We first told you two weeks ago about some Junction businesses’ petition campaign against Conner Homes‘ request for the city to “vacate” that stretch of the alley between 42nd and California, south of Alaska, so that land under the alley can be included in the underground parking garage for its two-building development. (Read our original report here; read developer Charlie Conner‘s next-day “letter to the community” here.) Opponents including Elliott Bay Brewery and Liberty Bell Printing have continued to gather petition signatures, and the Junction Neighborhood Organization has posted the petition as well; now there’s word that the city’s deadline for comments on the request has now been extended to September 15. That of course means comments in support of it as well as against it; you can comment directly to Moira Gray at SDOT, which is reviewing the request, at moira.gray@seattle.gov. The project itself, meantime, is still in the design-review process. Here’s our coverage of the most recent meeting, in late May; the city has not yet posted a date for the next one.

Full report to come, but here’s the headline version: The two meetings (“early design guidance” for 35th/Graham High Point mixed-use project, “recommendations” for revised Fauntleroy Place) together lasted 3 1/2 hours. Results: High Point project (see the presentation) needs work, must come back for second round of “early design guidance”; FP (see the presentation) can advance to permit stage but with some tweaks. Details later.

Top to bottom, those are the views of Fauntleroy Place‘s proposed new design – its east side facing 39th SW, west side and southwest corner along 40th SW, and its south side along SW Alaska. Site work has been under way for weeks now but the project’s back in Design Review because of changes; tonight’s Southwest Design Review Board meeting is at 8 pm at High Point Community Center (here’s a map), and the PDF of the presentation is on the city website now (see it here). It’s preceded by the 6:30 “early design guidance” meeting for the mixed-use building proposed in High Point at 35th/Graham; the presentation for that project is not online as of this writing .

Two notes regarding proposed projects that the Southwest Design Review Board will consider in public meetings coming up this month and next: First, a change — The 9/11 date we first mentioned last week for the Admiral Safeway (photo above; the rendering for the new proposal is to be released at a community meeting sometime in the next few weeks) rebuild project has just been moved to 9/25, per the city’s Design Review-Upcoming page; on that night, after the Safeway project at 6:30 pm, it’s the next review for the Harbor Properties project at 38th/Alaska, both meetings at the Southwest Precinct. Meantime, here’s what’s on design reviewers’ agenda this Thursday night:

On Thursday, two major projects are on the Southwest Design Review Board agenda – the newest design for Fauntleroy Place (above, the most recent publicly released rendering) at 8 pm; the 35th/Graham High Point mixed-use project at 6:30 pm, both meetings at High Point Community Center. Chip Marshall from Lowe Enterprises, which is developing the HP project, gave WSB a tiny bit of a sneak peek today regarding the commercial part of the project:

At this point the commercial is only in the very rudimentary planning stages. It will be along 35th and a portion of Graham street with a public plaza space in-between at the junction of the two streets.

Of course we are at the mercy of what end users will want to locate there, but we believe that given its location on a busy street as well as being the gateway to High Point that it should be attractive to a number of potential tenants.

We have had a meeting with High Point residents and they expressed interest in a coffee shop, some form of food related business that could also serve as a community meeting place, a restaurant as well as possible live work spaces, all of which we are open to.

Two weeks into serious work at the Fauntleroy Place site (current status: big dirt piles, as seen above), we checked as promised with developers BlueStar this morning to ask if the Whole Foods trouble has led to any concern for them about the grocery chain’s participation in the project (mentioned here last night). BlueStar’s Eric Radovich says no — “We have a lease that’s signed and recorded” — 25 years — and adds that they’ve been working closely with Whole Foods in recent weeks to finalize the design, looking ahead to next week’s Design Review Board meeting (8 pm 8/14, High Point Community Center). He adds that Whole Foods is considering the design for this store to be something of a template for their next generation of stores.

Posted tonight on the P-I site – trouble for Whole Foods, which says it’ll be scaling back but doesn’t specify how. We’ll check with Fauntleroy Place developer BlueStar in the morning to see if they’ve received any assurances the project here won’t be affected. (The next project update was expected a week from Thursday, when the newest design for Fauntleroy Place is to go before the Southwest Design Review Board, 8 pm 8/14 @ High Point Community Center.)

