May 2009

King County Council Chair Dow Constantine joined the owners of the White Center Square development for a groundbreaking ceremony to launch the retail project today, May 28.

The $11 million White Center Square was funded through a $6.25 million loan from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“There is very tight competition for these federal funds," said Constantine this morning. "This project won support from a review panel that includes representatives from across King County—and for several good reasons. This project will create new retail space and new jobs, while providing a new home for a longtime community business, the Vong family’s Asian market.”

The event began at 10 a.m. at the construction site, on the corner of 15th Avenue Southwest and Southwest 100th Street.

The one acre-plus project will provide 60 new jobs for the White Center neighborhood, was authorized on March 30 by the King County Council.

It will be the new home of Vong's Market, also the developer's behind the project. There will be eight other retail units and a restaurant attached to the the market. A central plaza will include 58 surface parking spaces.

The Army Corps of Engineers will close the Hiram M. Chittenden, or Ballard Locks, to all traffic from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. June 1.

The closure is to allow for the inspection of the adult salmon exclusion structure, which is in place near the middle pier between the east entrances to both locks. It was installed last year.

According to the Army Corps, there will be divers in the water during this time period, preventing lock operations.

If necessary there will be divers in the water again on Tuesday, June 2. The only exception will be for emergency vessels, such as the police or fire department.

Any questions should be referred to David Carpenter, navigation supervisor 206-789-2622 ext.202, or the lockmaster on duty, 206-783-7000.

More information on the Locks can be found here.

In 1985, the City of Seattle announced plans to spend more than $5 million of the city's general-fund dollars on creation of a new home for the elephants at the Woodland Park Zoo. Such a home, it was said, was long overdue. It just wasn't humane to cram those pachyderms into a cramped concrete enclosure, and they needed room to roam.

For housing advocates, this was bitterly ironic. Sure, it was a fine idea to renovate Dumbo's home, but the Reagan administration had just wiped out federal assistance programs for housing for low-income and working families across the country.

To top it off, there was a downtown-office boom under way, and city officials had just announced the loss of more than 1,500 low-income units to demolition and abandonment in downtown alone.

Hundreds of other units across the city also were giving way to new construction, while waiting lists for our city's limited stock of affordable rentals were exploding. The city's few homeless shelters were inundated with newly homeless people, including, for the first time, dozens of families with children.

The 2009 Ballard High School season came to an end May 23 at the Southwest Athletic Complex in West Seattle, as the Beaver senior trio of Julian Montante, Carlos Stanley and Linton Rowan missed out on advancing to the WIAA state track and field championships.

For triple jumper Julian Montante, 0.25 inches was the difference between his first appearance at state and pondering what might have been.

Montante, who was a solid third after the first three rounds of competition in the event with what eventually was his best jump of 41-2 1/2, first saw Heritage's Donovan Marion and Eastlake's Devin Bennett overtake him in the final three rounds of jumping.

Bennett overtook Montante in round five with a jump of 41-2 3/4, 0.25 inches better than the Ballard senior.

Fellow Ballard senior Carlos Stanley, who finished second in the KingCo Championships the week before, was bothered by a sore left quadriceps muscle, which affected his ability to reach the takeoff board, and finished seventh with a jump of 41-1.

In the boys shot put, 2008 state qualifier Linton Rowan finished sixth with a throw of 47-2.

Sustainable Seattle has teamed up with Green Lake, Greenwood and Rainier Beach to complete a pilot of their Neighborhood Actions for Building Resilience and Sustainability (NABRS) Project.

The project aims to meet community goals surrounding building healthy communities, economies and ecosystems.

This spring, Sustainable Seattle was granted a city Small and Simple grant of about $8,000 from the Department of Neighborhoods for the project.

“This is a continuation of the kind of work we’ve been doing over 15 years now,” Sean Schmidt, director of NABRS and acting executive director of Sustainable Seattle said. “It’s looking at how we’re performing in certain areas and how we can do better.”

As a first step, NABRS will develop a template for a Neighborhood Sustainability Scorecard. The Scorecard will be a standard set of indicators to see how the pilot neighborhoods, Green Lake, Greenwood and Rainier Beach, are doing in terms of meeting their community goals, as well as a way neighborhoods can compare their efforts with those of other neighborhoods, said Schmidt.

On the same day Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson will receive her annual performance review, teachers, parents and students will rally and offer their evaluation of district leadership and performance this year, petitioning against Seattle schools’ Reduction in Force (RIF), or layoffs.

