October 2010

When Felix Vacca arrived in America from Italy in 1906 he found his way to the Rainier Valley, then South Park and eventually Sunnydale by 1926.

His son and daughter, Angelo and Angelina, were raised on the 6 acres Felix purchased along Des Moines Way South near 152nd street.

It became Vacca's Pumpkin Patch and a family tradition where for many years people would come from all directions to purchase his prized creations.

Not far from her birth home, just over the hill at 146th, Angelina tells us about those famous pumpkins and her grandchildren and great grandchildren who keep her young.

In the late '40s, Angelina or "Babe" remembers Frank Anderson who dug a large hole on some adjacent property creating a lake he named Lora after his mother Lora Anderson.

Not much more than 12-feet deep, the lake was quite popular with the kids, becoming the local swimming hole. Babe's daughter, Donna Yellam, often swam around the perimeter in the '60s. It was not to last.

The North Highline Unincorporated Area Council is staging a candidates forum Thursday, Oct. 21st at 6:30 pm. at the Greenbridge YWCA Learning Center, 9720 8th Ave. s.w. - adjacent to the Greenbridge Library.

Those attending are asked to park behind the building, or on 8th Ave in front. You may enter from either side of the the building.

Light refreshments will be served.

The audience is welcome to bring questions to the event, or send them ahead to pprice@northhighlineuac.org to be included on the initial list of prepared questions for the candidates.

The following Candidates have confirmed their participation.

for King County Council:
Diana Toledo
Joe McDermott

for 34th Legislative District:
Mike Heavey
Joe Fitzgibbon

Kicking off two months of public comment on the future of the Duwamish River, Sustainable West Seattle hosted a community forum to discuss the river’s past, present and future on Oct. 18 at Camp Long in West Seattle.

The forum coincided with the Lower Duwamish Waterway Group’s release of the Duwamish River Cleanup Alternatives Feasibility Study yesterday. The LDWG is comprised of identified responsible parties in polluting the Duwamish and includes the City of Seattle, King County, the Port of Seattle and Boeing. The study lays out options for cleanup and is officially open for public comment and scrutiny by the EPA. More information on the feasibility study can be found here.

“No decision has been made, they are all up for review,” Lori Cohen with the Environmental Protection Agency said at the forum. “We really want public feedback over the next couple of months.”

Paving crews from the Seattle Department of Transportation are working on 15th Avenue Northwest from Northwest 85th to 87th streets. Two lanes on 15th Avenue Northwest will remain open in each direction until 9 a.m., after which time one lane will remain open in each direction until 3 p.m.

Sidewalks will remain open. The crews plan to grind off surface asphalt today and tomorrow, and pave on Wednesday and Thursday, weather permitting.

Press release:
Six months ago, The Highline School District reached agreement with a community group to operate a closed pool in White Center, which was renamed The Evergreen Community Aquatics Center (ECAC). Since that time hundreds of subsidized swim lessons have been attended by area youth, and dozens of adult and seniors have attended exercise classes.

Now home to The Highline Pirates, Evergreen/Tyee Swim and WhiteWater Aquatic Swim Teams, scores of area youth are swimming daily, along with community outreach programs. Indeed, it’s a very busy place at Evergreen Community Aquatics Center every weekday. The flags of sixteen nations hang over the pool, to honor the diversity of clientele and the many parts of the world that pool users are from.

Gravel trucks and cement workers were out in force on Monday Oct. 18 at the Delridge Playfield 4458 Delridge Way s.w. working to complete the $3.2 million improvement project approved under the Parks and Green Spaces Levy.

The construction contract was awarded to A-1 Landscape and Construction, Inc. and work began in early July. The project is on schedule, and parks anticipates opening the facility in early November.

Parks held two public meetings for this project at the Delridge Community Center. The landscape architects presented a schematic design at the first meeting and went over the project summary.

