January:
Seattle Parks and Recreation announced plans to tear down the Nike antiballistic-missile bunker in Discovery Park. A relic from the Cold War when the United States and Russia were arming themselves with atomic bombs and missiles, the squat building has walls that are 3- to 4-feet thick in places, and it won't be easy to demolish. Still, a city architect wondered if the building should be save for historical purposes.
The parks department launched a nationwide search for a company that could tackle the job, but first it had to clean out the place, which had been used for storage by the city. Metal thieves lent a hand several times during the year by breaking in and stripping away copper cable in the bunker.
The Magnolia Cooperative Preschool dodged a bullet when the Department of Planning and Development ruled that the preschool was an allowable use in the Magnolia United Church of Christ. The preschool had made the church its home for more than half a century, but a neighbor complained to the city that the preschool and the new Magnolia Theater School of Drama were causing parking and traffic hassles. The theater group had been cleared for operations earlier by the city.
The massive deluge and windstorm on Dec. 14, 2006, left trees in Queen Anne and Magnolia relatively unscathed, according to city arborist Nolan Rundquist.
Parks and Rec announced an effort to increase use of Queen Anne's Kinnear Park. The newfound sense of purpose was tied in to a plan to set up an off-leash-dog area in the park, but many local residents are leery of going into the park because there are homeless encampments. Randy Wiger from the parks department insisted that increased use can help turn around parks with a history of public-safety problems.
A nearby resident discovered there was a hush-hush plan to use the old military chapel in Discovery Park as a hutch for rabbits captured in Woodland Park. With staffing by tight-lipped volunteers in cooperation with Parks and Rec, which partially funded the project, the idea was to sterilize the critters and have them recuperate in the chapel until they could be shipped off to a rabbit sanctuary.
The scene of multiple shootings and one death later ruled to be self-defense, the Mr. Lucky hip-hop club across the street from KeyArena and its later incarnation as a sports bar finally closed down when the business was sold. Replacing the trouble spot was the Mainstage Comedy and Music Club.
A Master Use Permit announced that Queen Anne's Seventh Church of Christ, Scientist on Eighth Avenue West was to be demolished and replaced by housing. The news was a blow to the Queen Anne Historical Society, which had tried unsuccessfully to find a buyer for the building.
Church officials had no choice, they said, because the congregation had dwindled to fewer than 10 members, and they couldn't afford to pay a minimum of $100,000 needed to fix the aging structure. However, the church was later saved. See September.
A PTA committee launched an effort to give Magnolia's Catharine Blaine School a makeover. Overgrown landscaping was the main problem, but the building was looking dowdy compared with the new Karen's Place playground and the Magnolia Gateway Project south of the school.
February
Bucking a trend that has seen chain outfits take over the book business, Flora & Fauna Books has managed to survive for more than a quarter of a century, most lately in new digs on West Government Way in Magnolia. Owner David Hutchinson - who lives in Magnolia with his wife - credits his success to serving a niche market, and the store is the only one of its kind in North America.
Residents living in an apartment house in the 400 block of Queen Anne Ave. N. had a problem with their water supply. There was too much chlorine in it, making bathrooms smell like public swimming pools and drying out skin and hair, they said. In response to a query from the News, Seattle Public Utilities tested the water and found that the chlorine levels were within acceptable limits.
The No Tunnel Alliance held an open house in Magnolia to explain why they thought the Alaskan Way Viaduct should be replaced with a new, elevated structure. It would be cheaper and quicker than building a tunnel, which had been scaled back from a $4.8-billion, six-lane version to a $3.4-billion, four-lane version, according to alliance co-chair and Magnolia resident Gene Hoglund.
The alliance's stand echoed 36th District State Representative and Magnolian Helen Sommers, who said in January that the four-lane plan hadn't been evaluated for cost and traffic capacity. Besides, she added, there was no money available to build the tunnel.
City officials announced at a community meeting that numerous proposals had been received for uses of the Fort Lawton Army Reserve Base when it is surplussed in 2009. Among the proposals were 182 units of market-rate housing and 304 units for the homeless, for self-help housing and for affordable housing.
The United Indians of All Tribes Foundation also proposed building a community center and a college, while the parks department wanted to preserve open space. Some Magnolians worried about their property values going down if the space was used to house the homeless, but city officials noted the federal government requires that use for its military installations when they are no longer needed.
