All posts by Wendi Dunlap

Editor of the Beacon Hill Blog.
Lost and Found

Is this dog yours? And have you seen a missing golden retriever?

Neighbor Joshua sent us this message last night:

“This sweet girl ran up to me this afternoon on 13th near Angeline around 5:30. She would really like to go home. Is she yours? Give me a call at 206.354.2582.”

Another dog is not where he should be. Neighbor Allison posted a plea to the Beacon Hill Mailing List last night: “Our golden retriever Jack escaped our yard near El Centro. As of 10pm he's out and about. He typically comes home on his own. He wears a tag but the current one may not have our phone numbers on it.” Contact us here at the blog if you find Jack.

(Editor’s note: Jack has now been found!)

Meetings

Golf Clubhouse, station block development on agenda for NBHC

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A proposed design for the new Jefferson Park Golf Clubhouse, as viewed from the Beacon Avenue side.

The Jefferson Park Golf Clubhouse and the new development planned for the southeast corner of the Beacon Hill Station block — both topics of a fair amount of neighborhood interest — are on the agenda for the next North Beacon Hill Council meeting Tuesday, April 3 at 7 p.m. at the Beacon Hill Library community room.

Here’s the agenda:

This is an important meeting for all residents concerned with the
redevelopment happening on Beacon Hill. Please come to ask your
questions and voice your opinions.

  • 7:00 Welcomes and hellos
  • 7:15 Susan Rockwell, Seattle Parks Dep’t. Program Coordinator – Plans for the clubhouse at Jefferson Park; Q&A to follow
  • 7:45 Andrea Leuschke, Pacific Housing NW, Landscape Architect – An update on the development planned for the SE corner of 17th Avenue and McClellan (light rail station block) with questions and answers
  • 8:15 Community concerns and announcements
  • 8:30 Closure and executive board meeting if needed

The Beacon Hill Library is located at 2821 Beacon Avenue South. All are welcome to observe or participate in the neighborhood council; you are part of the council when you attend your first meeting, and you have voting privileges when you attend your second.

Urban Planning

Applications filed to subdivide on Sturgus, expand at El Centro

The Department of Planning and Development (DPD) has announced two new applications for Beacon Hill projects.

El Centro de la Raza (2524 16th Ave. S.) has filed an application to allow the expansion of the existing child care center, consisting of two portable classroom buildings. The El Centro site is currently zoned as SF5000 (single-family residential) and so this institutional expansion requires an administrative conditional use permit.

According to the application, the child care center will have eight employees and will provide care for 68 children. Existing parking will be redistributed on the current site.

Comments on this application may be submitted through April 4. You can comment by filling out this web form.

At 1534 Sturgus Ave. S., an application has been filed to subdivide one site into four unit lots for the construction of residential units. Permits have already been granted to tear down a 1906 3-bed/1 bath home on the site (sold in December for $200,000) and construct two 2-unit townhouses, with one garage and three surface parking spots. The subdivision is for the purpose of allowing sale or lease of the individual unit lots.

Comments on this application may be submitted through April 4. You can comment by filling out this web form.

This house has survived a century, but it looks as if it won’t see another one:


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Education

Van Asselt readers to compete for city championship

“The Van Asselt Bobcat Champions” from Van Asselt Elementary School on South Beacon Hill will compete in the city final of the 2012 Global Reading Challenge against students from Adams, Alki, Arbor Heights, Graham Hill, Greenwood, Loyal Heights, Northgate, Roxhill, and View Ridge elementary schools. The event is this coming Tuesday, March 27, at 7 p.m. in the Central Library Microsoft Auditorium, 1000 Fourth Ave., and it is free and open to all. Parking is available for $5 in the library’s garage.

The Challenge is a “Battle of the Books” for kids in grades 4 and 5. To compete, children read books from this list, and then participate in a “Quiz Bowl” game. Questions about the books are read to the teams and repeated once. Then the teams have 20 seconds to write down the correct answer. The winning Seattle team will take home the Global Reading Challenge traveling trophy and continue on to a videoconference challenge against students from Fraser Valley and Coquitlam in British Columbia, Canada.

The final against the Canadian teams will be held on Friday, April 13 at 10 a.m. at the John Stanford Center, 2445 Third Avenue South.

BH in the News, Local Business

“High-octane” booze sales may be voluntarily restricted on Beacon Hill

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Photo (not of Beacon Hill, as far as we know) by Steve Snodgrass via Creative Commons/Flickr.
Retailers in Beacon Hill, Sodo, and Lake City would be asked to voluntarily refrain from selling certain “high-octane” alcohol products during morning hours under a pilot program currently being developed by Mayor Mike McGinn’s office.

Under this voluntary plan, sales of fortified wine and some beers would be prohibited between 6 a.m. and 1 p.m., seven days a week. Bars and restaurants would not be included. Community organizations would be notified if local businesses don’t participate.

