Editor's Note: This was sent to the Seattle Department of Planning and Development with a copy to this newspaper.

I live in the Alaska Junction and have been following new development projects in this area for about a year. This is one of the latest projects to be proposed for this area that is too large and offers too little to the community, at too high an impact.

We are under siege here from construction of far too many projects that provide housing for too elite a group, and retail that is redundant. The Connor projects for this intersection continue that trend. They will eliminate a shoe repair service (the only one in the Junction), women and children's clothing consignment shop (ditto), live-music venue (we have only two others in West Seattle), and several other independently owned businesses that contribute to the vibrancy and community of this area.

Connor has already replaced an independently owned fitness facility with a Super Supplements on this corner; one can easily surmise that he will look for similar corporate tenants for his proposed new buildings.

The Mural project nearing completion (Harbor Properties project just down the street) did the same: they originally said they would provide "affordable" appartments starting at $950 per month; now they are saying it will be "market rate" apartments at $1,100-$2,100 per month. Their retail tenants include a hair salon, restaurant and framing store. There is already a framing store directly across California Avenue from the Mural; countless restaurants and several salons.

The trend among development here is not encouraging. We will be soon saddled with a QFC and a Whole Foods within blocks of each other - and they are within blocks of a Safeway that has been here for years.

Over 1,100 apartment units are being added in this spate of construction - and it does not include newer projects under review (Harbor Properties' Link project, for example, and other proposed projects for the "Fauntleroy Triangle").

These projects proposed by Connor have the added impact of threatening to ruin the intersection that is the very heart of the Alaska Junction. They will turn California Avenue into a canyon - as is happening with the QFC project a block away on Alaska. Our views, light, and sense of space have already been eliminated by that and the Mural project, and will continue to erode with the Bluestar Whole Foods project going up at Alaska and Fauntleroy, and the Fauntleroy Triangle will fall soon after.

These projects all provide higher priced housing for single people and couples - at the developers' own admission. This is not housing for families, nor is it housing for the less-than-wealthy. These projects threaten our neighborhood at its very core - turning what was once a blue-collar, middle class neighborhood into the latest enclave for young urban professionals, driving out the families and modest income earners that made West Seattle what it was.

Someone has to stop this at some point. At the very least, limit Connor's projects to 3-4 stories; get commitments about what kind of retail tenants he will pursue; and why not set aside a percentage of these new residential units as affordable housing? Why is the city able to do this in other neighborhoods, but not here?

I have brought up these other projects (Mural, QFC, Whole Foods) because it's time to take a look at the big picture here in this neighborhood.

If you came here, even you might be shocked by the number of land-use proposal placards in a few-block radius that you would see. It was so alarming, I invited Sally Clark to come meet with me this past summer to look over what is happening. I don't think she cared, frankly. She simply said, "We have a hard time saying 'no' to developers." That is a direct quote.

Someone needs to start saying that. Will it be you? Or will West Seattle go the way of Ballard, Belltown, Pike/Pine, etc. - and be absorbed by the gentrification and generi-fication that plagues what was once a city with distinct neighborhoods that afforded a standard of living that modest earners could afford?

Please put a stop to this. This is no less than the death of another Seattle neighborhood we are talking about - and the death of what was once a livable, friendly city, on its way to becoming another San Francisco or New York - a goal Mayor Nickels made very clear was dear to his heart.

Please say no. Please save our city.

Sue Scharff

Alaska Junction