Saturday, January 16, EarthCorps, Seattle Parks & Recreation, and the Seattle Green Partnership will kickoff the Martin Luther King, Jr. Birthday / King County United Way Day of Caring volunteer events at Dr. Jose Rizal Park. The event runs from 10 AM to 2 PM, with set up beginning around 9. Around 50 volunteers are expected, who’ll work on planting 300+ native plants and doing maintenance work on previously cleared areas, and continue reclaiming the southwestern slope of the area for restoration. If a few neighbors come, we can move some logs and improve the trail into the area, too.
And on Sunday, January 17, in case you can make it, at Dearborn Park off Othello Orcas, there will be another event, from 10 AM to 2 PM.
A second Beacon Hill event will take place on Monday, January 18, with 300 volunteers (!) coming to the Cheasty Greenspace on the east side of the hill. Sponsors include EarthCorps, the Green Seattle Partnership, Service for Peace, City Year, YMCA Earth Service Corps, University of Washington, and Seattle Parks and Recreation. This is the “signature†event for the MLK Day of Caring volunteer events in Seattle’s south end. Following the event will be a service appreciation reception at Jefferson Community Center, which is a great opportunity to network with volunteer agencies doing on the ground work on Beacon Hill.
The Beacon Hill events are on our event calendar, as well.
Thanks Craig! And thanks for the correction, Deborah!
Jefferson Community Center and Van Asselt Community Center, along with the rest of Seattle Parks and Recreation’s community centers and indoor pools, will be closed today for furlough. Other facilities such as the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center and the Amy Yee Tennis Center will also be closed (fully or partially).
Golfers practicing drives under the bright lights of the Jefferson Park Driving Range. Photo by Tim Ripley.They don't all reach their target. Photo by Tim Ripley.
These are two of the many interesting and wonderful photos you can find in the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr. Thanks to Tim for posting them!
(Editor’s note, 1/18: The top photo is slightly different today as Tim pulled the original photo from Flickr and replaced it with this one, so we replaced it here on the blog as well. The original photo contained two golfers.)
Perhaps the biggest change proposed in this draft is increasing the height limit of buildings surrounding the light rail station. There’s also a proposal to update El Centro de la Raza’s zoning. It’s currently single family residential—no, I’m not joking. In case you’re unfamiliar with El Centro, there are dozens of programs operating out of that building, serving thousands of people of all ages and from all backgrounds. Childcare, senior meals, homeless services, a food bank, immigrant advocacy, and more. There are also businesses operating within El Centro: CommuniChi acupuncture, Excelsior Travel Agency, and others. For a complete list and to learn how to volunteer or make a donation to El Centro, visit their website. El Centro hopes to develop affordable housing and expand their program facilities. This is an incredible opportunity for our entire neighborhood.
One potential future for North Beacon Hill (looking north on Beacon Avenue, near McClellan). Many people have concerns and fears about changes to our neighborhood, especially around the idea of increasing density. What’s important to you? What makes Beacon Hill a place you want to live? What would you change? I’m concerned about preserving the character of our neighborhood and encouraging good design. I want to keep what we have (Red Apple, Baja Bistro, La Cabaña, etc.) and add businesses that serve our community (a bookstore, a consignment store). I want to preserve the charm of our single family blocks and add dense, affordable housing near the station. I want our sidewalks and crosswalks accessible to the seniors who’ve lived here for decades and to those of us pushing strollers through the neighborhood.
My priorities around neighborhood planning were honed when we were looking for a house in 2003. I attended Seattle Midwifery School at El Centro (they’ve now moved) and loved Beacon Hill.  It only took one walking tour to convince my partner that this was a great place to live. Our goal is to live in this house for 20-30 years. We planned where we were going to buy a house based on what was important to us:
walkability/run-ability (safety, accessibility, comfort, quality of sidewalks and trails)
transit access and easy access by car to other places
diversity
established community
parks and green spaces
We’re expecting another human member of the family in May. I’m excited to see baby/kid-friendly businesses opening in our neighborhood. We always assumed we’d send our kid to the neighborhood school, and were content with Beacon Elementary and Kimball as choices. The Seattle School District is shifting to location-based school assignment, which will (hopefully) mean that our south-end schools start achieving parity with the rest of the city.
Change can be challenging. For some perspective on all the changes in Beacon Hill over the last 100 years or so, check out Seattle’s Beacon Hill by Frederica Merrell and Mira Latoszek. (Merrell is an occasional contributor to the BHB. — ed.) The book is chock-full of photos from the Jackson Regrade—when neighborhood planning meant washing huge portions of the city down into the Sound! Now is our chance to shape our community for decades to come. Get informed; get involved. Attend meetings (the North Beacon Hill Council meets on the first Thursday of every month at the library) and talk to your neighbors.
(Editor’s note: If you’d like your own copy of Seattle’s Beacon Hill, you can order one from Amazon through the link on the lower right of this page.) An artist's depiction of a future event at the Lander Festival Street, from the North Beacon Hill neighborhood plan update.
