popular programs–Play-in-a-Day!
Their new Spring Break Drama Camp will focus on creating a play in four days, beginning on Monday, March 29 to Thursday, April 1, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Using improvisation exercises and theatre games, we will create and perform a play which has a plot with a beginning, middle, end, characters and setting – all in 4 days!
The Spring Break Drama Camp costs $135 for the week. All school grades and ages are welcome. To sign up, pick up forms in the John Hay Volunteer Office or print and return the forms here.
Kids should bring a light snack to camp and wear comfortable clothing that allows them to move. For more information or to answer questions, email Deb Fox at foxbarlow@comcast.net.
Interested in learning how to make your backyard attractive for birds, butterflies and other small critters? Attend the next Sustainable Queen Anne meeting on Monday, March 22 at 6:30 p.m. at 2501 Westview Drive W (on the corner of Wheeler) and hear how you can craft your yard into a wildlife haven.
Guest speaker Courtney Sullivan from the National Wildlife Federation’s Backyard Wildlife Habitat program will talk about tips for making your garden wildlife friendly. A Q&A will follow.
Courtney Sullivan from the National Wildlife Federation who will talk about how you can make your yard into backyard habitat. We gardeners, even beginners, can help be part of the solution to restoring the health of the Puget Sound region. The four basic components are food, water, cover and places to raise young. Small changes in your yard can create these features.
After the speaker and Q&A portions conclude, SQA will continue planning future activities for the year, including the tool sharing library and bag share. Dinner will be provided.
With the motto “neighbors in stewardship and collaboration,” Sustainable Queen Anne works to “enhance the natural resources and social well-being of our community, our city and our region.” SQA holds monthly meetings on the 4th Mondays, at 6:30 pm. All are invited to attend. They strive to bring a guest speaker to each meeting and run community conscious projects. To read up on past projects or meeting minutes, see their website.
Local non-profit Successful Schools in Action, which works to provide support and resources for schools, students and teachers at seven schools in Queen Anne and Magnolia, raised just shy of $30,000 at their 4th annual community breakfast last week, making the event the most successful breakfast fundraiser they’ve ever had!
SSIA says the funds are essential to their operations, enabling them “to continue providing tutors for struggling students, debate for every student who wants to participate, and Collaborative Conversations to support our teachers, empower our families, and engage our community.”
In a letter sent out today the organization thanked the community for their continued support.
We appreciate the incredible sponsor support we received this year from so many local businesses and organizations. Special recognition and thanks to our Signature Sponsor, Vulcan, and our Table Sponsors, JAS Design Build and King & Oliason.
Read up on the some of the past work SSIA has done in the community here, here and here. If you’d like to support SSIA, make a donation here, or eat out through the Celebrated Chefs program and have 5 percent donated on your behalf. See participating restaurants here.
(Photographer: Samuel Kuntz. Photos courtesy of SSIA).
Queen Anne resident and 36th District Rep. Reuven Carlyle has been throwing support behind House Bill 2561, which if passed would raise $850 from a state bond and allocate it to clean energy construction improvements to schools and universities statewide and create 38,000 “well paying jobs.”
Yesterday he spoke on the House floor in support of the bill, citing a current pilot project at McClure Middle School that he helped secure a million dollars in funding for last year. The project called for an energy audit of the school that identified energy and cost-savings improvements that will begin to be made to the 1960s era building after the current academic term ends this summer. According to Reuven, these improvements are not only necessary to maintaining the infrastructure of Seattle Public Schools–they also provide an extreme value add for the state. Here are some choice excerpts from his speech.
“This is a city that is a net exporter of education tax dollars, in fact in state property taxes received 37 cents for every dollar that it sends to Olympia. And we have a school–600 kids–who walk around in jackets. And they’re cold.”
“Parents and community leaders and students and faculty and teachers and the principal, Sarah Pritchett got together and sat down…and they did an analysis of this very building, McClure Middle School, and that analysis found that for a million dollar investment we could get a return on investment from a financial perspective that was extraordinary.”
“This pilot project is successful. It’s a return on investment that makes sense.”
Read more on the McClure Middle School pilot project here.
The Interbay P-Patch at 2451 15th Ave W, a 132-plot, 43,000-square-foot urban garden in the valley between Queen Anne and Magnolia will be celebrating the opening of the Interbay food bank garden on Tuesday, March 30 at 5:30 p.m. with a community gathering. From the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods,
There will be a traditional first kale harvest, perhaps some planting, definitely some soup, some stories, lots of laughter and camaraderie, and who knows? Possibly even some sunshine!
In 2009 the Interbay P-Patch donated over 5,000 pounds of produce to local food banks, including the the Ballard Food Bank, Mary’s Place and St. Martin’s.
You may have noticed all of the construction going on up and down Queen Anne Ave N over the last few weeks – repaving, tree placement, etc. Well, yesterday, amidst all of the construction commotion, the city made a little extra addition to one of the neighborhood’s main thoroughfares.
