As a result of Riser Homes' construction of two houses on 23rd Avenue SW a few hundred feet up the hill from the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, most houses in the Pigeon Point neighborhood have 24-hour no-parking signs in front of their houses. That includes homes without driveways. According to signs, the no-parking enforcement begins Monday, Feb. 22, and runs until April 5.

Many residents are surprised and outraged by the big trench to be dug. Also, Metro's Route 125 bus will be rerouted through their neighborhood as will other traffic from South Seattle Community College creating more congestion as 23rd near the new houses will be cut off.

"They gave us the weekend notice by sticking all these signs here," said Nichole Espana who lives on Genesee near 23rd Avenue in the house where she grew up. "We have multiple vehicles so we spent almost $300 on gravel to put in our front yard to park. I came home yesterday and I was like, wow, they're all along our street. When my baby sitter comes over where are they going to park?"

"You can't even leave a voice mail," said Alex, her husband. "The number you're supposed to call at Riser Homes says the mailbox is full."

"I heard about this problem in the office and had no idea how extensive it was," said Tom Rasmussen, who chairs the transportation committee with the Seattle City Council. "I'll see if they can hold it off." Rasmussen met about a dozen concerned residents on his bicycle at 20th Avenue and Dakota. He appeared surprised at the number of signs lined along both sides of the streets there.

"I've got a car port with one spot, but my wife's car is in there now," said Larry Galvin who lives across the street from the gathering. "I can't get my Mazda running which is parked in the street. I'll need to get a mechanic tomorrow (Sunday.) I had a hard time sleeping last night worried what am I going to do. Kids up on 19th have been breaking into cars. I don't want to park up there."

"We certainly need to accommodate change and improvements, but not both sides of the street," said "Mark" who lives near Galvin. "A lot of cars have been broken into recently. You take the cars and condense them in one area, parked away from your house, and the sense would be this would be an easy target from the prowlers' point of view."

Updates will be posted on Metro's website.

UPDATE Sunday, FEB. 21:

Thanks to Pete Spalding for sending this:

This morning Jim Sander( Co-Chair of our PPNC) & Pete Spalding met
with John Riser the developer of the project on 23rd Ave SW that has
caused our parking woes. We were able to negotiate a compromise on
some of the parking restrictions.

You can now park on the east-west connector streets. Parking
restrictions have been lifted on SW Dakota between 21st Ave SW and
19th Ave SW. on SW Andover between 20th Ave SW & 19th Ave SW, on SW
Charlestown between 20th Ave SW & 19th Ave SW, and on the north side
of SW Genesee between 20th Ave SW & 19th Ave SW.
We are continuing to work with Metro in and effort to convince them to
move the re-route of the 125 over to 21st Ave SW so that we can free
up more parking on 20th Ave SW. We do not expect any word on that
until after they have run the buses through the neighborhood for a
portion of tomorrow and then they have promised to re-evaluate the
situation.