West Seattle, Washington
19 Thursday
Note on the front door of Gatewood Baptist says they’ve finally made their move to the new digs on 35th (formerly Calvary Lutheran), and the name change (Life Church) too. Meantime, the townhouses on ex-church property across the street are moving fast … frames are up for at least two of the buildings.
Another reminder: For everyone concerned about the future of Charlestown Cafe and what might be built on its site, you’ll want to be there 7 pm this Wednesday night for the long-awaited community meeting.
As of midmorning today (camera pointing northwest, SW Alaska in foreground):
On the east edge of The Junction, developers of the mixed-use project with the QFC didn’t waste much time after booting Hollywood Video. A reader e-mailed us late yesterday that demolition work was racing ahead. What you see behind the backhoe is actually a house behind the ex-store – by late last night, it was just a shell:
-Another one of our looming megaprojects gets its Design Review Board closeup this Thursday: 4729 42nd SW, aka Soon-To-Be-Ex-Parking-Lot Behind Soon-To-Be-Ex-Petco, aka Ex-Monorail Land.
-Make sure your calendar’s marked for the big meeting a week from Wednesday at Charlestown Cafe, which folks are trying to save from the fate of becoming future home to Soon-To-Be-Ex-Petco.
-Jumping back down to The Junction, we heard concerns a while back from the neighbors of 4515 41st SW, more “mixed use” creeping into a residential neighborhood. Its next Design Review Board spotlight comes up April 12.
-Now hopscotching back up toward Admiral, we got a note recently from a neighbor who wonders if anyone else cares about the phenomenon of creeping commercialism spilling further inland from Cali. This neighbor lives near the beauty salon across from the far corner of PCC’s lot, west of McDonald’s, and contends zoning only allows a home-based business, not a business-focused house with big signs. The neighbor says a zoning inspector ruled the signs could stay because they don’t have text — they’re considered “art.” They’re campaigning to get the businessperson to tone down the signs.
-Finally, another reader points out that the ex-Christian Science church north of the Hiawatha playground, east of Safeway Parking Smackdown Ground Zero, has relatively recently transitioned into something called Sanctuary At Admiral, giving The Hall At Fauntleroy (among other venues) a run for its money.
As mentioned about halfway through the plentiful comments on this post three weeks ago, a big Delridge apartment building is going condo. (Odd little blip on the city website about the complex “failing” an “inspection” this week, related to all this.) The Weekly features the project in this story (by photo, not by name) and links it to a company whose website simply notes “West Seattle, coming soon.”
#1, second Thursday of the month means Junction Art Walk night. Haven’t received the full lineup from the fine folks at Divina yet, but got a heads-up from participating WS artist Kelly Rae Cunningham, who says she’ll have collage work @ Clementine.
#2, wondering what’s up with Fauntleroy Place? Will Schuck’s/Hancock ever come down, so Whole Foods etc. can go up? Next stage in the process is the Southwest Design Review Board meeting Thursday, 6:30 pm @ the Southwest Precinct. (We can’t go but would love postable notes — we’ll give you a byline if you want — from anyone who can.)
Mark Wainwright reports on the Our Town West Seattle group that he and the folks who run the endangered Charlestown Cafe have agreed on a time and date for a community meeting: 7 pm March 28, at CC. They’re hoping for a big show of support; mark your calendar now!
Things are pretty tall and dense along the stretch of Beach Drive between Weather Watch Park and Me-Kwa-Mooks. This is likely to continue the trend, replacing a few surviving century-old homes:
Kinda like that nickname for the upward development along Cali. Or maybe we’re just hopeless SW geeks. Anyway — today’s developer development: Houses going down, more townhomes going up, on the north end, on a lot sold to Omni for a cool $1.8 mil last spring.
Thanks to CHS for pointing to Defend Capitol Hill. As in, from condos. In our case, townhomes. Perhaps the iconic image could be a red circle-slash through the Death Star Trench (as coined by “Steve E” in a comment on this post).
Interesting tidbits in the city’s latest sheaf of Land Use Permits/Applications:
-Part of the “greater than the sum of its parts” townhome project across from Gatewood Baptist Church needs an environmental review. We non-experts are guessing that’s why the sudden sign went up. But is it enough for the upset neighbors?
-Speaking of GBC, its new home (formerly Calvary Lutheran) has spawned two applications (here and here); both appear related to its auxiliary child-care enterprise.
-A bit to the north, sign installation appears to be next for the ex-Doxa home of Mars Hill-West Seattle.