The Seattle Education Association and Educators, Students and Parents for a Better Vision of the Seattle Schools have united their parent-teacher-student coalition against an estimated 165 teacher layoffs, including seven cuts at Ballard High; six teachers and a counselor at Whitman; three teachers at Adams; two more at West Woodland and Salmon Bay each, and lastly, one at Whittier.

The rally is a symbol of unprecedented solidarity and support between parents and the teachers’ union, creating a shift in Seattle’s history of education politics to fight for Seattle’s children and the future of education, according to a release from the group.

The protest is scheduled to take place on June 3, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. before the 6 p.m. school board meeting at the John Stanford Center, 2445 3rd Ave. S.

In the middle of Ballard High School's May 27 choral concert, the full auditorium gave a standing ovation and said "Thank you, Aunt Elve" to a smiling, misty-eyed woman on stage.

Aunt Elve is Elve (Lillquist) Fathers, a 1929 Ballard High School graduate who dedicated 40 years of her life to sharing her love of music with students around the Puget Sound.

Fathers was honored with a plaque on Ballard's Music Wall of Honor for her decades as a music teacher and with a plaque on a small grand piano for the Ballard stage that her donation to the Ballard High School Foundation paid for.

The plaque on the piano reads "In sharing her love of music, this piano is a gift to the music students of Ballard High School."

Fathers graduated from the University of Washington in 1934 and started teaching in Bellevue the following year. Every Monday she would take two buses and a ferry from Ballard to Bellevue, returning to the neighborhood on the weekends.

For the next 40 years, Fathers taught music, orchestra and voice in Bellevue, Kent and Edmonds. She also coordinated music teachers in 31 schools and worked with KCTS-TV to bring televised music education into the classroom.

On Sunday, May 31 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Alki Ave. S.W. from California Way S.W. to 63rd Ave. S.W. will be opened up to pedestrians and cyclists.

Attendees can participate or cheer on runners at the West Seattle 5K Run/Walk in the morning and stay to watch world renown stunt bicyclists at Seattle Summer Streets in the afternoon. Enjoy a delicious seafood lunch, browse sidewalk sales and listen to the waves crash on the beach throughout the afternoon.

For information on vehicle access and parking along Alki Avenue during click here. The Water Taxi Shuttle will maintain its normal Sunday schedule and move in a coned-off eastbound travel lane along Alki.

Events include:

West Seattle 5K Run/Walk: Run starts at 9:30 a.m. at the Alki Beach Bathhouse. Online registration will continue until midnight on May 30.

Cascade Bicycle Club Seattle Summer Streets Spectacular: Participants can ride their bike and spending a fun afternoon at Seattle's premier beachfront location. Free, fun activities have been programmed including world-class mountain bike stunt-rider extraordinaire Ryan Leech.

The Seattle Department of Transportation will begin work June 1 on a project the Greenwood Community Council has lobbied for the past few years.

The Greenwood Community Council has been working for years to complete the sidewalk grid in its neighborhood and requested funding from the Neighborhood Street Fund funded by the Bridging the Gap transportation initiative.

A sidewalk will be built on the west side of Fremont Avenue North to connect the existing sidewalks south of the Boys and Girls Club (at North 86th Street) to North 90th Street. The project will fill the gap in the sidewalk between the Boys and Girls Club, Greenwood Park and North 85th Street.

The city has also worked with Seattle Public Utilities to install a natural drainage system next to the sidewalk project. The green infrastructure will take water that would traditionally go into pipes
and allow it to permeate into the planting strip to support plants and trees.

Seattle Lutheran High School closed at noon today as a precaution against the H1N1 virus, now commonly known as swine flu.

One of the school's students reported having come in contact with a student from outside the school who has been confirmed to have swine flu. However, no students from Seattle Lutheran High School are known to have the virus at this time.

All students are currently dismissed from school as a precaution. Seattle Lutheran High School is scheduled to open again on June 1.

Parents can contact Seattle Lutheran High School if they have any concerns at (206) 937-7722.

As of today, the King County Health Department reports that there are 414 confirmed cases of H1N1 Influenza A.

H1N1 influenza is a virus that can spread from people who are infected to others through coughs and sneezes. When people cough or sneeze, they spread germs through the air or onto surfaces that other people may touch. H1N1 virus is not transmitted from pigs to humans or from eating pork products.