December 2014 Montlake Playfield Tree
After hearing reports of activity in Montlake playfield last night, we investigated this afternoon and found the lone tree near the Bill Dawson trail had once again been sprinkled with holiday cheer. This year it appears the elves may have had some assistance or a taller ladder as a golden star rests at the top of the tree.
Happy Holidays!
Canal Market
Update on Canal Market via AlwaysFreshGoodness
Canal Market isn’t quite ready to open, but Ericka Burke is too excited to bring her selection of curated goods to the neighborhood—so she’s hosting a pop-up shop right next door! The shop will open for business at 2917 Fuhrman Ave E on November 22. The shop will be open Tuesday – Sunday, from 10am – 7pm, all the way up until Christmas Eve, when the shop will close at 3pm.
Visitors can expect a darling array of perfect gifts—Burke has been seeking out all her favorite things to sell at Canal Market, and has a perfect selection chosen for the holidays. Culinary wares like high-quality olive oils and vinegars will be available, as well as gourmet nut butters, honeys, jams, and chocolates. Three kinds of Volunteer Park Cafe’s famous granola will be on offer, as well as bags of cookies and jars of caramel and chocolate sauce for the sweet tooth on your list. There’ll be lotions, soaps, and linens, plus an adorable selection of handmade baby and children’s gifts, like blankets, aprons, and toys.
July Floral (julyfloraldesign.com) will provide holiday bouquets and wreaths, and both Bremelo Press (bremelopress.com) and Dahlia Press (dahliapress.com) will offer a sweet selection of letter pressed stationary, holiday cards, and gift-wrap. Gift-wrapping for purchases made at the shop will be available as well!
Holiday Pies can be ordered and picked up at Canal Market — Organic Pumpkin, Organic Apple, and Chocolate Pecan are all available for $32 each.
Burke is excited to host three wine tastings at the space, on three Tuesdays: November 25, December 9, and December 16. All of the tastings will be from 5pm – 7pm, and will showcase some of Burke’s favorite wines for the holiday table. They’ll all come from boutique wineries and from winemakers she admires, that are dedicated to taking care of the land as well as producing great wines.
Slate Coffee espresso drinks and cups of pour-over coffee will be available daily, as will a handful of great pastries from VPC—shopping fuel! Burke is excited to start getting to know her Portage Bay neighbors better, and welcomes all to come and do their holiday shopping at the pop-up. Additional local artisans will be featured throughout the pop-up, so stay tuned!
Per the new Canal Market website, opening is scheduled for February 2015.
Montlake mom, author and life coach, Erin Baebler has published a new book. Moms Mean Business: A Guide to Creating a Successful Company and Happy Life as a Mom Entrepreneur, available Monday, October 20th, is full of tools and solutions to help those who, according to John Agno, “work –a lot or don’t have time to plan your time.”
If you know someone who might be interested, please spread the word. It’s available from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble and hopefully coming to local bookstores in the near future. Feel free to ask them to carry it!
Also, Mockingbird Books near Green Lake will be hosting an event for the book in November. Stay tuned for details.
WSDOT WABN Construction Update
Wednesday, September 10, 2014 was the beginning date of the contract between the Washington State Dept. of Transportation (WSDOT) and the Flat Iron Construction Co. This is the firm that won the contract and will build the next phase of the SR-520 replacement bridge. The scope of this project includes the West Approach Bridge-North (WABN) called “wahban”, from the pontoons to Montlake Blvd. Completion of this phase is expected in 2017.
During the next 6 months the activities you will see around our neighborhood will be preparation for building WABN. This will include:
During the construction there will be regular public meetings with representatives from the construction co. and WSDOT staff. They will inform residents of construction activities and allow residents to ask questions and bring up any problems. The first meeting will be held in early October and will be posted on the Montlake community calendar. 9/29 Update: The meeting has been scheduled for October 2, 2014, 5 – 7pm -Montlake Community Center.
To keep up on WABN news you can checkout the WSDOT website: www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/SR520Bridge/520orangepage/ and you can e-mail project staff at: SR520bridge@wsdot.wa.gov. There is a construction hot like at: 206-708-4657.
WSDOT is coming to the neighborhood on Thursday, September 11th with new plans for a shorter Montlake Lid — and high hopes of getting enough state funding next year to finish the SR-520 Replacement project through Seattle. Since the last design update in 2012, WSDOT has partnered with the City of Seattle to respond to critical public feedback asking for better pedestrian and bicycle access. Next week’s open house is the first unveiling of the collaborative effort.
