A dump truck full of gravel lost its brake on Madison around 8:30 this morning and hit two parked cars and the cleaners building at MLK an Madison.
The building suffered significant damage, and the truck is still wedged under the building overhang more than an hour later.
Crews are now out with an excavator and are preparing to move the load of gravel into a waiting truck.
Last night about a dozen residents and an equal number of city staffers gathered at Blanche Lavizzo Park, enjoyed some free frosty treats, and listened in on a meeting of the city council’s Planning, Land Use, and Neighborhoods Committee. The committee was discussing proposed changes to the city’s land use code to encourage affordable housing by giving developers bonus height if they include it in their projects.
The changes would only affect two specific types of dense residential zoning: midrise, and highrise. And there’s actually very little land devoted to those two types. Here in the Central District, only a single area is affected between 12th & Broadway, south of Seattle U to Yesler. You’ll also find midrise on Capitol Hill east of Broadway, on the south slope of Queen Anne, along Alki in West Seattle, and in a few small places north of the ship canal. Highrise zoning is only found on First Hill (downtown is different).
Note that the much more prevalent Neighborhood Commercial zoning, which can also reach 60′ in height, is not included in the current proposal. But committee chair Sally Clark said that the guidelines under discussion could be extended to commercial zones sometime in the future.
Normally midrise zones top out at a maximum of 60 feet of allowed height, or about six stories tall. The new rules would give them an extra 15 feet for one or two additional stories, up to 75 feet total, if developers include a specific amount of affordable housing in the project. And that affordable housing would have to remain affordable for at least fifty years.
In addition to the height, developers would get authority for more total floor area too for including affordable units. This provoked a council discussion about whether we could end up with bulky, more imposing structures, but a planning department staffer said that existing setback rules would still apply and should prevent bulk from becoming an issue.
There is one other item that could bring more wide-reaching changes to the neighborhood. The committee’s proposal would also change the “locational criteria” that guides council decisions on zoning, and would make it easier for the council to decide to upzone lowrise-3 and lowrise-4 zones to midrise, increasing heights from 30/40 feet up to 60, plus the allowable bonus up to 75 feet.
All of these changes are still in the discussion phase. Final action and votes aren’t expected until later in the year.
This afternoon, the neighbors down in the southern end of the CD completed their first community harvest.
We picked two Italian plum trees (one donated by a neighbor and one on a lot being converted to townhomes). We gathered approximately 100 pounds of fruit, which then was offered to the harvesters and neighbors in the Colman. About 70 pounds of fresh fruit will go tomorrow morning to the Rainier Valley Food Bank.
We’re planning on another harvest this weekend and anticipate several more harvests as we move from plum to the pears and apples in our old neighborhood.
If you live within the Colman sub-neighborhood (Jackson to the Lid, 23rd to MLK) and are interested in either donating your unused fruit, helping with the harvest, or doing workshops on canning and preserving the harvest, please contact Knox at [email protected] directly.
For our other neighbors in the CD who are interested in Community Harvesting, please contact either the Seattle Tilth to donate your tree at 633-0451 or City Fruit to learn more about urban fruit and gleaning initiatives in the city.
A few days ago someone posted a link about people dumping some old couches on the front lawn/parking strip.
I just wanted to broadcast out and share with everyone a resource sheet on complaint lines for the city by category.
Does anyone have a recommendation for a reasonable and reliable general contractor who can do a bathroom remodel? Need someone who can do tiling, some plumbing, electrical, and install a bathtub. Any great recommendations would be very much appreciated. Thanks for your help in advance.
-Andrew
The first batch of election results have been released by King County. The biggest shocker so far? Mayor Nickels is in 3rd place, but it’s very close.
Here’s the top leaders from the initial batch of ballots (the top two make it to the general election):
Update: New numbers posted at 10:14, including votes from a small number of accessible polling places. No big changes.
We’ll update this as new numbers come in.
Just got word from a frien that Ezell’s (23rd & Jefferson) is having a
big anniversary sale of chicken. Evidently there’s some long lines,
but probably worth it if you’re lacking dinner plans.
Curbside In The CD: This vehicle was the time machine in the movie Back to The Future before Michael J. Fox replaced Rick Schroeder in the lead role. Michael insisted on a DeLorean. What Michael wants, Michael gets. I believe this is an Oldsmobile sedan, let’s say mid ‘70s. The re-badging on the car would have us believe this is a Capissen 38. The themes seem to revolve around space travel and signal jamming. The burn marks around the jet motor and side thrusters look like this car has some actual flame effects! The fluids under the hood likely have not been checked since 1987, so this car should be a strong runner. Be sure to check out the photographs.
Our friends at Capitol Hill Seattle spent a lot of time crunching numbers on contributions during the recent primary campaign. It turns out that the combination of zipcodes 98102, 98112, and 98122 is second in the city for contributions, behind only the big money Downtown. In total, our area has donated $322,760 during the current campaign cycle.
(Remember: Today is your last chance to vote. Get your ballot to the post office by 6pm or to the Neighborhood Service Center at 23rd & Jackson by 8pm).
We also came in first for contributions to support the bag tax, and all anti-bag-tax money came from out of town:
And our contributions to the Mayor’s race pretty much follows the city pattern. People in our zipcodes gave the following amounts to the major candidates:
Check out Justin’s post for lots of other interesting details, and make sure you get your ballot in to be counted!
From the sunny streets of Seattle East Precinct:
(are you a Twitter user? Get your scanner fix from @cdscanner)