Friday night’s community party at Garfield is an opportunity to make a local kid’s holiday great — and to see that joy first hand. Here’s a last-minute invitation to help from organizer Elisa Porter:

Still Needed

We are getting closer to having the toys we need. So much thanks goes out to those that have donated! Toys are still needed for ages 5-11. If you want a truly heart warming experience, come help organize all the toys and give them out. Volunteers can come anytime between 3pm and 5pm, and stay as late as you like.

Toy and monetary donations are being accepted at all Parks and Recreation Community Centers.  You can also still sign up to volunteer. Call 684-4559 or e-mail [email protected]

Central Seattle Community Center Holiday Parties
In addition to Garfield, the community is rallying around some other ‘parties for everybody’ in the area. The East Precinct is helping out at the Yesler Community Center for its celebration on Friday. We hear turnout was great to help wrap presents for the Miller Community Center party. You can stop by to enjoy the holiday feel or lend a hand on Saturday.

A few notes from Thursday night’s meeting of the East Precinct Crime Prevention Coalition. If you were there and caught something we missed or want to add your $0.02, please add a comment or three.

• Lieutenant Joel Guay was in the hot seat for the precinct fielding community — and reporter! — questions.
• Guay said that crime in areas like 23rd and Union and along Dearborn ebbs and flows and is “up and down” — though he said East Precinct crime is “down” in all “countable categories.”
• He noted what he called the “historic” meeting of property owners around 23rd and Union and the progress in connecting that group with the city’s Office of Economic Development.
• Guay also dropped an interesting tidbit related to the Jim Mueller planned development at 23rd and Union that we reported on earlier on Thursday. Guay said there will be a “ground breaking” on the mixed-use development “in a month or two.” Mueller told us earlier this week that nothing was definite yet. We haven’t confirmed anything following Guay’s interesting remarks.
• We asked Guay if he was concerned about a trend of crimes in the CD and Capitol Hill — and in other parts of the city — involving pepper spray. Guay was relatively philosophical about it saying SPD sees these kinds of things pop up from time to time until, like a fad, it goes away. At one point, Guay said the concern was related to cheap over the counter “stun gun” type devices. SPD has said that it is looking into the possibility that crimes involving pepper spray in the CD and other neighborhoods could be related.
• Crime prevention coordinator Terrie Johnston shared some burglary statistics. The dataset was only for Edward Sector — the western edge of Capitol Hill and First Hill — but it’s an interesting snapshot of residential burglary activity in the area. Johnston said of the 18 reported residential burglaries in the area, 13 required no force to enter the building. You might chalk this up to people being lazy locking their doors — or the Key Ring Kid but Johnston said only three of the incidents definitely involved a key. She also added that nearly all of the incidents occurred during the day.
• The next community crime meeting is slated for January 27th.

With King County Metro still studying its options for replacing the aging fleet of electric trolleys that ply the streets of Capitol Hill, the Central District and other lucky Seattle neighborhoods, a special guest was invited to town this week to give the transit agency’s engineers and staff an opportunity for a real world examination of a state of the art electric coach. Of course, the bus is from Canada, eh.

Metro borrowed the trolley coach from Vancouver, BC for a one-day trial in Pioneer Square on Wednesday. Among other magic things like kneeling capability and lots of standing room in the interior configuration, the coach also is capable of traveling short distances off wire. On Wednesday, the driver was showing off by completing an entire city block on off-wire power. The current ancient fleet of King County bus trolleys require a tow for any off-wire activities. And, no, skeptics, we didn’t ask whether these magic buses were any better at keeping their hooks on the overhead wires. We kind of like those zen pauses in our travels.