While this new four-way stop could slow down traffic on Queen Anne Ave and make it easier for pedestrians walking through the business district, some are worried that the stop signs will cause cars to block the entrances to Safeway and other businesses, making it more difficult to get around. What do you think?
Picture Perfect Queen Anne is a volunteer-run organization dedicated to beautifying the neighborhood’s main entrances and business districts in the hopes of making Queen Anne a welcoming and vibrant community. (You may have noticed their signs up and down Queen Anne Ave N from Galer to McGraw or some of the flower beds they’ve planted).
PPQA has been working to raise $16,000 for the completion of their “Green Gateways” program (i.e. fixing up the entrances to Queen Anne, installing pavers, and covering the costs of continued gardening and maintenance). Last month the group was just a few thousand shy of their goal.
This week the 8-person board of directors got an extra helping hand when on Sunday, March 14, Noah, a 9-year-old Queen Anne-er and son of PPQA board member Jeff Parker, took to the streets to raise a little extra money for the cause. Board member Virginia Hand wrote,
Noah set up a table at the intersection of Queen Anne Avenue at Boston and started asking passing neighbors to donate to PPQA and the Green Gateways project. Along with homemade banana bread, cookies and brownies (his father says Noah is a baking machine), Noah rewarded contributors with flower seeds donated by Ed Hume Seeds. By the end of the day, Noah had raised over $150, a big accomplishment for the fourth-grader and a meaningful contribution to PPQA.
PPQA is especially grateful to Noah for raising awareness about the group’s mission to make Queen Anne Avenue greener as well as more pedestrian safe and family friendly. Projects include the installation of new cross walks, street lamps, and sidewalks such as those just completed at Queen Anne Avenue at Galer and McGraw Streets.
To sum up, PPQA deemed Noah’s fundraiser “a big success.” If you’re interested in learning more about the project or making a donation yourself, click here.
As for what the neighborhood can expect from PPQA this spring, during the last week of April the group will be installing 30 18″by 18″ pavers inscribed with the names of community members and organizations who have supported the project at the intersection of Galer and Queen Anne Ave N. And on May 1 neighbors will get together for PPQA’s big spring planting day. Anyone interested in sponsoring PPQA and getting their name on one of the last pavers left have until Monday, March 22 to do so. More information here.
After hearing reports of more car break-ins yesterday, reader Dustin discovered that his car had also been targeted either overnight last night (Monday) or the night before (Sunday) at 5th Ave N and Highland. He wrote,
I didn’t use my car yesterday so I’m not too sure which night specifically that it happened. But I also came to my car this morning to find the inside all disheveled. Luckily, I don’t keep valuables in my car so nothing was missing. I guess they were disappointed to only find golf shoes, a couple of my gig posters, and CD-R demos in the back seat. This is the second time my car has been broken into in the last two years I’ve lived at this address…the last time…vandals ran off with a tail light. I guess Queen Anne is prime for these people. Maybe from now on I’ll leave a Hallmark Card on the front seat to sing them a song… maybe that way they’ll at least steal one of my demos and come to a gig.
Though Dustin didn’t have anything of value taken from his car, he wants to remind neighbors to keep their eyes peeled for suspicious activity, especially with recent reports of more and more car prowls in Queen Anne.
Citizen Cope will be doing a live, free performance at Easy Street Records at 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 3. This will be his third in-store show as Easy Street. Citizen Cope will be in town playing a three-night run at the Showbox Market from April 1-3. Get ticket information here. Check out Citizen Cope’s new album, The Rainwater LP, here.
(Thanks to Jesse & Easy Street Records for the picture!)
SeattlePI.com has a great article today about the changing nature of journalism, especially the explosion of hyperlocal news websites such as ours.
In the old days of print journalism, people got all their basic news from their local newspaper and maybe a national paper such as the Wall Street Journal or New York Times. But, in the last few years, everything has changed as newspapers go out of business (the P.I.’s presses fell silent one year ago tomorrow) and media companies consolidate and try to figure out how to do more with less.
Just before 8 a.m. this morning, Tuesday, March 16, medics and SPD officers were called to 1800 Queen Anne Ave N, at the top of the hill, where an unidentified man had reportedly passed on.
Several readers witnessed officers and what they assumed to be a body bag outside of Bethany Presbyterian Church between 9 and 9:40 a.m. this morning. One anonymous reader wrote,
There was a bright yellow bag that looked like a body bag on top of the hill on Queen Anne Ave in central strip of retail laying on the sidewalk. There were multiple police cars, officers, and a coroners office vehicle.
Although the identity of the man has not yet been released, the deceased was known at Bethany, according to the church’s Office Administrative Assistant Sylvia Lidell. “He had a relationship with our pastor. He would come to the Wednesday night dinners,” she said.
According to Head of Staff Pastor, Rev. Dan Baumgartner the man, who he estimated to be about 75 years old, had attended Bethany services for the past six or seven years and developed relationships with the staff.
“I don’t know what happened. He was not in good health,” Baumgartner said, noting that the assumption was that the man sat down on the steps sometime early in the morning, where he eventually passed.