The finished project will feature two striped soccer fields, one softball field, one baseball field, one woman’s lacrosse field overlaying the north soccer field, one men’s lacrosse field overlaying the south soccer field, two striped 'Ultimate' fields overlaying the south soccer field, and one smaller Ultimate field demarcated with ‘cone dots’ overlaying the north soccer field.

The ADA accessibility to the north will be maintained and ADA access to the south will be added from the south parking lot.

The renovation to the field includes:

Hard to say exactly what happened here, but it may be a case of burglars being burglarized. Officers responded to a burglary in progress at a home on 21st Ave s.w. last week. Someone had seen a white male in his mid 20s lurking around the house and going into the bushes, and then called police. When officers arrived the suspect was gone, but they found two toolboxes and two antique lamps in the back yard and a broken window on the back door. Here is where it gets interesting … the house has been abandoned and overgrown with blackberry bushes and other vegetation. When they entered the house, officers found evidence of squatters (sleeping bags, clothing and camping equipment) and “an abundance of expensive tools, machinery and valuable antiques.” Officers put the toolboxes and lamps back in the house and were unsuccessful in finding a property manager to contact.

The new Jonny Bostons Sandwich Shop at 4151 California Avenue s.w. that the West Seattle Herald told you about first in August is finally nearing completion with the opening expected now the first week of November.

Owner Dan Atherton was on site Monday, Oct. 18 and explained that permitting issues had delayed the project by about a month. The exterior painting is done in a bright green, "to give you a bit of the Boston feel" Atherton explained, and Glenn Case has done the window signage painting. "We just need to finish the plumbing, get the gas up to code and we're going to start sheet rocking and painting and we plan to have that done by probably Monday or Tuesday.

Atherton is installing a very high level of insulation in the walls and ceiling, "There was none in here before," he offered, "because in the summer I want this to be a cool place to walk into."

The location was formerly occupied by Authentic Home.

The 562 square foot space is being redesigned by Eric Koch Partners Architectural Design from Redmond.

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is adding another important feature to its Intelligent Transportation System. Beginning today, Oct. 18 electronic signs (called dynamic message signs) on five city arterial streets will show current travel times during peak commute hours, from 6 to 9 a.m. and from 3 to 7 p.m. The signs will show the actual times it takes a vehicle to travel between two points, not estimates or averages. “We are excited by this new phase,” said Mayor McGinn. “This real-time information will help people make better travel decisions.”

The five dynamic message sign locations that will have travel times on Monday are:
• Fauntleroy Way Southwest near Southwest 38th Street
• 35th Avenue Southwest near Southwest Snoqualmie Street
• First Avenue South near South Bennett Street (close to south Lucile Street)
• Fourth Avenue South near South Spokane Street
• Holman Road Northwest near 14th Avenue Northwest

Travel times will be added to a dynamic message sign on Admiral Way SW by the end of October, and by March travel times will be added to three signs on SR99 and one on East Marginal Way South.

I rush too much. Although one part of my brain had registered that Lombardi’s restaurant was going to close in early October, my brain and body were rushing to the next event, running late to yoga, late to meet someone, too late for the library. But since I was locked out of the library, I finally read the words on the glass windows of the restaurant: “one day left.”

Why did it take the words "one day left" for me to consider what Lombardi’s has meant to me in the last 23 years? I wanted to eat there the night it was first reviewed (highly) in the Seattle Times, even though I lived in a starter apartment and had only gone west of 15th Avenue Northwest on my way to Ray’s Boathouse. I called for a reservation, but they were fully booked.

By the time I first ate there, the "we" that was "we" then had bought a house and moved to Ballard, lured over the bridge to the Ballard Market and then pulled toward Salmon Bay. I remember feeling so at home at Lombardi’s after that first dinner: Was it the roasted garlic or the ravioli di quattro formaggio? I said to Jim, “Should I go up to the owner right now and tell her that we’re going to be regulars?”