Metro says it must find an alternative as the lifespan of its current electric fleet is coming to an end. Representatives say there is no room for working to extend the life of the existing trolley fleet because key systems are facing parts shortages and other maintenance issues on both types of trolley buses currently operated by Metro. Without having access to spare parts from the bus manufacturers, keeping the existing vehicles would force Metro to do their own engineering and fabrication of replacement parts, something that has been deemed to difficult and costly to pursue any further. Metro faces the replacement dilemma as it also struggles with necessary budget cuts to continue offering its service as revenues show no signs of near-term recovery.

You can read more about Vancouver’s electric trolleys in this Wikipedia entry on BC’s TransLink system.

It’s been awhile since we had an update on East Precinct crime as holidays and busy neighborhood blog schedules have conspired to keep this reporter and the precinct brass apart. No longer. Sweet reunion. Thursday night, we’ll be in attendance along with community members for an opportunity to learn about the latest updates in crime prevention in our neighborhoods and to hear what other community members have on their minds in regards to keeping the streets safe. Also on the agenda, a rep from Rebuilding Seattle Together will be on hand to talk about their services helping homeowners do important repairs to improve efficiency and safety. You can learn more on http://www.rtseattle.org/

If you can’t make the meeting, let us know in comments if you have anything on your mind and we’ll try to ask about it at the meeting.

East Precinct Crime Prevention Coalition

Thursday, December 9th, 2010
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Seattle Vocational Institute, Room 401

Agenda:
Margie Thirlby, Rebuilding Together Seattle
Community Concerns
Precinct Updates

There will be more attention on improving Madrona Elementary and other central Seattle public schools Tuesday night as Parents and school officials will meet Tuesday night to discuss the scores and action plans for improving schools in central Seattle.

Seattle Public Schools recently released individual school report cards to the public for the first time. Tuesday night’s meeting will bring together parents, community members and school officials to talk solutions. Organizers say Nancy Coogan, Seattle school’s central region executive director and local school principals will be in attendance with an agenda including an overview of the region’s School Reports and breakout discussion sessions centered on improvement plans and next steps. Here are the details from the Seattle Council of Parent Teacher Associations:

Seattle Public Schools recently released its annual District Scorecard as well as individual School Reports. These are designed to show the community where Seattle schools are meeting state standards as well as district goals. There are some great successes; there is also a pervasive achievement gap in nearly every school in the district. 

The Seattle Council PTSA is co-sponsoring these meetings to help the greater community understand the challenge and to give community members an opportunity to speak directly to the administrators in charge.

We need your voices there. The first meetings are this Monday, Nov. 29, (NE) and Tuesday, Nov. 30 (SE). Following are a schedule and links to the reports. Each school has an improvement plan, those can be found on page 2 of the School Reports.

Central: Dec. 7, 7-8:30 p.m. at Washington Middle School, 2101 S. Jackson St., Seattle 98144

Central schools include:
Franklin HS, Garfield HS, Nova HS
Secondary Bilingual Orientation Center
McClure MS, Washington MS
Blaine K-8, Madrona K-8
Coe, Gatzert, Hay, Jophn Muir, Lawton, Leschi, Lowell, McGilvra, Montlake, Queen Anne, Stevens, and Thurgood Marshall elementary schools

You can find specific school reports and improvement plans here.

Seattle Schools overview on the reports and these plots of school performance

The circumstances are eerily similar. A lost driver. The wrong place. Wrong time. Wrong people packing a gun and pepper spray. SeattleCrime has details on yet another pepper spray and pistol stick-up in the Central District:

In the most recent incident we’ve come across, two suspects pulled a handgun on a man and pepper sprayed him on December 3rd after the victim stopped and asked the suspects for directions.

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According to police, the victim pulled up to the two suspects at 21st and E Spruce around 5:45pm after he got lost on his way to a friend’s house.

One suspect then pulled out a black handgun and demanded the victim’s money.

CDN reported on what victims said was a similar hold-up of a car full of people on the icy night of November 24th at Columbia and MLK. That incident sent three people to the hospital to be treated for pepper spray exposure.