So… a shorter lid? Yep. Previous plans from 2012 call for a 1400-foot-long landscaped lid over the future 520 from Montlake Blvd to Montlake’s eastern shoreline. This new plan calls for a much shorter 800-foot-long lid from a wee bit west of Montlake Blvd to 24th Ave East (the ex-MOHAI overpass). Goodbye eastern lid.
But wait, there’s more. A new bicycle-and-pedestrian-only bascule bridge over the Montlake Cut is now on the table, location yet to be determined. This follows a 2012 study concluding bike and pedestrian access on the Montlake Bridge is inadequate and even dangerous. The same study also concluded the vehicular capacity of the four-lane bridge is nowhere near its limit (it’s the inefficient intersections before and after the bridge that cause congestion, not the bridge itself), so there is no reason to build a second vehicular bridge. For now.
WSDOT will also present updated designs for a new Portage Bay Bridge, now including a 16-foot wide multi-use trail. Amazingly, it took “overwhelming” public comments in the year 2012 A.D. to finally convince WSDOT to allow people to walk and bike on what will be a rather large urban bridge. Important questions remain about how people will connect to the trail at either end.
Back to the “short lid.” WSDOT claims the plan improves neighborhood connectivity with better bike and pedestrian access compared to the 2012 “long lid” plan. Its shorter length doesn’t require mechanical ventilation and giant air shafts — and of course removing some 600 feet of concrete lid covering twelve lanes of highway would trim millions from the project’s unfunded need.
In lieu of the long lid’s eastern end, the short lid plan includes a “land bridge” over 520 with a trail connecting the Arboretum area to McCurdy Park and Hamlin Street. A land bridge is a lighter structure up to 70 feet wide that doesn’t support the weight of tall trees but is instead flanked by grassy mounds that block noise from the mega-highway below. It also has a much easier grade up and over for walkers and bikers. Check it out in the image at the top of this post.
Expect to see other improved connections to local streets and trails in the short lid plan at the public open house. One obvious question is: are such improvements made possible by reducing the length of the lid — or would they too be expected as common sense refinements to the long lid plan? Simply cutting back on hard-won mitigation during WSDOT’s “preferred alternative” process will likely not sit well. A shorter lid only makes sense if it affords new benefits that are unique to it.
SR 520 west side design open house — Thursday, September 11th, 4:30-7:30pm — Montlake Community Center
Images: WSDOT
WSDOT’s 520 Replacement design team is back at it again, after taking 2013 off for lack of funding. They recently updated the design options for the future Portage Bay Bridge in a presentation to the Seattle Design Commission. The options were narrowed down to two bridge types at the end of the 2012 Community Design Process: cable stay or box girder. The goal with the fresh design update is to have a better-vetted design option ready to impress lawmakers in Olympia deciding on 520 funding during the next legislative session (expect a public open house announcement soon). Check out the updated design drawings and take a quick poll below.
Cable stay:
Box girder:
Here’s another look. Cable stay:
Box girder:
And yet another view, from the multi-use path. Cable stay:
Box girder:
There you have it. The Seattle Design Commission debated the merits of each bridge type at its July 17th meeting and didn’t seem to reach an obvious consensus during discussion. The cable stay option is by far the more expensive of the two, has nine towers and has a thinner road deck. The box girder option costs less, has a thicker deck and is aesthetically more minimal. Made up your mind? Time for some democracy.
Thoughts? Put ’em in the comments or take no prisoners on the Montlake Forum. More updated drawings and info for the Portage Bay Bridge replacement can be found here and at Montlake.net’s Everything 520 page.
Had a good look at the Gate to Nowhere yet? After months of planning by a local group called Re-Collective, this urban art work is right here in Montlake — visible from the shore near Lake Washington Blvd, but even better from a canoe, kayak or row boat. It’s a temporary installation on an arch of one of the Ramps to Nowhere near the Arboretum. Re-Collective members designed it to commemorate the successful 1968 citizens campaign to stop the R. H. Thompson Freeway from bisecting Seattle from north to south, while destroying hundreds of homes and neighborhoods, including Montlake.
