Dear Editor

Re: the Petco Space

When my family first moved to Seattle it was a flat city. There was the Smith Tower. Then we added the Space Needle and later the Bank of America Building which became known as the box the Space Needle came in. I moved away for a decade or so and came back to more tall buildings and more trees planted on parking strips. The trees seemed a good idea at the time but we were never a city that needed protection from the sun.

Drive through the streets of most residential neighborhoods these days and you drive through tunnels of green limbs. No sky. Drive through downtown and it is a tunnel of tall buildings. Drive through neighborhood business districts and the tall buildings are shorter but the effect is the same. Now we have added real tunnels for cars, buses, trains and trucks and under the guise of open space we can now make more above ground tunnels. Our horizons are gone. One of the joys of driving towards down town on 35th was seeing the Cascades and Mt. Baker as you approached the golf course. The trees are about to make that disappear. The building across from Jefferson Square on 42nd created the first real dark shadow spot in the Junction and now it will continue with the seven story project for the Petco space. We have lost our sense of balance and I have fallen out of love with my city and my neighborhood.

I grieve the loss.

Linda Maki