Queen Anne Garden Apartments residents were in a gloomy mood when the Low Income Housing Institute, the property owner, announced it was facing a money crunch and could be forced to sell the building. Some complained that the institute didn't tell them about the financial problems, and there were also complaints that the 38-unit building wasn't managed properly. That included a resident manager who was fired after he allegedly stole rents from tenants.
March
The Magnolia Helpline announced that it was closing its doors after more than 20 years of helping neighborhood residents in need. Declining poverty rates in Seattle was one reason cited for the decision, but so were declining donations and a drop in calls for help from an average of 1,000 a month to only around 150 a month.
The St. Vincent de Paul Society stepped in later that month to take up the slack for the Helpline. The Christian organization spent $20,400 the year before to help 120 clients, and the organization spent around $15,000 helping clients the year before that.
Queen Anne resident and State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles sponsored a Senate bill that would clarify how much marijuana constitutes a 60-day supply for medical uses. A 60-day supply was the standard approved in 1998 by Initiative 692, which legalized the medical use of the drug in the state, but the exact amount was never defined.
The bill calls for state Department of Health to determine the amount of grass contained in a 60-day supply, based on, but not limited, to "a review of available medical and scientific literature, consultation with experts, survey of other states' best practices, and public input."
Historic preservationists scored a victory when the Seattle City Council voted to give the Treat mansion at West Highland Drive and Queen Anne Avenue historical status. The historic status applied only to the exterior of the building, but the designation torpedoed plans by owners of the property to tear down the building and replace it with 55 housing units, many of which would have had killer views.
Five appeals were filed challenging the city's OK to demolish the Seventh Church of Christ, Scientist. Three of the appeals were based on historical-preservation grounds, and two were based on environmental impacts that included the danger of contamination from lead-based paint when the building was razed.
The Magnolia Library was closed for renovations and expansion. The original closure date was in February, but it was delayed when estimated costs for the project came in much higher than the city's original estimate of $1.78 million. As it turned out, it will cost an estimated $2.8 million to fix up the neighborhood library, and the library board anticipated it would need to amend the budget to make up the difference.
April
A priest at Sacred Heart Church in Lower Queen Anne was ousted after an audit revealed he had allegedly misspent parish funds. A spokesman from the Archdiocese said the priest, Fr. Robert Ivan Dawson, diverted funds from ordinary operations to capital projects that included a new altar and work on the sanctuary.
Dawson, who served at Sacred Heart for a year and a half, is in the Denver-based Redemptorist order, and the order promised to make up the loss.
The Municipal League of King County honored Magnolian Randy Revelle with its James R. Ellis Regional Leadership Award. A former King County Executive and two-term Seattle City Council member, Revelle thinks one reason he got the award was because he was upfront about suffering from bi-polar disorder, a mental condition that struck during his successful run for a second term on the city council in 1977.
Revelle told numerous people about his disease, but his condition didn't become public knowledge until he was elected King County Executive in 1981. That's when a KING-TV reporter who thought he was hiding his condition found out and planned a hatchet job on him. Revelle - who hasn't had a manic episode for 30 years thanks to lithium - did an end run by talking the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which broke the story.
He also led a successful effort in 2002 to force insurance companies to cover mental-health treatment for the first time, and Revelle has become a nationally known speaker on bi-polar disorder.
The Seattle School District announced that it wanted to sell the old Queen Anne High School gym and the 14-space parking lot next to it. There was a hitch. A provision in the Master Use Permit for the construction of the nearby John Hay Elementary School 20 years ago mandated that the gym and the parking lot be available for use by school staff members, teachers and parents during school days. It was partially a mitigation for not having to include as many parking places as normal on school grounds.
Plans were put on hold for determining the future use of the Fort Lawton base in Discovery Park. In a late-breaking development, the Army told the city it was worried about not being able to sell off as much property as possible to private developers.
That was a major issue because federal law calls for surplus military property to be available to programs for the homeless at little or no cost.
May
A Port of Seattle proposal to tighten up live-aboard policies at Fishermen's Terminal fell flatter than a flounder at a meeting of the Fishermen's Terminal Advisory Committee. Under the existing standards, owners, captains and crewmembers of fishing boats moored at the marina could live on the ships year round.
