Category Archives: BH in the News

BH in the News

KOMO’s best neighborhood blog’porter

KOMO reporter and Beacon Hill neighbor Travis Mayfield. Photo from Travis's personal blog.
KOMO reporter and Beacon Hill neighbor Travis Mayfield. Photo from Travis's personal blog.
Among KOMO’s new (and somewhat contentious) neighborhood-focused newsblogs, Beacon Hill’s Travis Mayfield is likely their best neighborhood reporter. (If you peruse their other “KOMO Communities“, we think you’ll agree.)

Living on the north-east edge of Beacon Hill with his partner Curtis and their chew-happy hound Sadie, Travis is in the neighborhood, chasing stories and asking questions nearly every day when he isn’t outside it, reporting on events and issues from Stanwood to Olympia to Port Orchard for KOMO NewsRadio and KOMO 4 News.

Most recently, Travis caught up with Governor Christine Gregoire during a visit to El Centro de La Raza today. Earlier this week, he sat down for a chat with North Beacon Hill Council chair Judith Edwards at Baja Bistro.

BH in the News, Clean and Green, Food and Drink

Beacon Hill plum tree is front-page news

Nearly half the front page is devoted to the Risses' plum tree. From the Seattle Times front page PDF.
Nearly half the front page is devoted to the Risses' plum tree. From the Seattle Times front page PDF.
Heidi Risse pointed out their plum tree’s front-page appearance on today’s issue of the Seattle Times. The Risses’ tree, with a bumper crop of plums this year, is featured in an article about City Fruit (previously mentioned here), an organization formed earlier this year to not only help harvest urban crops, but to assist and educate tree owners in pest control, pruning and processing. Check out City Fruit’s calendar for classes on canning and more.

Find out how the 75 pounds of bounty will be put to use in the article at the Times.

BH in the News

Neighbors protest power lines; City Light responds

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These are the new power lines on the west side of Beacon Hill. Photo by Wendi.
These are the new power lines on the west side of Beacon Hill. Photo by Wendi.
The Seattle Times revisited the power line controversy on northwest Beacon Hill today, including a photo of neighbors Heather DeRosier, Carole Swanson, and Joan Habu standing underneath one of the new poles with a “Take Them Down!” protest sign. The new, thicker power lines, with taller poles, were installed a few weeks ago near South Stevens Street and 12th Avenue South.

Neighbor Frederica Merrell recently sent a letter of complaint about the power lines to Seattle City Light Superintendent Jorge Carrasco, asking, among other things, “why didn’t they bring the power in from below and run the lines through the tunnel, putting them under the freeway instead of draping them in the open where they will face wind and weather?” and received the following response:

Thank you for your note about the electrical service upgrade in Beacon Hill.

Seattle City Light installed an additional set of power lines to provide service for Sound Transit’s light rail trains, electrified buses and growing energy needs in the Rainier valley. The utility spent about three years reviewing possible routes and designs to deliver this needed service upgrade. While we try to limit the impact of such projects on the surrounding neighborhoods, safety for residents and our workers, reliability of the electric supply, and cost are important considerations as well.
Continue reading Neighbors protest power lines; City Light responds →

BH in the News

Power lines obscuring some sight lines for neighbors on the hill

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From the right angle, these power lines prevent a clear view of the towering office buildings downtown. Photo by Wendi
From the right angle, these power lines prevent a clear view of the towering office buildings downtown. Photo by Wendi
Several local media outlets have picked up a story of some neighbors on the far-west edge of the hill whose views have become scarred due to taller power poles with thicker power lines, purportedly installed by Seattle City Light at the behest of Sound Transit to accommodate the power requirements of the light rail station.

Beacon Hill neighbor Roger Pence, who works with Sound Transit, said on the mailing list:

…these power lines have nothing to do with Sound Transit. We didn’t know they were going up either! This is a “betterment” project entirely the doing of Seattle City Light.

Later reports indicate that City Light upgraded the service to power trolley buses and in expectation of increased demand in Rainier Valley.

(Tangentially, I noticed the trucks on Stevens between 12th and 13th yesterday morning, and when I called City Light to inquire about them , I was told it they were performing sewer work. “TV sewer inspection.” Odd. Updating with links as they appear.)

BH in the News

Jefferson Park reservoir: insane in the membrane?

