Construction work is underway inside the old Cherry St. Cleaners building, preparing it for new tenants. According to Shira, the lovely and charming and inquisitive bartender at the Twilight Exit (a CDNews sponsor), the building is being partitioned into a sort of mini-mall where access to each business will be from a shared hallway.

The prospective tenants are:

• Burger joint
• Consignment shop
• Men’s and women’s hair salon
• A check-cashing outlet

Exact opening dates weren’t available, but construction is expected to finish by early summer.

HONK! Fest West hopes to see the whole community on Saturday April 10. Starting 10AM you may not be able to go outside without hearing a marching band somewhere in the distance as we entertain and engage our neighbors at community meetings, sports fields, businesses, social service agencies and street corners.

Then in the afternoon, follow the music to 14th & Yesler where 30 bands from around the US and Canada will join other entertainers at the HONK! street fair between Gatzert Elementary School and historic Washington Hall (13th and 14th Avenues from S Washington to East Spruce Street). Local groups Bakra Bata, the Seattle Fandango Project, la Banda Gozona and others will join the HONK! bands from 2-4PM.

Want to pick up your horn or drum and join the fun? We will be organizing a pick-up band playing easy charts and led by Dick Valentine of Cornish Institute.

www.HONKFESTWEST.com has info about venues, neighborhoods, times, line up, etc…

If you, your friends, or family members would like to help support HONK! Fest West, please click on this link to find out how. www.honkfestwest.com/donate

The HONK! Fest West Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Honk-Fest-West-official-page/184221802939?ref=ts

This is our third annual HONK! in Seattle and the tenth HONK! nation-wide. HONK! Fest West is sponsored in thee CentralArea by the City of Seattle and the Vera Project in partnership with Jackson Place Community Council, Squire Park Community Council, Hidmo, Casa Latina, Historic Seattle PDA, Garfield Community Center, The Bikery, Seven Star Women’s Kung Fu and dozens of your neighbors.

HONK! is organized by the musicians themselves to encourage public participation in the arts and in social issues. For more HONK! background see http://honkfest.org/about/

Contact [email protected]

I bought a piece of stone  for a project and leaned it against a telephone pole saturday morning until I had time and help to move it.  Seeing as how it was 34″x15″x2″ and weighed close to two hundred pounds, I assumed it would be fine there.  But it was gone when I got home Saturday evening. 

I believe that someone took it thinking it was free, but it wasn’t and I would appreciate it’s return.   The stone is black marble with no vains or other irregularities.  It has been polished to a shine on one side and has a natural edge (not cut).

I have designed a table specifically for this piece of stone. If you notice this slab of stone in someones yard please call me.   206-325-0139

Welcome back to our week-daily chronicle of the crimes big and small in Seattle’s East Precinct:

It’s no secret that we’ve had an unusually easy winter, with warm temperatures and a lot less precipitation than normal, and it certainly seems like trees and plants are blooming earlier this year. Since we’re now well into our third year of the neighborhood news biz, we can go back to our photo library and see if that feeling is accurate. 

Here’s a photo looking east from Leschi, taken on the 9th of April, 2009:

And here’s a photo from the same spot, taken on the 14th of March, 2010, showing even greener trees, and much less snow in the cascades:

Based on that, I’d say spring is hitting about 3 1/2 weeks earlier than last year. But I’m certainly not complaining.

As CDNews member Wave reported on this site last summer, the Bullitt Foundation had been planning to replace the small C.C. Attle’s building with “a building that performed a series of technically rigorous functions in geology, hydrology and solar applications.”

With the first design review scheduled for this week, we’ve got our first look at what they were talking about:

It’s a hyper-efficient five-story office building.  Overall the project would go beyond the standard 65′ height limit for that property, including an extra 10′ to allow more daylight into the five stories.

The preferred design outlines three separate commercial spaces at ground level with entrances off of 15th, and entrance to the offices up the hill on the Madison side:

The roof and south wall along Pike Street hold a ton of solar cells, good for up to 261,000 kilowatt-hours per year. The average single-family house consumes about 60,000 kilowatt-hours per year, so that would be enough to power more than four homes.

The developer is also exploring whether they could turn that block of 15th Avenue into a park boulevard, and remodel the small triangular McGilvra park across the street there to include different plants, more seating, and “an innovative wastewater and stormwater treatment system for the overall project.”

You can learn more and put in your comments at the design review this Wednesday.

Police were just racing southbound on 23rd towards multiple reports of shots fired near Judkins Park.

So far there are no reports of injuries or property damage.

One caller in the 2000 block of Ingersol Place thought that the shooting occurred right outside her door.

Three juveniles were seen running away from the park, and a dark-colored van was seen leaving westbound from the area.

We’re lucky to have some amazingly well-organized and dedicated community groups around the Central District. There was a perfect example of it over on Hiawatha Place this morning where a large group of neighbors picked up dozens of bags of trash and spruced up the planting areas.

Here’s some community service action shots:

Margo Robb hauls a huge bag of trash

Ruiz Medina and Jesus Peña load up a shopping cart with trash

Susan Rose puts her green thumb to use on a traffic circle

Looking for an escape this weekend? Here’s what you can go and see:

• Central Cinema (a CDNews sponsor) is continuing their James Bond Fest, with showings of Goldfinger at 7:00pm and 10:30pm Friday and Saturday, and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service at 6:30 and 9:30 on Sunday. 
• The Post-Globe reviews “the best ethnocentric prison movie since 1993”
• The NW film forum is showing a documentary/concert film on the Isle of Wight music festival of 1970
• The Jewish Film Fest is running at SIFF
• More in the Post Globe weekly film guide

Our friends at The Seattle Times were in the courtroom yesterday when Christopher Monfort, accused in the 10/31 murder of Officer Tim Brenton, launched into a rambling five minute speech against police abuses. It appears to confirm that a King County deputy’s jail cell beating of a teenage girl was a possible motivation in the crime, as has been alleged by prosecutors:

In his first public comments since his arrest Nov. 6, Monfort compared the former deputy, Paul Schene, and another deputy also present in the holding cell to Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin.

Monfort said society depends on the police to “protect us from the police as well.”

“If the police are wrong, we depend on the police to cross the blue line of silence and apprehend, detain and file charges against those police who are corrupt,” said Monfort in a rambling discourse that took place before the judge entered the courtroom.

Prosecutors have alleged it was anger at Schene and the holding-cell incident that drove Monfort to kill Brenton and to firebomb four Seattle police vehicles nine days earlier.

Prosecutors are currently in the process of deciding whether to pursue the death penalty against Monfort in the case. That decision is expected in June.

Read more at The Seattle Times.