The new plan, by contrast, restricted people living on the fishing boats from 14 to 30 days prior to departure and 10 to 20 days following the boats' return, depending on the size of the boat.
A Port spokesman denied the Port was going to unilaterally impose the new live-aboard proposal, and he claimed the ideas behind the new policy were first introduced by the advisory committee. The committee denied that.
The proposal by the Seattle School District to sell the old Queen Anne High School gym and parking lot was slammed at the second of two public meetings held by an advisory committee. Many at the two meetings didn't think the property should be sold in the first place, and another point of contention was that living units in a new development on the site would make parking in the area more difficult.
The school district countered that a study had shown parking in the neighborhood wasn't that bad within 400 feet of John Hay. But there were complaints that the traffic counts weren't taken at peak demand times when school starts in the morning and when it lets out in the afternoon.
Tony Pella, who disappeared on a night out with his father at Ozzie's during the bar's Cinco de Mayo celebration, was found dead under the western end of the Magnolia Bridge.
His father, Jeff Pella, told police his son disappeared between the time Tony walked around a nearby corner and the time it took Jeff to walk around the block from the other direction in an effort to surprise him.
Tony's car was still parked in Lower Queen Anne the morning after he disappeared, and was unknown how he made it to the end of the Magnolia Bridge a mile and a half from Ozzie's. Police were treating the case as an accidental death.
A reverse-911-call system recently launched in Seattle helped find a woman suffering from Alzheimer's Disease after she wandered away from her Magnolia home. The system sends out automated calls to residents in areas where an adult or child has disappeared, and the call prompted two Magnolia men to change their usual jogging path from 28th Avenue West to 29th Avenue West, where the missing woman was last seen.
The men, accompanied by their dog, found the woman partially down an embankment wearing slipper socks, and they flagged down a nearby squad car, which took her home to her relieved husband. The men, Jim Dyer and Stuart Vincent, later won Outstanding Citizen Awards for their efforts.
A Queen Anne couple living next to the Seventh Church of Christ, Scientist was successful in their appeal of a demolition permit for the building. The victory was a narrow one based on the church submitting an environmental checklist that listed asbestos, but no other hazardous materials.
Longtime King County Prosecutor and Magnolia resident Norm Maleng died suddenly of a heart attack. It was a loss that stunned friends and colleagues across the state.
June
The Hilltop Children's Center, which was ordered to leave its longtime home in the Queen Anne Lutheran Church earlier in the year, found a new home at 4 Nickerson St. The center had looked at every church and public space within a 5-mile radius from its old digs, but found nothing suitable, according to a center staffer. So the center settled for commercial space in a location that formerly housed a university laboratory.
Plans were put on hold to build a mixed residential and commercial project on the block that the Metropolitan has called home in Upper Queen Anne. The plan included a new QFC as an anchor store in the new development, something that sparked a good deal of outrage on the Hill.
But although talks between QFC and the family that owns the property hadn't completely broken down, neither side was willing to commit to the other, a family lawyer said.
Staff members at the Fun Forest saw the writing on the wall and realized their jobs were going to disappear in the relatively near future when the Seattle Center carnival shuts down. Owners of the family-run business don't have much choice about leaving; they'd fallen approximately $800,000 in their rent payments since 2004, according to a Seattle Center spokesman.
In addition, the Century 21 Committee, charged with coming up with a plan for the future of the Seattle Center, recommended dumping the Fun Forest because it's past its prime.
July
The King County Waste Water Division wants to do something about raw sewage combined with stormwater getting dumped into the waters hundreds of feet off the beach at south end of Magnolia. It's called a combined sewer overflow (CSO) and happens when storms overwhelm the sewer system.
The CSOs take place an average of 10 times a year at the spot and pose an obvious health risk to the public, so King County wants to limit them to once a year, according to a spokeswoman. One of the solutions would be to build a large tank or pipe that could store the CSO until it could be sent to the West Point treatment plant.
Magnolia developer Martin Selig plans to build a four-story, two-building complex at the site of the closed Westfarm Foods and Darigold building. Numerous residents of condominiums across the street and up the hill are steamed, complaining that the development will block their views. There doesn't seem to be much they can do about it. Only public views are protected by law, not private ones.
