What a gorgeous morning – gotta enjoy these while they last. Here’s the word on the streets of Seattle’s East Precinct:

The Miller Park community center played host to the “second chance” neighborhood planning gathering Thursday night for the Pike/Pine, Central Area, and Capitol Hill Neighborhoods.

About 40 people attended, with a majority coming from the central district, to discuss and gain community feedback on the 10-year-old neighborhood plans. This meeting was a special effort to confirm the community’s involvement, but David Goldberg from DPD explained that this is only a step to a plan update, as only a few neighborhood plans will qualify under the undetermined criteria for updating.

Those of you who took the city’s online neighborhood survey might recognize those — they’re the same questions the city asked on the Internet.

For Central Area, the immediate concern was the clumping of three different urban villages, Madison-Miller, 12th Ave., and 23rd & Union Jackson, despite differences in opinion within those communities and the separation of Pike/Pine from Capitol hill. While not complete, here is a summary of what was said at the meeting at the Central Area table lead by Adrienne Bailey.

Thursday afternoon brought Garfield High School’s marching band camp to a close, after 3 full days of rehearsal and hard work.

Tony Sodano, Garfield’s third year marching band director, was happy about the progress made this week, but said they still have more to do. Sonata said the Drumline grew this year (which you can hear in the video), but they still had trouble getting wind instrument players to come out and wishes more of the players from Garfield’s nationally recognized jazz program would join.  I caught a glimpse and an earful of what will hopefully be leading the football team to victory this year at the end-of-camp showcase for friends and parents. The band is not playing at this Saturday’s game, but begins their season on the 12th.

Here’s the band playing “Louie Louie” – Warning: The room was quite loud while the band was playing, as reflected in the sound quality of this video. 

Noticed on the daily dog walk this morning that there are several large trucks parked along both Alder St. and Fir St. between 26th and 27th Avenues, including 4 large tractor trailer trucks emblazoned with the words “Serving the Motion Picture Industry” on Alder St. Appears to be a generator on Fir St. and a truck for studio sound on 26th Ave. near Fir St. The intersections around both Alder and Fir and 26th have been posted with no parking signs (for Thurs 3pm through tonight at 10pm) the past couple of days before these trucks all arrived in the night.

Any scoop on what may be getting filmed here in the Central District / Garfield neighborhood? Did I miss the memo somehow? Just curious to know!

Update by scott: We just walked over and did some sleuthing, and found out that they are filming for The Details, “A black comedy about a couple whose disagreements over how to deal with their raccoon infestation leads to an escalating series of events.” Its got some big name stars too, including Tobey Maguire (Spiderman), Ray Liotta (Field of Dreams, Goodfellas), Elizabeth Banks (40 year old virgin, Scrubs), and Dennis Haybert (24).

But don’t get too excited about seeing someone famous. No stars were visible while we were at the scene, and we were told, without asking, that photos, videos, or interviews with stars would require approval of the production company and the stars’ publicist ahead of time.

They’re filming at the Upper Room Church, which now has a replacement star of David on its peak, and they’ve invited a bunch of snapily-dressed church members to be extras in the movie. A production assistant told me this is their only day at this location, and they have about two weeks left of filming in Seattle.

It’s a huge production, with large trailers full of wardrobe, equipment, and presumably stars taking up on-street parking as far as a block away. And there’s scores of ever-annoyed, headset-equipped production assistants that will be none too happy to see you and work to keep you at a safe distance from the action. 

Hopefully the production leaves The Upper Room in good shape. The Seattle Times previously reported how the movie trashed a woman’s home and didn’t initially follow up on promises to fix things up. Based on the number of people and equipment on the set, we’re guessing they’ve cleared up any issues with funding.

We’re very pleased to welcome The SunBreak to our family of sites here in Seattle. It’s a new citywide arts, entertainment, food, culture, and news site, and it’s built on our InstiNews platform, using a lot of the same tools and systems that run Central District News and the other neighborhood news sites on our Neighborlogs service.

The site was started by Michael van Baker, formerly editor of Seattlest.com. And he’s got a great line-up of other contributors working with him too.