Photo of Daniel Hicks from spdblotter.seattle.govDaniel Hicks, charged with the shooting deaths of his girlfriend and baby daughter last month near 13th and Ferdinand, has arrived back in the state in police custody and is being held in the King County Jail after having fled to California.
Food stands in Portland; could we have this here? Photo by Joel Lee.by Joel Lee
I’ve always admired Portland’s funky attitude towards street food vendors. What was years ago a smattering of taco trucks and falafel vendors, has grown into entire streets filled with every imaginable variety of food being served from every imaginable type of food wagon. Working in downtown Portland means having your choice between dozens of street vendors during lunchtime.
Since returning from my recent trip to Portland I’ve been dreaming of seeing more of this in Seattle. Besides my own selfish desires for more food selection, it’s also a perfect building block for a strong local economy. It does not take nearly as much money to start up a food cart as it would to open a restaurant, and it does not involve nearly as much risk—these types of small businesses are the front lines in a recovering economy.
I would love it if the area around our light rail station would develop into an area where street vendors would become more welcome and small business entrepreneurs would be given the time, community support, and space to try new types of businesses. As an added bonus this would give us a multi-ethnic gathering place, build community, and enliven ‘downtown’ Beacon Hill.
Photo by Doug Wilson.The STEM Open House and recruiting fair is happening at Cleveland High School on Saturday, January 23rd from 10am to noon. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and is a curriculum with where students may choose from two academies: Life Science and Global Health or Engineering and Technology. See the PDF flyer. More information on the program at seattleschools.org.
[O]ur After-School program was lucky enough to receive a $3,000 grant from School’s Out Washington for quality improvement. We are very excited for the opportunity to add new reading and homework materials to our site to help our kids succeed!
The community center currently has openings in their after-school program — contact Jerrod if you’d like more information.
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Romina Rivera, Volunteer Coordinator for Youth Programs for Neighborhood House, writes:
WANTED: Mentors for Middle School Students
January is National Mentoring Month. To celebrate, Neighborhood House is launching the Recruit-A-Mentor Challenge. We’re trying to double the number of our CASASTART volunteer mentors for our middle school students.
Mentors are an important component of CASASTART. Each month, mentors join our students in various activities during after-school hours. These activities range from educational to simply hanging out. By being present each month, mentors become positive adult role models to our students which they may not otherwise have if it were not for the CASASTART program. The time commitment is two hours per month with the students plus some planning time with the other mentors. We ask that mentors commit at least six months to the program.
If you (or anyone you know) are interested in becoming a mentor, please e-mail RominaR@nhwa.org for more information on how to get started as a mentor.
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Lissa Munger, a teacher at Van Asselt Elementary, writes concerning an Open House there on Thursday, January 28th from 6:30-8:30pm:
We want to welcome community members, not just current Van Asselt families. At the open house, neighbors can:
Learn more about the Student Assignment Plan
Find out which schools your family is assigned to
See our facilities
Meet current Van Asselt staff and families (and district officials)
A Land Use Application has been filed by Clearwire to mount three panel antennas and a microwave dish antenna on the Seattle City Light transmission tower and install supporting communications equipment at grade within the foot print of the transmission tower at “4999 P BEACON AVE S”.
Comments may be submitted through January 20th.
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The bust of Dr. Jose Rizal on the north tip of Beacon Hill (in the park of the same name) is one of many around the world. The one in Washington, D.C. has gone missing.
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Art galleries on Beacon Hill have been few and far between, but Klara Glosova wants to change that. In November, she opened her house in North Beacon for one night as an experimental gallery space, the home_page.project. The current issue of City Arts has an article about Glosova and the home_page.project, and you can see a slide show here.
Glosova is putting together another open house; you can keep up with the plans at the home_page.project page.
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Free healthcare counseling sessions will be held from 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm on the first Thursday of every month at the Beacon Hill Library branch, starting Thursday, February 4. The sessions are open to all, with no registration required. A volunteer counselor, who speaks Mandarin, Cantonese and English, will provide one-on-one counseling on topics such as healthcare options, medical billing and Medicare.
The library is located at 2821 Beacon Avenue South, at the corner of Beacon Avenue South and South Forest Street. It is one block south of Beacon Hill Station, and right on the #36 bus line. There is free parking in the lot behind the building. For more information, call the branch at 206-684-4711.
Lastly, something I’m sorry we didn’t know about in time to see or promote — ’30s jazz and art inspired by classic cars? Sounds like a fun time. Here’s how the event went.
Photo by WendiThe city is introducing changes to the neighborhood Residential Parking Zone program this year. Come March, it will be easier to check if you need a parking permit on your block and apply for a permit online. Newly issued decals include the registered vehicle’s plate number, assisting in parking enforcement. (Existing permits will continue to be valid through their expiration date.) Which vehicles must be registered, the number of single-day guest permits, and the number of permits allowed per address are changing as well. No permit will be required for motorcycles and scooters, but a couple of challenging restrictions are coming: no more than four permits per address, and vehicles must be parked within six blocks of the registered address. More information on the 2010 RPZ program changes is available from seattle.gov.