The city inked a deal to spend $11.1 million to buy the Navy's Capehart housing complex in the middle of Discovery Park. The housing will be torn down, and the land will be returned to park use.
An advisory committee voted to block the Seattle School District's request to eliminate 14 parking places as part of the deal to sell the old Queen Anne High School gym to a private developer.
Police announced that a homeless 28-year-old man admitted killing former KIRO Radio talkshow host Mike Webb in his Queen Anne home. The man, Scott White, had been living and sleeping with Webb.
August
The long-running effort to find a replacement location for the Seattle Center skateboard park that was eliminated by the construction of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ran into a major bump in the road. The idea was to build a new skateboard park north of KeyArena in the location currently occupied by the Everett DuPen "Fountain of Creation" sculpture and wading pond.
City officials said the artwork would be stored until a new location for it could be identified on the Seattle Center Campus. The DuPen family and the general arts community went ballistic over the proposal, fearing that the sculpture would end up simply being warehoused. There was also an issue of where the money would come from to tear down and relocate the art.
Within days the Seattle City Council dropped the proposal, opting instead to put the replacement skateboard park in the space currently occupied by the Pavilion buildings southeast of the KeyArena.
A couple took action when they noticed men cutting down trees in the environmentally sensitive Kiwanis Ravine below their home. They also called police, who showed up but took no action when the workmen said they had been hired by the Army Corps of Engineers to do the job.
Still, a parks department arborist stepped in, stopped the tree cutting and posted a stop-work order on one of the remaining trees.
An elderly Magnolia woman didn't buy it when a man with a GE logo on his jacket tried to convince her to install a new, wireless alarm system in her home at no charge. The woman already had an alarm system connected to her landline, but the smooth-talking salesman told the woman that all landlines were going to be torn down soon. She didn't believe him.
The Queen Anne Library reopened to great fanfare following $850,000 worth of renovations. The work included improved ventilation and electrical connections, a new boiler and repairs to mildewed walls.
The Ravenna Gardens at the corner of Queen Anne Avenue and West Boston Street closed after a decade of business in the community. Replacing the gardening store was a Peet's Coffee & Tea shop at a corner where three other coffee joints are located.
Facing demolition, the Seventh Church of Christ, Scientist in Queen Anne was saved at the last minute when the Seattle Church of Christ bought the 1926-era building for $1.56 million.
The 18-year-old Church of Christ group had been renting space in other buildings for its services and first looked at the Christian Scientist church about a year and a half before. The group couldn't afford the $2.3-million asking price at the time, but the lowered price made the deal practical. Historic preservationists were thrilled.
The Queen Anne Helpline marked its 25th anniversary. The charitable organization had a budget of $12,790 the first year, and the budget had swelled to around $281,000 in 2007. Longtime Helpline director Pat Sobeck noted that many would be surprised at the number of people in the neighborhood who need help.
Seattle Parks and Recreation plans to do some major landscaping work along the scenic Magnolia Boulevard. The so-called Vegetation Management Plan was developed over the course of three years a decade ago with the help of the public.
Some of the work will involve volunteer labor and day laborers hired with donated money. The plan, which will take around five years to implement, includes opening up 65 percent of the park property to views by trimming shrubbery and topping trees on steep slopes below the boulevard.
Traveling magazine-subscription salesmen may not have made many sales, but they certainly made an impression on many Queen Anne and Magnolia residents who called police to complain about the men's pushy and obnoxious sales techniques. Two of the salesmen in Queen Anne were arrested, as was one who choked a woman on Eastlake and stole her laptop computer.
October
A Magnolia chiropractor's license was suspended by the state Department of Health Chiropractic Quality Assurance Commission following a complaint that he allegedly engaged in sexual activity with one of his female patients. Chiropractors having sex with patients is against state law, and the complaint turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg.
An investigation revealed that Dr. Mark Svetcos allegedly had sexual contact with at least eight other female patients between July 2005 and August 2006. Some of the women were married at the time, and the contacts took place in his home, the women's home and in his office, according to state charges.
Svetcos' lawyer issued a press release stressing that all of the alleged sexual contacts were consensual, but that really didn't matter in the end. Svetcos sold his business to another chiropractor.