We live in a city full of cultural and entertainment opportunities that are just a short walk, bus ride, or car trip away from (and sometimes in) our close-in neighborhood. But it can be hard to follow it all and know what to go see if you’re not completely plugged in to the scene. The SunBreak will be tracking it all, so hopefully it can help you take full advantage of what Seattle has to offer.

So check it out, and use it as a new source to stay plugged in to citywide events, arts, sports, news, and more.

http://www.thesunbreak.com

Yesler Terrace could be a completely different place in 2014 if all of Seattle Housing Authority’s plans fall into place. The public housing agency has been working since 2007, spending almost $3 million, on a future vision for the nearly 70 year old development that sits on 38 acres of land above I-5 and south of Harborview hospital.

The math is pretty simple: the housing is old and needs to be replaced. But there isn’t federal funding available to do it. So they’ve created a big plan that would add market rate housing and office space to fund the replacement of the existing 561 extremely-low-income housing units and create additional units for low income and workforce housing.

As we talked about before, the benchmarks would see a total of 4000 housing units, one million square feet of office space, and thirty thousand square feet of retail. Towers could rise to 240 feet tall. Five to eight acres of open space would be added, and new streets, pedestrian overpasses, and pedestrian hill climbs would provide new connections to downtown and Little Saigon.

SHA has been collecting feedback on three initial concepts that have a mix of street layouts, distribution of uses, and arrangement of open space. They’ve taken the most popular of those options and are combining them into a “Concept D” that will be presented to the public on November 12th.

Today SHA staff said that the combined concept will include the following features:

• A street grid, and not curving or diagonal streets that were also envisioned
• Centralized retail around Broadway & Yesler
• Office space to the north nearest to Harborview

For existing residents, the most important part is that the agency is committing to replacing all existing extremely-low-income units, and those residents will have a guaranteed right of return. The market rate housing and office space will also fund about 200 new units of low-income housing (< 60% of median), and 950 units of workforce housing (< 80% of median), which would all be on site according to the existing concepts.

But a lot of concerns remain. By definition, this project adds density to a place that doesn’t currently have it, so people are nervous about having more neighbors and being a lot closer to them. And people who live at ground level with small backyards are not always receptive to the idea of living in larger buildings, even though all of the concepts retain a significant amount of units with ground-floor entrances and commitments for urban agriculture opportunities within the new development.

More fundamentally, there’s a deep distrust between some residents, activists, and SHA. A person I spoke to at today’s meeting said that they feel like the rug will be pulled out from under them at the last minute, with promises broken, low-income housing moved off site, affordable unit counts lowered, and density further increased from the currently contemplated 4,000 units. That same person expressed some bewilderment that the agency has spent $3 million on planning when there’s a backlog of deferred maintenance with the existing facility, including sewer problems that could take one hundreds units offline at an instant.

With or without the controversy, there’s a lot of steps before the project can become reality. Environmental Impact Statements will be worked on throughout next year and 2011, studying five different alternatives from do-nothing up to 5000 total housing units (a number that was new to some and invited further suspicion). The agency would then pick an alternative and have to work with the city to change the site’s zoning and get master use permits for the project. That pushes the earliest start date to 2012 or 2013. And the size of the project would require that it be built out in phases over a 10-15 year time frame.

Stay tuned for new details in November.

Greetings!

We had a great time last Thursday on the rooftop of 1404 E. Yesler Way. Thanks to all who attended our Open House. It was a wonderful event, with food and beverages generously provided by Afrikando Afrikando and Hale’s Ales. I was delighted to meet many of our constituents and was warmed by the passionate commitment so many have for the CD Forum’s work and importance to the Seattle Community.

What a wonderful city!

If you weren’t able to join us, we hope to see you at our 10th Anniversary Bash 10th Anniversary Bash Challenging the Definition of Black Thursday, October 1, 2009 6:30pm at Sole Repair. Tickets: $10 general admission, 21+ event. There will be short performances by past and present CREATION Project artists, including Gin Hammond, Chad Goller-Sojourner, Storme Webber and SoulChilde BlueSun, and we’ll also share a toast to Stephanie Ellis-Smith for her clarity of vision in starting the CD Forum. I look forward to seeing you there.