SPD media relationship representative Renee Whitt confirmed that the body was removed from the scene this morning and that it was recorded as “a natural death.” According to Whitt, the case has been turned over to a medical examiner who will investigate further.
Baumgartner said the man lived in an apartment downtown, and had no family that he knew of. Due to the nature of the situation, he opted not to release his name.
Which school can raise more money? That’s the challenge Upper Queen Anne cafe 5 Spot has proposed to two neighborhood elementary schools, John Hay and Coe.
On Tuesday, March 23 (Coe) and Wednesday, March 24 (Hay) students, parents and teachers will pack into 5 Spot and see how much they can earn by eating out. For these two days the 5 Spot will be contributing 25 percent of all their food and beverage sales from 4 p.m. to closing at midnight to each respective school. So if you eat at the 5 Spot either Tuesday or Wednesday next week, a quarter of every dollar you spend will go straight to Coe or John Hay.
Additionally, the children in the classroom from the winning school that has the highest level of family participation—families will be asked to write their teacher’s name at the top of their guest checks—will win a $10 Chow Foods gift card for each child in the class of the “highest participation level” classroom.
All funds raised over these two nights will be donated directly to each respective school. Coe Elementary, who will be fundraising on Tuesday the 23rd, plans to utilize the proceeds to purchase age and reading level appropriate books for their classrooms. John Hay Elementary, who will be represented on Wednesday the 24th, plans to put its donated funds toward the hiring of math and reading tutors.
(Photo courtesy of Society of Friends of St. Patrick, via their Facebook page).
The most interesting twist to the story is, however, that the anonymous do-gooders behind the shillelagh’s safe return turned out to be the Seafair Pirates, who produced both the missing artifact and the alleged culprit.
“The Seafair Pirates produced both the shillelagh and a clown – who evidently was the culprit. I’m told it may have been a Seafair Clown. The clown was “cuffed” and hauled off in what looked like an unmarked police car,” McQuaid wrote to us earlier today.
McQuaid had offered up a $5,000 reward for the return of the shillelagh, but he said the Seafair Pirates, acting quite the opposite to what their title implies, “respectfully declined to accept” the check.
“I was successfully duped by a clown and Seattle’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration and parade were saved by the Seafair Pirates. I still have no idea how the clown got into my car. I do know that we have a Seafair clown on our committee,” McQuaid wrote.
On Saturday evening after the parade McQuaid, as outgoing president of the Society of the Friends of St. Patrick, passed the century-and-half-year-old shillelagh, thought to be the oldest of its kind in the Pacific Northwest, on to new president Bob Larkin, continuing a 70-year-old tradition.
So there you have it. The St. Patty’s Day parade was saved. A 70-year-old tradition was continued. The 151-year-old shillelagh has been returned to its rightful owners. All thanks to the Seafair Pirates.
Back in December the Seattle Center cleared out half of the rides at the Fun Forest–those east of the Center House–to make room for new vendors and temporary installations in the 68,000 square feet of then empty space.
The private carnival ride and games concessionaire, Fun Forest Amusements LLC, has leased the two parcels of land at the Center since 1963. In the fall the rest of their lease will undergo termination, and the remaining rides, those located southeast of the Center House, will also be removed.
In the meantime, the Center has been searching for new projects and programming to incorporate into the space as part of the Century 21 Master Plan, a $570 million, 20-year investment in the revitalization of Seattle Center in celebration of the 1962 World’s Fair for which it was originally built.
The Center asked the community for proposals, and has also received a project plan for a 44,000 square foot “glass house” for a permanent Dale Chihuly exhibit. The Center is looking for an exhibit that draws crowds to the campus and emphasizes community engagement. In a press release today the Center clarified its goal:
The Seattle Center Century 21 Master Plan, which sets the framework for future development on the campus, calls for campus design that draws visitors to the center of the grounds and emphasizes flexibility, vibrancy and artistic expression. While the plan was adopted by the Seattle City Council in 2008, it lacks the necessary public funding, and so Seattle Center must consider interim activities and amenities to fill the vacated areas.
The Center would like community input on the proposed projects, and will be hosting a public meeting on potential future uses for the former Fun Forest space at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 30 in the Center House Conference Room A. Those interested are invited to participant and will have an opportunity for public comment.
Please join Seattle Center to learn more about potential future uses of the former Fun Forest areas and share your thoughts and ideas on creating engaging activities and amenities that fulfill the mission of Seattle Center to “delight and inspire the human spirit in each individual and bring together our rich and varied community.”
Those who would like to submit comments before the meeting, may email sc.customerservice@seattle.gov or write to Seattle Center, c/o Customer Service, 305 Harrison Street, Seattle, WA 98109.
There was another car break-in over the weekend on Warren Ave N between Boston and Crockett. The prowl must have occurred sometime overnight, because the car was found open this morning, writes Glenda:
My boyfriend went out to go to work today and found his trunk open, the inside of the car all disheveled and the ignition looked like it had been messed with. Luckily they only got away with headphones.
If anyone remembers seeing anything suspicious in the area that could have been related to this break-in, please write in the comments below.
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