Check it out. And remember, if you are interested in helping — or at least monitoring — the campaign to save the Charlestown Cafe, you can join the Our Town/West Seattle group.
Also from the P-I: a little hand-wringing about the teardown trend — not homes-to-townhomes, which seems to be West Seattle’s most popular flavor, but homes-to-bigger-homes. Our favorite quote in the story (which doesn’t feature WS but still seems relevant) is an explanation of why people are moving from the burbs back to the city:
“It’s the commute,” he said. “If you’re not working at Microsoft, why would you want to live in Issaquah?
(For us, the commute is only one of about 6,955 reasons we don’t want to live in the burbs, but that’s another post.)
Three more of the remaining houses along Alki Avenue are about to make way for apartments (six stories, 11 units, according to the permit application).
The controversial construction site on ex-Gatewood Church property (across Cali from the still-for-sale church) suddenly, belatedly, has one of those big white city land-use-notice signs on the chain-link fence. The sign only mentions part of the development, however — five units — not all the permits that have been issued, totaling more than a dozen units. (By the way, the city seems to be reworking the permit status pages to make direct linking tougher, so some of our older links on this project are broken. We’ll find a way around it! Meantime, two recent complaints about the project/s have been dismissed — here and here.)
The “hard copy” version of this week’s Herald has something you won’t find online — a big color ad from the folks who run Guadalajara Hacienda, on Cali between Morgan and Alaska Junctions. Says the restaurant’s closing as of this Sunday. We checked the city land-use system; you probably don’t even need to click this link to guess what’ll be built at the site.
-Guess who’s surfaced in the growing push to keep Charlestown Cafe from being replaced by a standalone Petco store: Former City Councilman Charlie Chong. His letter to the current council members is in one of the latest posts on the Our Town/West Seattle group site, as it moves to organize the fight.
-Also stepping up their fight: The Morgan Junction/Gatewood neighbors who say the construction across the street from Gatewood Baptist shouldn’t have sneaked through the permit process as a group of small projects instead of the one semi-big project it really is. One neighbor has just posted a new comment on this WSB page, contending the project is clearly illegal, and also wants everyone to know project updates are on the ORCA site.
-And one last reminder regarding a (so far as we know) noncontroversial project: As we mentioned Sunday, tonight’s the third and final public meeting to talk about what’s going to be done to transform the “Ercolini property” (photo below) into a park.
We were just reminded that it’s been exactly a year since the developers of Fauntleroy Place east of The Junction announced they’d signed Whole Foods. Six months since their land-use permit application. Looks like they’re not through the red tape yet — another Design Review Board meeting is tentatively set for the project in a month. Seems somewhat behind schedule, since the developer’s own fancy PR sheet suggested (page 11) groundbreaking ’06, completion mid-’07.
A great, informative discussion in the comments here, after the Charlestown Cafe site/Petco project Design Review Board meeting, has led to action. Admiral Neighborhood leader Mark Wainwright has set up a Yahoo! group (with a cool logo) as a rallying point for those concerned about the development (and the way things are going around here in general). Go sign up!
We mentioned last week that work has begun across the street from Gatewood Baptist Church, where land sold by the church is turning into “townhomes” (first noted here almost 3 months ago, then re-noted when multiple permits were issued just before Thanksgiving for four addresses all assigned to the one site – 7200 Cali, 7202 Cali, 7206 Cali, 7208 Cali). Now, with yet another permit JUST assigned to a fifth address at the site (7204 Cali) and the heavy equipment having arrived (photos below), neighborhood watchdogs have uncovered the magnitude of the project — contending this is ONE semi-big development that should have been subject to public hearings and a more intensive review process, instead of sliding through under the guise of multiple small projects. They’re conferring frantically about what they can do to get construction put on hold. They also say the work has opened “a natural spring” that’s causing water trouble at the site and may be reason alone for city review. They’d be interested in hearing from any land-use experts with thoughts on all this. (Side note, the house hidden in the trees at the upper right of the top photo is described by neighbors as an old “hunting lodge.” Who knew?)
Remember the exotically named, misleadingly marketed Verge Condos on Harbor? Six months to the day after we muttered about the peculiarities of their website, seems at least a few remain available, since today a soggy sign-waver was stationed nearby:
Things are going to be busier along Cali Ave just south of Morgan Junction — construction has begun on the townhomes-to-be across from Gatewood Church (this land was sold along with the church, which is still up for re-sale, though its listing now says “subject to inspection”) — the building on the north end of the property is already gone and the heavy equipment’s moved in.
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