Last year Casa Latina moved into a remodeled office building at 17th & Jackson, and at the time they had told neighbors to expect a further expansion within a year or two. Planning for that expansion is well underway, with a design review scheduled for tonight to collect feedback on the three options their architects have come up with.

The overall plan is to add 6,000 square feed of new office and retail space on the vacant lot just west of their existing facility on Jackson. They’re proposing three total floors that will fit within the 40′ height limit of the zoning there, with the first floor containing 2,000 square feet of retail space that Casa Latina will lease out to another business or organization. Development regulations require a total of eight parking spaces to be provided on-site.

Option A provides for a two-story frontage along Jackson, with a third story above parking spaces on the back half of the lot:

Option B limits the Jackson-street side to a single story containing the ground-floor retail, and adds two stories above parking on the back half of the lot:

Option C puts all of three stories up along Jackson, with a surface parking lot on the back side of the lot:

Got a favorite amongst the three, or something else you’d like to add to the discussion? It’s your chance to be heard tonight at 6:30pm at SVI.

Please join us this Saturday May 22nd from 10-2pm at Cal Anderson Park as we kick off the Capitol Hill and 12th Avenue Street Clean! Breakfast and lunch will be provided to fuel us as we gather together to do trash pick-up and beautification of curb bulbs along 12th Avenue, from Madison to Yesler on the south end. Groups from SU, SAAS, Pioneer Human Services and Umpqua Bank are already signed up. Please join us and show your neighborhood a little love! All you need to bring is yourself, all tools, bags and gloves will be provided on the morning of the 22nd.  Questions? Contact Cecelia Gunn at Capitol Hill Housing [email protected] or 206-204-3832. See you Saturday!

Madrona’s own glassybaby, the unique votive candle company with a studio and shop on Union just off 34th Ave, got some love from the Huffington Post’s Impact section this week.

The story, Glassybaby Candles Light Up New York Charity Scene, highlights founder and cancer survivor Lee Rhodes’ mission of supporting cancer charities and other nonprofit organizations, particularly in New York where glassybaby opened another shop last fall.

The company will be providing candles to Ellen’s Run, a Long Island event supporting breast cancer patients, and the Phoenix House Summer Party, a fundraiser for the organization’s work to help families affected by drug addiction.

For any purchases made online or at the Seattle and New York stores using the promotion code ‘Huff’, 10 percent will be donated to Conservation International to protect the environment.

glassybaby has been getting all kinds of national press this month, with an feature on CNN’s Larry King Live and a piece in Martha Stewart Living as well.

From what is predicted to be the breezy streets of Seattle’s East Precinct:

When we first moved to the neighborhood way back in the ’90s, one of the first community events we remember attending was the garden tour. We got a map that led us on a walking tour to new areas of the neighborhood where individual residents had opened up their private gardens, allowing their neighbors to take a look at their work.

It was fascinating to see how many beautiful spaces there were around the neighborhood, and we picked up some cool new ideas on how to spruce up our little courtyard spaces. And we met a bunch of neighbors along the way, including one guy just down the block.

After a long hiatus, the Garden Tour returns to the neighborhood this Saturday from 11am to 4pm. And CDNews is proud to be a sponsor of the event.

Tickets are a very affordable $5 each in advance, and you can get them online from Central Cinema.

All proceeds from the tour go to a new project to create public art around the CD, which will get under way late this year.

Get a ticket today, and we’ll see you out there on Saturday.

Seattle attorney Lee Rousso has filed a claim against the city for ‘Racial Profiling’ against the Seattle Police Department

Dori Monson Show

Centraldistrictnews.com

Please join the 12th Ave community and the Parks Dept. tonight Tuesday May 18th at 5:30pm at the Seattle University A+A Building (824 12th Ave) to kick off the official design and development process for the 12th Avenue and James Court Pocket Park!  This project has been a long time coming and we are so excited to finally bring people together to talk about what we want this park to be like!

Snacks and beverages will be served. Questions? Contact Bill Zosel at 329-3986 or Kate Stineback at 204-3831.   Please join us!

Mountain Flow Yoga, which recently moved to Madrona from Madison Park, has the benefit of residing in the same building as the Bowling Green Apartments, which have a nicely finished rooftop deck.

Now that the weather is (mostly) cooperating, certain yoga classes will be held outdoors on the deck. I checked out a class last Saturday and there’s something to be said for doing sun salutations that actually involve sun.

Studio owner Jaime Scates Schmitz said they hope to get up to five classes outdoors a week in the summer. For now, you can check their interactive calendar to learn which classes will be held on the roof.

Your daily dose of craziness from Seattle’s East Precinct:

Based on our comments and conversations, it’s safe to say that the majority of people in the Central District would be sorry to see our trolley buses converted diesel. The livability aspects are important, such as how quiet they are. But there’s a common-sense efficiency aspect too: we’ve got cheap, environmentally friendly hydropower in Seattle. That must be better and cheaper than diesel, right?

We asked Metro for the raw data, and can say that yes, electric trolley buses have a big efficiency advantage over their diesel equivalents. Here’s how it shakes out:

• Trolley buses cost $0.35 per mile for electricity, or $1,021,854 for all of 2009
• Diesel buses cost $1.79 per mile for fuel. Based on current price of $2.30 per gallon, that would have cost $5,228,701 to run on the same routes as the existing trolley network

So based on raw energy prices, trolleys have a $4 million advantage over diesel buses per year.

But trolleys have a big additional cost that diesels don’t. The network of wires that power them requires constant maintenance, as they occasionally break or have to be moved for construction projects. Metro says that averages to $1.17 per mile of trolley service, or $3,400,367 for all of 2009.

That reduces the trolley cost savings to $806,480. Of course that money goes to a completely different place, into the pockets of local workers vs. paid to overseas oil producers. But it does significantly reduce the absolute cost savings of trolley buses.

The problem is that the core of the county’s possible decision to abandon the trolleys is driven not by operational costs, but by capital costs. The existing bus fleet will be worn out in 2015, and new trolley buses are much more expensive than diesel hybrids. The Seattle Times reported that it’s at least $280,000 more expensive per bus. That adds up to $44 million to replace all 159 trolley buses.

So in many ways this comes down to a very simple financial equation. Is the capital cost for new trolley equipment worth the projected operational cost savings over the life of the buses? 

The answer is maybe, and depends on how much we expect the price of oil to increase over the next 20 years.

We broke out our long-neglected Engineering Economy textbook to calculate the time-value of money:

• If we assume that fuel prices will grow at 6% a year (to $7.37 a gallon in 2030), the operational cost savings are only worth $27 million, which is not enough to close the gap for the increased capital cost
• However, if we assume that fuel inflation will be 10% a year (to $15.47 a gallon in 2030), the operational cost savings are worth $74 million, which is easily enough to justify the purchase price of new trolley buses
• A fuel-inflation rate of 7.75% ($10.23 a gallon in 2030) would equalize operational savings and capital costs.

So if gas prices go up at the rate we saw a few years ago, it’s a no-brainer to invest more to keep the trolley bus network.

Stay tuned as we look at other aspects of the trolley bus decision over coming weeks.