Jefferson Park reservoir work, 2007
Jefferson Park reservoir work, 2007. It won't be going back quite to this stage, presumably. Photo by Jason

West Seattle Blog just broke a story about problems with leaky “membranes” applied to both the Beacon Hill Reservoir at Jefferson Park and West Seattle’s Myrtle Reservoir projects.

Repairing the problem will require removal of grass, dirt and “drain rock” lids covering the nearly-completed reservoirs to get to the membrane material. After replacing the faulty waterproofing, it will be re-covered. Who pays for the repair work will likely be resolved in court, and how far out this pushes “completion” of the project is unknown.

Much, much more detail on the West Seattle Blog.

Thanks, WSB!

BH in the News

A bear that gets around?

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This morning around 10:30, there were reports of a bear sighting near 17th & Ferdinand, and motorcycle officers were dispatched to search southward along the Chief Sealth Trail from about 5000 Beacon Avenue.

KING5 and KIRO-TV have preliminary reports.

If this turns out to be the same bear that made the news up north earlier this week, that bear really gets around!

11:50 Update: The P-I reports paw prints and a gnawed-on ice cream container found near the Beacon Hill P-Patch. And KOMO now has initial coverage.

12:45 Update: The P-I adds that Department of Fish and Wildlife Sgt. Kim Chandler doubts the credibility of the reported sighting and that “wildlife agents will not be responding unless additional, more credible reports are received.”

1:30 Update: The Weekly on the false bear alarm.

2:15 Update: The P-I now has pictures of the P-Patch tracks.

6:00 Update: The Big Blog has a photo of the ice cream evidence and Blogging Georgetown breaks out the hazard stats for black bear attacks.

BH in the News

Four vehicle crash injures pedestrians, driver at Beacon and Columbian

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The Seattle P-I reports that a vehicle-pedestrian collision was reported just before 2:30 pm today at Beacon Avenue South and South Columbian Way. Police are investigating the incident.

Edited to add further info:

KOMO 4 has a photo and further information. A 60 year old woman driving near the above intersection collided with another car, then veered into a grocery store parking lot and hit two women there. One pedestrian has broken bones, and the driver and the other pedestrian have minor injuries.

Edited yet again, 10:19pm::

The accident was worse than KOMO’s information stated. According to Seattle Police, four vehicles were involved in the collision, and there were life-threatening injuries to at least two people. An 81-year-old woman driving a Lexus sedan lost control of her car while attempting to back out of a parking space in the parking lot on the northwest corner of Beacon and Columbian. Then she hit a woman who had been a passenger in her car, then continued backward, striking another car and pinning its driver, then hit yet another vehicle. The driver of the Lexus and one of the pedestrians were transported to Harborview with life-threatening injuries; the other pedestrian was transported to Harborview with non-life-threatening injuries. Police are still investigating the accident.

Beacon and Columbian was not the best intersection to pass through this afternoon. Half an hour after the earlier accident, a 30-year-old man on a moped was struck by an SUV. The moped driver was also taken to Harborview with non-fatal injuries.


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BH in the News

Beacon Hill mentioned (briefly) in the New York Times

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Beacon Hill received a brief mention in the New York Times today:

The deep recession, with its lost jobs and falling home values nationwide, poses another kind of threat: to the character of neighborhoods settled by the young creative class, from the Lower East Side in Manhattan to Beacon Hill in Seattle. The tide of gentrification that transformed economically depressed enclaves is receding, leaving some communities high and dry.

It’s a bit odd, because Beacon Hill doesn’t actually seem to fit the pattern described in the article, of neighborhoods gentrified by “the young creative class” and then finding their new hipster shops and cafés collapsing from the effects of the recession. Beacon Hill is still a neighborhood seemingly on the verge of gentrification, but we haven’t yet seen an influx of shops “playing the Decemberists in a continuous loop,” as the Times puts it. We have a couple of newish coffee shops, and a couple of newer businesses that might have been on the cutting edge of gentrification up here, but, honestly, it sounds more as if the Times meant to name-check Georgetown.

BH in the News

Seattle Times: What Mid-Beacon Hill?

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The Seattle Times posted a “Neighborhood of the Week” article about South Beacon Hill, touting its affordability, diversity, closeness to Georgetown and Columbia City, and mentioning places like Lockmore and Cleveland High School — hey, wait a minute! Those locations are about as Mid-Beacon as you get. Apparently, to the Times, anything south of Jefferson Park is South Beacon Hill. Folks who live there, particularly in Lockmore, do you think of where you live as South Beacon?