According to a report by Casey McNerthney at seattlepi.com, the project will involve a partnership with several alcohol distributors who will encourage local retailers to participate in the program, and will keep track of the program’s progress. The program is still in the planning stages, but could be operating as soon as May.

The voluntary program would not preclude the city from eventually creating an Alcohol Impact Area (AIA) on Beacon Hill if necessary. In an AIA, retailers may be restricted from selling certain types of alcoholic beverages that are linked to local chronic public inebriation problems. This is the list of products currently banned in AIA areas. A group of Beacon Hill neighbors began a drive last year to form an AIA.

Clean and Green

New trees sprouting on North Beacon Hill

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Photo by Wendi Dunlap.

You may notice a lot of new trees like this one on North Beacon Hill. These are two of the 300 or so trees that the Seattle Department of Transportation is planting along some of our neighborhood streets this month through the SDOT Community Tree program.

The trees pictured here, on 17th Avenue South, are Paperbark Maples, which are known for their decorative peeling red bark and for spectacular autumn colors. Other trees offered to the neighborhood included Serviceberry trees and American Hornbeams.

Arts, Local Events

Hot jazz and a swinging barn dance coming to ROCKiT’s Folk Club

Photo by Michelle Tribe via Creative Commons/Flickr.
The ROCKiT Community Arts Tuesday Folk Club is holding its last Tuesday show this coming Tuesday, March 27. Have no fear, the folk is not going away — instead, it’s moving to First Sundays, with the first show just a few days later on April 1. No foolin’.

Tuesday’s show features the Chicago 7, playing jazz of the 1920s and ’30s. According to their website, the group, organized by trombonist Marc Smason, is “a salute to, and extension of, the polyphonic early hot jazz styles of New Orleans, Chicago and New York.” Here’s an audio clip: “More Than You Know.”

The show will open with a performance by Washington Middle School Alternative Strings. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the cover charge is $5 for adults, free for kids.

The following Sunday the Folk Club debuts on Sunday nights with a Garden House barn dance featuruing fiddler Tony Mates and caller Charmaine Slaven. Cover for this one is $7 for adults, and free for kids. Doors will open at 6 p.m.

Both shows are, as always, in the Garden House, 2336 15th Ave. S.

Clean and Green, Local Events

Jefferson Park solar shelters celebrate grand opening

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Illustration by Stephanie Bower; image courtesy of Seattle City Light.

All are invited to come out to Jefferson Park on Wednesday, March 21 from 9:30 a.m. until noon to be among the first to see the new Community Solar picnic shelters at the Park. Local dignitaries and representatives of Silicon Energy, the company who manufactured the solar modules that make up the roofs of the shelters, will be on hand to celebrate the grand opening. The Jefferson Park project is estimated to produce 24,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year, enough to operate 3 households.

In the Community Solar program, Seattle City Light customers have the opportunity to enroll in the program as founding members by purchasing “units” of solar power for $600 each. Members then receive credits to their electric bill, using the power generated by their portion of the project. See more about it here. Members will also have their names included on the shelters: “artistically inscribed on colored metal bands surrounding the structure support columns,” according to City Light.

Wednesday’s weather forecast currently calls for rain, so the solar part of the project might not get too much of a workout. The shelter part ought to come in handy, though.

Arts, Education, Local Events

Kimball Art Walk comes to Beacon Avenue 3/22

The first annual Kimball Art Walk is next Thursday, March 22 from 3 – 6 p.m. Beacon Hill businesses will display artwork by Kimball Elementary School students, and there will also be performances by the Kimball Elementary Ukulele Band, bead-making demonstrations, and more.

The art walk starts at Victrola Coffee and will continue to El Quetzal, Hello Bicycle, Bar Del Corso and beyond on Beacon Avenue South. Each site will host examples of Kimball kids exploring science, social studies, history, etc. through the arts.

Victrola Coffee is located at 3215 Beacon Ave. S.

Beacon Bits

Beacon Bits: Movie lights and skate park lights

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Jefferson Park sidewalk. Photo by Joel Lee in the Beacon Hill Blog photo pool on Flickr.

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Local group Blue Scholars have a short film contest in progress to promote their album Cinemetropolis. See this video for details. Deadline is April 6.

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The Seattle P-I has a photo series, “What Seattle neighborhood are you?” Beacon Hill is represented, but we daresay they don’t know us very well: “BEACON HILL: You were happily climbing the social ladder until you found out the love of your life was two-timing you with then-grungy South Lake Union. Forget Amazon. You can do better than that, Beacon Hill.” Love of our life? Bah. They wish.

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Apparently the lighting at the new Jefferson Skate Park is less than ideal. But Seattle Parks is working on getting it right.

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Former Beacon Hill resident Roger Valdez published an article recently in the Seattle Transit Blog with a radical anti-zoning suggestion: “Beacon Hill: The Revolution Won’t Be Measured in Feet.” But then he followed up with another Beacon-centric post: “Zeroing in on Beacon Hill.” What do you think of his suggestions?