Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 7, July 2004
Copyright 2004 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.
Seattle Sun news briefs
Council approves monorail route
The Seattle City Council approved the route alignment for the Seattle Monorail Project on June 14.
The 8-1 approval (Council member Richard Conlin cast the lone "no" vote) doesn't allow construction to begin, however. The council must still approve a transitway agreement to allow the trains to run on city streets and other rights of way. A separate agreement must be completed for the portion of the route that will cross the Seattle Center.
Construction and operation bids for the 14-mile monorail Green Line, which runs from West Seattle to Crown Hill, will be received later this summer.
Friends of Dahl Playfield forms
A new citizens group, Friends of Dahl Playfield, has formed in an effort to improve the area around the park, which is located in the Wedgwood neighborhood.
Small and Simple Project funds from the City have been awarded to help the group hire a landscape architect to work with its members and the community-at-large to create a design plan. The plan will describe how to landscape the park, how to make it more amenable to picnics and quiet moments, and how to build play structures that serve younger as well as older children.
The next community meeting will be held on Wednesday, Aug. 2, at 7:30 p.m. in the University Prep School Gymnasium at 8000 25th Ave. NE. Steering committee meetings will be held at 7 p.m. in the school's administration building on July 19, Aug. 2 and Aug. 16. The public is invited to attend any of these meetings. For more information, call Christine Larsen at 522-2522.
Northgate library to close; Northeast library will reopen
The Northgate Temporary Service Site Library will close at the end of the day on Friday, June 25, to make way for construction of a new Northgate Branch Library and Community Center at the same location later this summer. The new 10,000-square-foot Northgate Library will be co-located with a 20,000-square-foot community center and a 1.67-acre park at Fifth Avenue Northeast and Northeast 105th Street, across the street from Northgate Mall.
The recently renovated North East Branch in the Wedgwood neighborhood will reopen Saturday, June 26.
Sun staffers win Journalism awards
Seattle Sun writers James Bush and Jane Lotter received awards in this year's Society of Professional Journalists' Excellence In Journalism Competition for Western Washington.
The awards were presented May 15 at a banquet held at the Seattle Museum of Flight.
Sun staff reporter Bush won first place for column writing in the non-daily newspaper division. His entry of three samples of his "Politically Speaking" column included the June 2003 piece which broke the news that Seattle City Council incumbents Jim Compton, Judy Nicastro and Heidi Wills had received campaign contributions from persons associated with Rick's strip club. At the time, the Lake City Way nightclub was seeking City Council approval of a proposed rezone. All three council members were running for re-election. Nicastro and Wills were subsequently defeated in last November's final election.
Lotter, who writes a column for the Sun called "Jane Explains," won third place in the humorous writing category for non-daily newspapers. Her winning piece was "My brush with hysteria," published in June 2003.
Seattle Sun editor Clayton Park, through his "day job" as business editor of the King County Journal, was one of three writers who shared a third place SPJ award given to "King County Journal Staff" for a series of stories they did last fall titled "Jobs Lost" about the Puget Sound region's jobless economic recovery. The award was for single-day comprehensive coverage by a daily newspaper with a circulation of between 25,001 and 65,000 copies in Region X (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and Alaska).
Magnuson Park plan approved
The Seattle City Council in June unanimously approved the Magnuson Park master plan, including a compromise which will bring the number of lighted fields down to seven.
The City Council trimmed down a proposal by Mayor Greg Nickels to build 11 lighted, artificial turf fields and will instead add nine artificial turf fields to the park, seven of which will be lighted. Four existing unlighted, natural grass fields at the park will be improved under the proposal. Field lights must be turned off by 10 p.m. and no field lighting will be permitted on Sundays.
The council directed the Parks Department to build the fields in three phases, each accompanied by development of a portion of an artificial wetland at the Sand Point area park.
The council created a citizen project advisory committee by separate resolution. It will advise the parks department on the project and make progress reports to the City Council's Parks, Neighborhoods and Education Committee.
Fremont Bridge to get $31 million fix-up
A $31 million, three-year project to replace the Fremont Bridge approaches will get underway in early 2005.
Neighborhood residents were given specifics about the project at a May 12 open house at B.F. Day Elementary School. For the first nine months of the project, all lanes on the bridge will remain open. Traffic will be cut back to a single lane in each direction (and a single sidewalk) during the second nine months, and the bridge will be closed to all traffic during 14 weekends of the construction schedule.
The project is necessary to replace the 86-year-old approaches (the elevated roadway sections leading to the bascule drawbridge), to upgrade the bridge's electrical and mechanical systems, and to build a new maintenance shop. The shop will replace an existing structure under the bridge's south approach.
The project will also include the addition of new traffic signals on North 36th Street at its intersections with Evanston Avenue North and Fremont Avenue North. The existing signal at Fremont Avenue North and North 39th Street will be modified as part of the project.
For more information on the project, call Rob Gorman, project manager, at 233-7205 or e-mail him at robert.gorman@seattle.gov.
RNA to hold annual picnic
The Roosevelt Neighbors Alliance will host its fifth annual Potluck Picnic and Petanque at University Playground Park on Sunday, July 18, from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Picnickers are invited to bring a potluck dish to share; plates, utensils and soft drinks will be provided.