January 2009

Editor's note: This article is from Seattle City Council member Nick Licata's Urban Politics newsletter.

Dig that tunnel.

Chants of "drill, baby, drill" from this past fall echo in my mind, as the near unanimous political and editorial constellations line up to support the deep bore tunnel option for replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct. Although, technically, I suppose it would be "bore, baby, bore."

In any case, unlike Governor Palin, the clear winners in this billion dollar poker game are Mayor Nickels, Gov. (Chris) Gregoire and King County Executive Ron Sims.

Due to an increasingly bleak economic future, Jacobsen's Marine has announced it will move Feb. 1 to West Seattle, after owners told the News-Tribune last October it planned on staying in the community.

Its new location is set to open at 2625 Harbor Ave. S.W. in West Seattle. Greg Jacobsen owns the land in West Seattle and said he decided Dec. 30 to move Jacobsen's Marine to that location when it became apparent that the country's economic situation was not going to improve anytime soon and was hitting the boat-selling business especially hard.

"It's an expendable item people don't need," he said. "So, we're suffering."

Jacobsen said it was a difficult decision to move the business and one that he made entirely on his own. His parents and grandparents went to Ballard High School and he grew up in the neighborhood, he said.

"If you had asked me five years ago, I would have said there is no way we would be leaving Ballard," he said.

In 2007, owners of Jacobsen's Marine, a Ballard business since 1951, said it planned to move to the Port of Edmonds.

The Seattle Department of Transportation is installing Residential Parking Zones in Fremont in an attempt to ease negative feelings toward the decision to install parking meters in the business district in February. The department feels the parking zones will ensure residents a place to park from possible spill over of those visiting Fremont.

However, the decision is unfavorable to a number of residents.

Upset resident and vice president of Fremont Dock Co.

We learn "pi r squared" in high school, but at the Salmon Bay Eagles Lodge in Ballard Jan. 23 the pie, and the crowd, were very hip. Mary Schile hosted her 6th Annual Pie Party. This party was her first charity event, to raise money and awareness for the Marsha Rifkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research in Seattle.

Schile was greeting guests, a packed hall comprised mostly of young area couples toting youngsters, and stacking pies on displays in her cherried-out custom wardrobe.

A number of business and industrial groups filed an appeal Dec. 17 to derail the city's plans to complete the missing link of the Burke-Gilman Trail.

On Nov.

Ballard High School science teacher Megan Vogel has been awarded the Golden Apple for excellence in teaching. She was one of only 10 nominees chosen from a statewide field of more than 200 educators and educational programs.

Vogel started teaching in 1999 at a correctional facility in Montana. In 2001, she moved to Seattle to teach science in the Ballard High School special-ed program.

Plans to develop an eight-story, 260-unit condo at the old Denny's site on the corner of Market and 15th has been put on hold due to recent economic troubles, according to a representative of the developers, Rhapsody Partners.

Louis Richmond, a spokesperson for the developers, said financing is still being sought and there is still a desire to move ahead with the project.

Norman J. Englund was awarded his third patent from the United States Patent Office on December 30, 2008. Englund is an associate technical fellow with Boeing Commercial Airplane in the Mechanical Systems Test Laboratory in Seattle.

The streak is over.

Thomas Jefferson snapped a six-game boys basketball losing streak with a 66-44 victory over Kent-Meridian Saturday, Jan. 17 - although the Raiders turned around to lose a close 65-63 game to Kentlake Tuesday, Jan. 20.

Raider head coach David Stone was left feeling for his players after both games.

“It’s just a tough one, man,” said Stone after the loss to Kentlake. “Just kids that are working their tails off and it doesn’t pay off in the success the have to get.

The experience of youth this season is going to contain many hard lessons for first year Federal Way coach Travis Mango, and going up against the visiting, much more battle-hardened Thomas Jefferson Raiders was no exception, losing, 76-6, Thursday.

“We are young, but this season we won our first match in two years against Garfield,” said Mango, who began wrestling as a kid at Highline High School in Burien, graduating in 1998 and then setting up a wrestling club, as president, at Western Washington because it was not a college conference sport.

The Eagles are