Parks and Rec announced it was going to replace the artificial turf installed at the Queen Anne Bowl a decade before. It was showing its age, but the city caught a break when the manufacturer decided to sell the replacement turf at cost. The original project - which allowed year-round play - cost around $1 million, but the replacement costs came in at $300,000. Half of that was for removing the old turf and installing the new turf.
Magnolia Rotarians marked the end of a successful project after raising $20,000 and using the money to buy a dozen defibrillators that were installed in various locations in the neighborhood. The devices are automatic and literally talk the users through the steps needed to revive heart-attack victims.
The Greater Queen Anne Chamber of Commerce teamed up with the Community Police teamed up in calling for a license suspension at Club Level 5 following the shooting of four people in the parking lot behind the building in the 300 block of Fifth Ave. N.
A car in the lot was also peppered with gunshots, and police said the shooter and his victims had just been thrown out of the club for fighting, purportedly because someone stepped on the shooter's foot.
There's no money to pay for it, and potential funding sources have yet to be identified, but plans for replacing the Magnolia Bridge have been completed to the halfway point, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation. SDOT started out with 25 alternatives for a new bridge, but that number had been narrowed in 2006 to one that would be built just to the south of the existing bridge.
Assuming work would begin in 2009, the estimated cost of the project comes in at $262 million. Further planning won't take place until the funding is secured.
The Port of Seattle decided to stick with its current live-aboard policy at Fishermen's Terminal, meaning that owners, captains and crewmembers can live on the fishing boats indefinitely.
It was a complete flip-flop from what many termed as harsh restrictions proposed the year before on the amount of time, owners, captains and crewmembers could live on their fishing boats.
November
Bars and restaurants in Lower Queen Anne had mixed reaction when Sonics owner Clay Bennett announced he wanted out of his lease at Key Arena as soon as possible so he could move the team to Oklahoma City. Sonics fans pack local joints on game nights, and staff at most of them predicted a severe financial hit when the team leaves.
They're rarely used, but the Seattle School District decided to maintain 14 parking places for use by John Hay Elementary School parents, teachers and staff when it sells the old Queen Anne High School gym across the street. The district predicted it would lose between $100,000 and $400,000 when it sells the property because of the parking requirement, and the spaces could end up in an underground garage.
The ongoing saga of efforts to find space for a new skateboard park on the Seattle Center campus took another twist when a feasibility study revealed the city would have to spend big bucks to relocate utilities under Pavilions A and B, both of which would have been demolished to make room for the new skateboard facility.
The bottom line now is that only one pavilion will be razed, reducing the size of the park from 162,000 square feet to 144,000 square feet. The news was panned by both the skateboard community and the users of the pavilions such as Folklife staff members.
QFC bailed on taking part in a proposed development on the block where the Metropolitan Market is located, but a Magnolia developer has stepped forward and bought the property, which also includes an apartment house and two single-family homes. A lawyer for the Cox family, which owns the property, said he hopes the Met Market can be part of the new deal.
Teatro ZinZanni has returned to its original home across the street on Mercer from the opera house on a five-year lease. The move was necessary because the zany theater troupe had to move its speigletent from its former location at a Belltown car dealership because the land there is going to be developed. Most of the dinner-theater shows were sold out for the holidays even before the theater was ready to stage shows.
December
The King County Regional Justice Center in Kent was renamed the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center to honor the late King County Prosecutor and longtime Magnolia resident. The honor was marked by a ceremony attended by city, county and state officials, all of whom had found memories and high praise for Maleng.
The owner of the Metropolitan Market on Queen Anne Hill said he would like to be part of the new project that originally would have seen the longtime neighborhood grocery store replaced by a QFC in a mixed-use development.
Owners of the Queen Anne Hardware store have decided to hang it up after 25 years of operations on top of Queen Anne Hill. Ronald Goettge, who owns the store with his wife Elaine, is in an Eastside nursing home, and Elaine said she's tired, stressed out and needs a break.
A consultant team hired by the city has started a new study to find a location to build a new Fire Station 20 in the northwest part of Queen Anne. The city had proposed building a new, larger station at the existing location by taking out three single-family homes on the same block.
The city council backed off on the plan following public complaints, but the new consultants concede it's still possible the original replacement plan could turn out to be the best one.
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