Photo of Daejeon Park pagoda by Bridget Christian.Following up on the earlier post about the car wash located at an intersection not zoned for auto-centric businesses, 15th and Beacon: an inspector from the DPD visited the business on April 13, and apparently found it in violation, reporting: “‘Violation Alert’. Violation of the Seattle land use and zoning code observed. Change of use permit required for new car wash business. Also help wanted sign for auto detailers, stereo installers & auto tint installers.”
“A sister-city delegation was recently here to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their connection with Seattle, and they brought to our attention that their city is now officially known as Daejeon.
If you look around on the internet, you see the city referred to most places as Daejeon, some places as ‘Daejeon (Taejon),’ ‘Taejon or Daejeon,’ and some places (the online Encyclopedia Britannica) still give Taejon as the primary spelling, saying ‘also spelled Daejeon.’
…In both cases, correct pronunciation of the first syllable is a long “I”, so DIE-john.”
Apparently the Korean government adopted a new romanization style a few years ago: the Revised Romanization of Korean. In this change, Pusan became Busan, Taejon became Daejeon, and Taegu is now Daegu. The new romanization style is intended to represent the sounds of Korean more accurately. So the new sign at Daejeon Park represents the current spelling of the Korean name; the park name hasn’t changed, just its spelling in Roman characters.
Many of you were unable to attend the March 28th North Beacon Hill workshop on Neighborhood Planning held at El Centro de la Raza. We are one of three SE Seattle locations which will have updates to our neighborhood plans, due to our proximity to light rail stations. (This) link takes you to a simple survey that is being used to gather input from the residents of the community. It asks what you want Beacon Hill to be like in the future, what appeals to you about the Hill, etc. Please take the time to fill it out – it only takes about five minutes.
At the workshop, copies of our Neighborhood Plan were made available to each table group. Neighborhood facilitators helped groups to identify those improvements to the Hill that are part of the Neighborhood Plan. We also looked at those aspects of the plan which have yet to realize completion, for example Jefferson Park, a boulevard on Beacon Ave. that extends south to Jefferson Park, and other improvements. Please look at the plan on your next visit to the Library. An ad hoc committee of the North Beacon Hill Council is now meeting to define those elements of the Neighborhood Plan which have high priority. If you would like to join this committee, contact Freddie Merrill at frmerrill@seattleschools.org or Robert Hinrix at robphin@yahoo.com.
Your input to the future of Beacon Hill is important. Thanks for taking five minutes to fill out the survey.
Taejon/Daejeon Park in the snow last December. Photo by Matthew Rutledge in the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr.
Travis notices something different in Taejon Park: it’s now Daejeon Park — Madness Hamster
Speaking of Seattle Parks and Recreation, they are holding an open house at Jefferson Community Center, 3801 Beacon Avenue South, on Thursday, May 7, to discuss the possibility of standardizing park operating hours. See the press release here.
Real estate on Beacon Hill showed a mini-boom in March: “The average time on market for Beacon Hill dropped from over 170 days to 68 in a single month. That is the biggest drop I ever remember seeing” — Seattle Home Buying Guide
The planned design for the Beacon Mountain Playground at Jefferson Park. Click this image to see a larger version of this design.
David Gackenbach forwards this appeal from Glenn Herlihy:
Dear Friends of the Playground,
This is a crucial moment for funding the Beacon Mountain Playground.
As you might have heard the levy money is now (this week) being allocated to different parks projects and Jefferson Park will receive a portion but where it will go is still up in the air. There is a good chance we might be able to fund the entire new Playground design if we can convince Parks Department Head Timothy Gallagher, and Parks Committee Chair Tom Rasmussen to allocate the levy funds to build Beacon Mountain Playground.
If we get them to fund and build the entire new design we will have a magnificent playground completed by next year. If they don’t allocate the funds toward the the new design it would be phased construction for the next few years.
It been a long road to get our design approved by parks and ready to build so with one last push maybe we could see this dream through to completion. Those of us on the Beacon Mountain Playground Team believe play infrastructure is a healthy and sustainable investment for the future of our community.
Please take a moment and write a letter stating you wish to see levy funding to build the entire Beacon Mountain Playground at Jefferson Park. Include your name and address. Thanks
“Great progress is being made every day on Jefferson Park and I know these photos don’t look like much, but they are significant because today they started taking down the looming former earthen dam that paralleled Spokane St. For those of us that live near by it feels a little like the Berlin Wall is coming down!”
First the blue wall, now this — feels like things are starting to happen, doesn’t it?
Removal of the earthen wall at Jefferson Park on Spokane Street. Photo by Joel Lee -- thanks for the photo, Joel!
Certain kids could have found a better way of spending their spring break on South Beacon Hill this morning. Two juveniles suspected of burglarizing a house in the 8400 block of 37th Avenue South ran from police, broke into a nearby home, and then refused to come out. The SWAT team came out and surrounded the house, and eventually the youths were taken into custody around 10:30 am. KIRO has a picture of the standoff, and the P-I has a brief story as well.
The “dramatic tale of oh!”, as Nancy Leson put it in her All You Can Eat blog at the Seattle Times, was not yet over. This week Claycamp sent out an email stating that King County has now given him permission to sell the Swinery’s bacon legally. But on the other hand, they have now lost their lease and “will be for sure out of the building by the end of the month.” Lunch Counter? Closed. (That was fast.) Swinery? Sort of closed, but they say they have “24 days to make and sell some bacon,” along with t-shirts that read “BACON PIMP.”
And this is where the situation gets even more convoluted. While the Swinery now has a permit to sell bacon (and only bacon, no other cured meats) legally, the annual permit to run a restaurant/food establishment from the Culinary Communion House on Beacon Avenue expired on March 31. The bacon-selling permit assumes that the bacon will be sold from a legally-permitted establishment, which CC House is not. Unfortunately, the fees to renew CC House’s restaurant permit are not pro-ratable, so Gabriel and Heidi would have to pay either a year’s fee or a six-month seasonal fee to be able to sell bacon they plan to sell for the rest of April.
Claycamp has also withdrawn his application to sell at farmers’ markets, so the Ballard Farmers’ Market sales mentioned on the Swinery web site won’t be happening, nor will any other market sales.
The one result we can be sure of at the moment is that the Culinary Communion House on Beacon is going to be very vacant, very soon. Perhaps a nice pizza restaurant could open there instead?
Normally, a permit is $45 per vehicle for a two-year permit, but to ease the transition to the RPZ program, the city will provide two no-cost RPZ permits per household or business through spring 2011, along with one no-cost guest permit. If you need more permits, you can purchase them at the normal price, $45 per vehicle ($10 for low-income residents). Applications for permits will be sent out in May, and enforcement of the new zone will begin in July when the light rail system starts operation.
Speaking of development near the light rail line, we meant to post this last week: a PDF of Sound Transit’s plan for the Beacon Hill light rail station area. The gray areas that say “future development” are not owned by Sound Transit and will be fenced off by chain link fence after the construction is complete. It’s up to the property owners to decide what to do with those areas, and their plans are unknown at the moment.
Also in the Times, Kusak’s Cut Glass, at the foot of Beacon Hill just off Rainier Avenue on 22nd, was founded in Seattle nearly a century ago, in 1914. The company was named “the Northwest’s family-owned small business of the year” by the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Seattle office last year. And now, in the recession, it is struggling, but determined, to survive.
On a positive note, the cherry trees are blooming! (A little late this year, aren’t they?) Photo by Joel Lee, in the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr.