It is legal to own and carry pepper spray in Seattle and the state of Washington though you must be 18 years or older. While not available on the typical grocery mart shelves, it’s a relatively easy to acquire weapon as it is often marketed as “bear repellent.”

Only yards from an AM/PM mini-mart and service station, a new grocery store is planning to open on the northwest corner of Cherry at 23rd. The Cherry Corner Market and Deli still appears to be in planning and construction phases as owners Samuel Tadesse and Daniel Abahynhe are completing the paperwork required to launch the new business — and get a key liquor license that will allow the market to sell beer and wine.

The corner once housed the Update barber and salon which has now moved two doors north.

Beyond the business factors of operating a market directly across the street from a national quick-e-mart brand, the application to sell liquor bears watching given the store’s proximity to Garfield High School. In December 2008, the Twilight Exit faced opposition from Seattle Public Schools when it sought to move to Cherry from its former home on East Madison. That situation was eventually sorted out after a week of politicking including some campaigning right here on CDN.

As pointed out recently in comments, the Washington State Liquor Control Board has granted other recent liquor applications in the area but we’re following up with the WSLCB. Typically, the state is driven by local community decisions in these applications. We’re checking with the control board and Seattle Schools to see if there are plans for any additonal “good neighbor agreement” requirements for the Cherry Corner Market.

We reported on the meeting. The invite to come out and help was posted here. Might as well cover some of the results. It’s not going to change the world. But it’s something. Happy holidays, 23rd and Union style.

Last month, we told you about the return of some of the kitchen power behind King Creole in the form of the new Louisiana Grill. This weekend, Louisiana is celebrating its grand opening with some free treats for you.

The southern style take-out joint is offering free drinks or ice cream to anybody who spends $10 or more.

CDN commenter KH says: “Orgasmic gumbo and po’boy sandwiches!”

Sexy. Menu below. Happy grand opening. And, yes, we’re proud to say Louisiana Grill is a CDN advertiser.

Finished Installation (Jean),
originally uploaded by 23rd and Union.

A group including representatives for the four property owners at the corners of 23rd and Union met Thursday morning to discuss solutions for moving development forward and activating the intersection that now stands unused at three of the four corners, Central District News has learned.

According to Will Little of Cortona Cafe who also attended, representatives from all four corner properties and the Union Street Business Group attended the meeting to talk solutions both near-term and long-term.

What can they do right away? Decorate for the holidays.

Attendees are said to have hatched a plan to string holiday lights at the 23rd and Union intersection. It’s a long way from some of the other plans also targeting the area such as Operation “Safe Union” but for an area so critical to the neighborhood’s future but also facing so many challenges, police work needs to be matched with a diverse set of solutions — including Christmas lights.

The discussion is also said to have laid the groundwork for an effort to apply for more grant money from the City of Seattle to help fund more long-lasting improvements and possibly events.

We reported in mid-November on the sudden shut-down of the gas station on the northwest corner of 23rd and Union. The Richlen family has owned the property for decades and plans to bring a new tenant on board to operate the service station, CDN reported. King County says the land is now worth about $2.2 million.

Across 23rd, the building that once housed the Philadelphia Cheese Steaks restaurant still stands and waits, after some work by owner 1400 23rd LLC, for a new business to move in. It’s been empty since this tragic January 2008 shooting. The formal ownership of the $1 million property is complicated. We waded three levels deep through Washington State records before we found anybody’s names on the paperwork but CDN has identified a man named Ian Eisenberg as the “owner” of the property in our past reporting — he also now owns the property where the nearby car wash stands.

The $1.5 million lot where the state liquor stands is owned by Mid-Town Limited owned by Thomas Bangasser. Bangasser’s family is a longtime property holder in the area, according to county records.

The fourth southwest corner is also well known. Developer Jim Mueller’s 2203 East Union LLC owns the land where development of his project has been on hold for years. Mueller bought the parcel in 2006 for just over $1 million. The county says it’s now worth about $1.7 million. It currently is fenced and empty.