Followup to the new development we reported yesterday in the plan to rebuild Admiral Safeway (new store plus 34 residential units, according to the city project page): We mentioned, we had a message out to corporate HQ to ask if a rendering of the proposed project is available, and now we have a response: Not yet, says Safeway’s Sara Corn, but she promises it will be unveiled at a community meeting before the Design Review Board “early design guidance” session for the project on September 11th. As soon as Safeway sets the date for that community meeting, you’ll see it here, as well as other places including posters at the store.

Just added today to the city’s Design Review/Upcoming schedule: The September 11th meeting of the Southwest Design Review Board now includes the first “early design guidance” session for the proposal to redevelop the Admiral Safeway site. This has been under discussion for a while, as we first reported last February (then in April, this WSB post asked for your thoughts about the site); the city’s official project page includes this overview of what’s being proposed:

Design review, early design guidance meeting for two new buildings; a one story, 58,750 sq.ft. grocery store (Safeway) with a four story, 34-unit residential structure attached and a one story, 7,000 sq.ft. retail building. Parking for 227 vehicles to be located on the roof and at grade. Project will require alley vacations and contract rezone. Existing 32,000 sq.ft. grocery store to be demolished.

The architects on the project page are Seattle-based Fuller-Sears; you can see some of their work at their website. The design-review meeting is set for 8 pm Sept. 11 at a TBA location in West Seattle; we’d mentioned earlier that the Spring Hill mixed-use building south of The Junction (5020 California) was already on the agenda that night (6:30 pm). We’ve got a message out to Safeway to see if any renderings for this proposal are available yet.

When we published this WSB story yesterday afternoon about some Junction businesspeople circulating petitions opposing the alley “vacation” proposed by Conner Homes for its California/Alaska/42nd buildings, we promised to share any response from Conner Homes as soon as we received it. So here’s the entirety of a letter e-mailed to WSB a short time ago:

August 1, 2008

Dear Neighbors,

We are aware that some of you are concerned about our proposed development at the junction of Alaska and California Streets.

Please be assured that it has always been our intention to build a project that enhances the Junction. We have tried to keep the community aware of our plans and, to this end, have already had a number of group and individual meetings to update residents and merchants as they have progressed. We will continue to do so.

However, if any of you feel that we have been remiss on this score, we will be happy to meet with you either in a group or separately, so please feel to contact me or Project Manager, James Miller directly and we will set something up.

I understand that many of you are concerned about the impact of the development on overall parking in the area as well as the effects of our proposed alley vacation.

In terms of parking, we want to make it clear that our development will INCREASE the number of parking spaces available to the public. The number of surface spaces will remain roughly the same and there will be a considerable amount of new parking for retail created in our proposed underground garage. As a result the current parking congestion will be lessened.

We have also heard that there are worries that our development will somehow lead to the development of the public parking lots owned by the West Seattle Trustees Parking Association. We do not know how this rumor got started but it is completely false. Our development will have absolutely no effect on these lots and as a member of the Association we are not aware of any plans to develop these lots.

As far as the alley vacation we are confident that this will be a real plus for the abutting owners representing the majority of the properties along the alley have supported it. Still we appreciate the concerns of some merchants about possible disruption to their business and we want to assure them that we will work directly with them to come up with a solution (turnarounds etc.) to mitigate those impacts.

We do want to be clear that this is not a permanent alley vacation but only temporary to allow completion of the underground garage. Once this process is complete (in around 10-12 months) the alley will be restored to a much improved condition.

Specifically, the overhead wires will be under grounded, the alley will be widened and pedestrian friendly amenities will be added. These mitigations, along with a pedestrian walkway between 42nd Street and California will make the alley a real asset to the community overall.

As an additional mitigation we have also agreed to commit substantial funds to getting the proposed public park across the street from our property off the ground to the benefit of all residents and merchants in the area.

It should be noted that the two large developments underway in the area will be completed before we begin construction so that overall disruption to the community will not increase.

Finally, we firmly believe that a quality development in this location will improve the Junction, both in terms of housing and new retail opportunities for all West Seattle residents, as well as provide increased business activity for existing merchants.

As long term owners of the property we are fully committed to improving the Junction and welcome any opportunity to work with you to achieve this end.

Thank you for your attention and we look forward to working with you to make this a project we can all be proud of.

