Over the years the PI globe has become a Seattle landmark, no doubt helped by its picture perfect location poised on the edge Elliott Bay and right next to Myrtle Edwards Park.
Hearst Corp. spokesman Paul Luthringer says the site’s lease expires on July 31, prompting a move to a larger space near the current location. He says the new building has the appropriate technical infrastructure, and he adds that the site will keep some office space at the building.
The 146-year-old Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased printing on March 17, 2009. A day later, seattlepi.com was launched.
At the time, questions arose about the future of Post-Intelligencer’s 18-ton rotating globe. So far it has stayed spinning atop the building, but three city councilmembers are pushing for the globe to be designated a historical landmark.
The Museum of History & Industry has also negotiated with Hearst about taking stewardship of the globe, but no agreement has been reached.
McKibbin had been walking Sammy when he stepped on and was killed by 90 volts of “stray voltage” on a sidewalk ground-plate cover. The tragedy prompted an investigation at Seattle City Light, which found that four area streetlamps, including the one that killed Sammy, had been improperly grounded by a private contractor back in 2006. City Light responded by conducting a first-ever inspection of all 37,000 streetlights and associated equipment citywide. By the time the inspection concluded in January the utility had found and repaired 56 sites with elevated voltage.
According to the PI report, as per the terms of the agreement, the city will now post contact voltage “safety messages” on the Seattle City Light website, and is also expected to post a link to a page on electrical safety from a Toronto utility.
The owners’ attorney, Adam Karp, told the PI that McKibbin and Bostdorff “congratulate the city on taking preventative steps to protect the public from future hazards.”
Coe Elementary’s robotics team, ‘Coebotics‘, will be traveling to California in May to compete in FLL (First Lego League) national competition at Legoland, according to a story by Mary Cropp in the Seattle PI. The eight-person team made up of 4th and 5th graders will be the sole representatives of Washington state at the competition.
Using the Lego Mindstorms systems, Coe students work together in FLL competitions to solve realistic world issues, “such as using a robotic unit to rescue victims from, or deliver supplies to a burning or unstable building,” according to Cropp. From the Coebotics website:
Robotics is the ultimate team activity. All good robots and robotic devices are created by teams of engineers, biologists, artists and programmers to name a few disciplines. Because of this need of integrating many science, engineering and social science skills into a great Robot, it is an ideal discipline to start teaching as young as Kindergarten. It allows students of any ability to be part of a great accomplishment.
Federal agents have arrested and charged a man suspected in several home invasions in Queen Anne, Belltown and Tukwila with robbery, according to a report by the Seattle PI. From the report:
A man suspected in a series of home invasions in Queen Anne and Belltown has been charged with robbery, after federal agents said he thought he was robbing a stash house filled with drugs, but really fell prey to a police sting.
According to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, Alai Poe Tauai and Akata Maria Lisa Smith were ready to do a “drug rip,” an often armed robbery of a drug dealer’s stash house. Their contacts told them the house had 10 kilos of cocaine and 10 pounds of methamphetamine.
But the contacts turned out to be undercover cops. On the night of set-up, Tauai showed up with a gun, which he tossed before arrested, the complaint said. Three people were arrested; both Tauai and Smith were charged with robbery.
The complaint said Tauai is a gang member suspected in home invasions in Queen Anne, Belltown and Tukwila.
The accident was the result of a pinched wire and bad electrical work (including a lack of grounding), according to City Light, in an area of the electrical system that powers four streetlights in the 1500 block of Queen Anne Avenue N. In the two weeks since Sammy’s death, the city has been working to find out why this dangerous zone went unnoticed for so long.
“Our crews investigated the cause. We discovered that the original installation in 2006 did not include proper grounding of the four lights. Our crews have made the necessary repairs to all these lights and tested for any potential electrical charges. There is no electrical charge to any of the lights or groundcover plates. All the streetlights are functioning,” City Light Superintendent Jorge Carrasco said in a release last week.
A city invoice showed that an inspector had billed for the electrical project twice in 2005, when the system was installed, said Richard Sheridan, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation. But no record exists documenting what the inspector did or found during the visits.
“At the time (the project was installed), we did not require written field reports from electrical inspectors,” Sheridan said Monday.
After Sammy’s death, the city discovered the pinched wire and missing grounding. Sheridan says the department is still investigating how the lack of grounding was overlooked by the inspector back in 2005, a difficult task given that it’s been several years and the project inspector has since retired.
Since July the department’s inspectors, all “highly qualified” certified electricians, according to Sheridan, have been required to document inspections of private-public improvement projects in a field report. But in a few weeks City Light will take over the inspection process, a decision the department says was made in an effort to streamline the system. Read the full story at the Seattle PI.
Prosecutors have not yet charged the 24-year-old driver involved in a fatal crash on Aurora Monday morning, which took the life of the car’s 23-year-old male passenger. According to the Seattle PI’s Casey McNerthney, prosecutors missed the Wednesday rush deadline to file charges and continue to hold the driver in custody for investigation of vehicular homicide while they investigate evidence from the collision-reconstruction. From the PI:
“And we are awaiting lab results to either confirm or eliminate the possibility of any influencing substances in the suspect’s system,” said Ian Goodhew, deputy chief of staff for King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg.
Seattlepi.com is not naming the driver because he hasn’t been charged. The passenger who died was identified Tuesday by the King County Medical Examiner’s Office as Jamal Michael Clayton, 23.
Read the full Seattle PI piece here. Read up on the Monday morning accident here.
The Seattle PI’s Monica Guzman is hosting the popular weekly Big Blog meet-up in Queen Anne this week, and has invited me to attend and partake in the conversation. The meet-ups serve as a casual forum for community members to get together and chat about Seattle news, events and on-goings in neighborhoods across the city. Each week Monica holds these meet-ups in different neighborhoods around town. The QA meeting will be held tomorrow, Wednesday, April 14 at Crow, at 823 5th Ave. N, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Feel like chatting with Monica and me? Swing by and join in. It should be a good time!
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.
Based off of creator Craig Brewer‘s vision for the show, which followed a handful of Memphis bands in its first season, Seattle native Lynn Shelton took over as director of the second season and its cast of up-and-coming musicians fighting for “love, inspiration, and money to pay the rent”.
Mónica Guzman at the PI got the scoop on how the second season will depart from the original, which Shelton said she considered a bit more “contrived” in a later interview. “We wanted to keep it as close to reality as possible,” Shelton told Guzman, emphasizing that the band members would be organically connected to one another, and that the stories told would imitate events and situations from their own lives.
The trailer has been available for a few months now, but just came up on my radar when Guzman posted this update yesterday (Thanks again, Mónica!). Watch the trailer and see if you can spot the scene filmed right here in Queen Anne. Here’s a clue: Like the entire show, the setting relates to music. Still can’t get it? Here’s another clue: A link in this story will take you to the answer.
The release date for $5 Cover Seattle has not been announced yet, but the tagline for the show reads “Thirteen bands…one city…and one broke-down van,” which somehow seems very fitting.
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