Missed the Open House? Check out artist Robert Wade’s amazing photographs at ‘Round About Seattle,  http://robertwadephoto.blogspot.com/.

Kumani

It looks like our weather is turning. Let’s see how it affects the street scene in Seattle’s East Precinct:

There’s a movement afoot. Got this in my email this morning. What a great idea… let’s show Douglass-Truth some love!

“Hello fans of books everywhere!

Wouldn’t it be nice if the staff of the Greenwood Library came back to pictures, notes, cards left by the door or taped to it, saying how much we appreciate the library in our neighborhood?

I will start by posting a card tonight. I sure miss them this week…”

We’ve got a burgeoning internet news market here in Seattle, and that means that there’s a lot of folks scrambling on a day to day basis to fill the news hole. Some days nothing happens, and that makes it stressful for those of us that need to keep an audience engaged and entertained.

All news is somewhat iterative. You see something somewhere else, maybe look into it some more, and then are inspired to fit it into your beat or area of coverage. 

But there’s a tradition in the internet world that didn’t previously exist in print or TV. The internet allows this thing called links. They’re simple to do and don’t take much space. And the tradition has been that if you see something somewhere else and then write about it, you give at least a simple link and some credit to the place that inspired you. And especially if you see something and then use that research, how ever small, and just add your own words around it, you should definitely give credit where credit is due. Often it’s called a hat tip, or H/T for short, acknowledging the inspiration for your work and being honest with your audience that it wasn’t entirely original.

And maybe this will seem petty. Maybe it’s an indication that I should have had only one beer instead of two at Oddfellows tonight. But a couple of weeks ago I saw a crew replace the street signs outside of my house. Being a collective and sentimental nerd, I craved the old signs. I went out and talked to the crew and found that I would have to go down to the surplus store to get them. I did so, found out more about the process, and filed a mental note to write about it sometime in the future.

That future ended up being this morning at 9:17am. It wasn’t groundbreaking journalism. I spent a total of about 25 minutes getting a photo, finding links, and writing some copy. But it’s a good example of something that has started happening too often around here, where blogs find stories elsewhere and rewrite it for their own use without credit.

Now maybe a citywide site was miraculously and independently inspired to write the same story at 1:30pm today. And maybe another neighborhood blog was similarly inspired later at 1:13pm 4:17pm.  (Update: the link here was changed from QueenAnneView to KOMO, who first republished without attribution and are probably the worst of the local content thieves. Update x2: We’ve learned that KOMO was the original thief. Please blame them and not QueenAnneView) But the combination of the same facts, links, etc makes me a bit suspicious that they applied some quality writing skills to repeat the same story without credit. That another citywide site linked to one of the later posters adds a bit of aggravation to it all. And of course there was an 11pm TV newscast that repeated the story without credit to anyone, but TV has been doing that for years and years so it’s no big surprise.

I know first hand that often times you can be working on a story, doing research, and just happen to get beat to the “publish” button by someone else. But that is usually self-evident from the writing. They’ll each cover separate facts, probably talk to separate people, and have different takes on the story. But most cases I’ve found around here recently aren’t like that.

Here’s a couple of rules of thumb:

• If you’re inspired to write about something by something else you see on the internets, add a simple link somewhere within your story. Readers can then honestly judge how much independent effort you put into it
• If you take a press release or a blog post from a public agency and rewrite it, go ahead and let people know the source, with a link if it’s online. Otherwise it’s dishonest to your audience to imply through silence that you did some original reporting on it.
• If you’re looking for information for your corporate news blog, it’s probably not completely ethical to rely on your competitor’s calendar entries as your primary source of content, adding a few words and stock photos around them to juice things up.
• If you’re really just rewriting someone else’s story, save everyone some time and just blockquote what they say and add a link. It’s a lot easier on the psyche and allows you to move on and spend time on something original.

It’s simple: Be honest. Give credit where credit is due. Expect the same from others. And then you’ll benefit from your hard (or not) original work and everyone else will too.

Update x3: We’ve got some slow learners