Sincerely,
Charlie Conner
James Miller
Connerhomes.com
425-455-9280

On the sixth day of demolition, the old Schuck’s/Hancock building is finally all gone:

That’s the view from 40th, looking east toward Fauntleroy/Alaska; here’s the front view from 39th (note you can see straight through to Bank of America):

And the giant pile of wood debris has now morphed into this giant pile of wood chips:

One more demolition note, on a separate project – thanks to “Chuck and Sally’s Van Man” for the tip that the 6053 California (at Graham) demolition is actually proceeding from the alley side – couldn’t get close enough for a good look but the dumpster tells the tale (as does the sun dappling through the yellow paper covering the California-fronting windows):

You can see a rendering of the future 6053 California development here; you can see the latest design proposal for Fauntleroy Place (which goes to design review 8/14) here.

(video no longer available due to Blip.tv shutdown)

WSB was there about 10 minutes ago as the backhoes finally started tearing up the former Hancock Fabrics/Schuck’s building at Alaska/Fauntleroy/39th that will be the site of Fauntleroy Place (Whole Foods, a new Hancock store, and almost 200 apartments). Demolition work at the site started last week and has proceeded relatively slowly because crews have cleared a lot of recyclable material from the interior. (Video added 11:43 am.)

(2007 photo by WSB contributing photojournalist Christopher Boffoli)
The demolition of the ex-Schuck’s/Hancock building at Fauntleroy/Alaska/39th (continuing today) isn’t drawing many tears but other buildings can be a different story. As we wrote here in April 2007 when development plans for 6053 California (above) were first announced, we’ll be sad to see it go. It’s nothing fancy but its unique “Mission Revival” facade has been a semi-landmark of sorts at that California/Graham corner (across from the shuttered Chuck and Sally’s – nothing new on that, by the way – in one direction, the up-for-sale Strata in another). The demolition permit has just been issued. Here’s the project that will replace it, with “live/work” units and townhouses:

The West Seattle architect whose firm designed it, Brandon Nicholson, showed that rendering at the June “can townhouse design be saved?” forum as an example of non-cookie-cutter-architecture alternatives (it’s not a solid block of building – there’s a courtyard among other things). And the city ruled the old building didn’t warrant landmark consideration, despite some unique-for-its-time (1924) features. Nonetheless, we and others have memories, and some wistfulness will linger after the backhoes depart.

From the sidewalk on the SW Alaska side of the building that’s coming down to make way for Whole Foods and the rest of Fauntleroy Place, you can still see into the ex-storefront, and beyond to the former parking lot. We’re just back from another visit to the demolition site, where Fauntleroy Place project manager Easton Craft from BlueStar told WSB that the crews are not expected to tear down the actual structural shell before tomorrow. They’ve been assessing as the work proceeds, he says, and there’s more clearing out to do inside the old Hancock Fabrics (which will have a new store in the new building) and Schuck’s (which won’t) building; if you go by the site, you’ll see the debris in almost-neat piles:

It’s being arranged this way because much of the debris will be taken away for recycling. As previously mentioned, demolition (to be followed by excavation) is proceeding even though a final design for the mixed-use building (including almost 200 apartments) hasn’t been approved yet — the most recent version will go before the Southwest Design Review Board three weeks from tomorrow, on August 14th; the site for that meeting now has been set — High Point Community Center. Fauntleroy Place will be reviewed at 8 pm, after the design for the 35th/Graham project is reviewed at 6:30 pm.

Those are two of the three backhoes working on the ex-Hancock/Schuck’s building. We talked with BlueStar‘s project manager for Fauntleroy Place, Easton Craft, at the scene a few minutes ago – he said the crews aren’t expected to take the entire building down today — just the facade and some internal work — though the plan could change. Though the official “groundbreaking” ceremony was more than a month ago, the building couldn’t come down until asbestos-abatement work was done; Craft tells WSB that went uneventfully, without anything unusual turning up in the building beyond some of the tile/ceiling asbestos routinely used back when buildings like this went up. He also says City Light crews are in the area today doing some preparation work for the utility undergrounding that BlueStar plans to do (including the poles along 39th). While we were talking with Craft, a woman came up to ask what’s going to happen to the old Hancock/Schuck’s sign:

Well, he began, we think it’s going to the dump. No! she said, alarmed, identifying herself as a longtime West Seattleite who wants to see the sign preserved as history – at least, the Hancock’s part. Craft said he’d see what he could do, though he’s worried the sign might be welded to its metal poles and hard to separate. We’ll let you know how it turns out. ADDED 10:39 AM: Demolition video:

Click To Play

We’ll check back on the progress a bit later. As for the project itself, its new design will be considered by the Design Review Board next month, but as BlueStar told JuNO two weeks ago, they planned to proceed with demolition and excavation work in the meantime.