Two recently published articles give you a good idea of the story behind the historic citizen campaign and recent installation effort (The UW Daily, 7-16-14), and the importance of the design work as abstract expression (Designboom, 7-04-14). Here is how The UW Daily’s Danielle Palmer-Friedman described the installation and its purpose:
“One ramp’s support arch is now covered in reflective acrylic. This mirrored surface is designed to gently speak out against the removal of the ramps and was engineered by a group of former UW students that goes by the name of Re-Collective. This art installation, the “Gate to Nowhere,” was engineered over the course of a year to draw attention to the beauty and importance of a place so greatly used, which now waits to be so casually destroyed.”
See the full story here.
And here is how the international design publication, Designboom, wrote about the artistic elements of the work:
“For the public project, the architecture-artist group has wrapped a single support pier in acrylic mirror with stainless steel strapping to to reflect images of water trees, and air against its brutalist form. The perceived effect is a distorted representation of the surroundings into abstract forms, varying dramatically in accordance with the amount of sunlight, weather conditions, and time of day. Furthering the manipulation is the water below, whose form constantly ripples and undulates as animals, trees, and other forces of nature disrupt its condition. The designers encourage passage through the gate by means of a boat.”
See the complete piece with photos here.
The entire ramp on which the installation arch appears is slated for demolition by WSDOT starting this Fall, so don’t delay in getting over to appreciate this special one-of-a-kind wonder.
Re-Collective’s project team included Caroline Davis, Abby Inpanbutr, Greg Lewis, JJ Powell, and Montlake residents Bojana Ostojic and Rainer Metzger.
On Saturday, July 26th, Seattle lost one of its rare Japanese Flowering Cherry trees. A thirty foot tall ‘Horinji’ tree, likely dating from the 1940s, fell over into an adjacent Yoshino cherry tree near the Montlake Community Center tennis courts. To the east still stand two other ‘Kwanzan’ cherry trees, and more of Yoshino. Both these latter kinds are very common in contrast to ‘Horinji’.
This photo shows how the flowers appeared in mid-April (the first photo above shows rot at the tree base). Tree root rots are exacerbated by such factors as mulch applied too heavily at tree bases, and overwatering. Dry-site trees in general live longer than trees in wet places.
The ‘Horinji’ tree is not grafted, being unlike most cherry trees sold these days. Own-root Japanese Flowering Cherry trees live longer than those that are grafted on European rootstocks. It seems that somehow a delayed graft incompatibility sets in, becoming—in effect—the nursery industry’s version of planned obsolescence.
Since the fallen ‘Horinji’ tree is not dead, people can attempt to root twig cuttings from it, before the Park workers feed it into a chipper. Since few cuttings will root, many should be tried. ‘Horinji’ is no longer available at nurseries, so if people desire one they must do their own propagation.
‘Horinji’ is the name of an ancient Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan.
There is a lot happening behind the scenes with 520 these days. In order to keep Montlakers up to date and informed on all things Five-Twenty, the Montlake Community Club Board of Trustees has developed a webpage on Montlake.net devoted to news about the project. It’s called the Everything 520 page. We hope to make this the “go to” place for the latest and most thorough 520 news. The site will post updates about the construction and have links to other websites where readers can get detailed information about different aspects of the 520 project. Look for the drop-down menu links in the upper right hand corner of our Montlake.net website.
www.montlake.net/everything-520
WSDOT is working this summer to update their 2012 designs for the Portage Bay Bridge and Montlake Lid. A public open house is expected in September. Montlake Community Club Board members Lionel Job and Rainer Metzger are following the project closely and will advise us as progress is made.
The pre-construction inspections of homes near the 520 on Lake Washington Blvd and Hamlin St have been completed. Work is continuing on our application for federal Historic District designation. This project will be completed in the fall.
The Seattle Design Commission is working with WSDOT on design options for the Portage Bay bridge connecting 520 from Montlake Blvd to the I-5 freeway. The Commission is also advising on the design for the Montlake and Roanoke lids in consideration of previous pubic comments. See the Everything 520 page for more details.
By the end of the summer WSDOT will start widening sidewalks on Montlake Blvd to better accommodate walkers and bikers. WSDOT will also be moving utility poles in the 520 corridor in advance of construction starting this fall. And soon an extra lane will be added the eastbound exit ramp from 520 to Montlake Blvd (the Hop-In exit). This will create three exit lanes: one for left turn only, one for left turn and thru traffic crossing to Lake Washington Blvd and one lane for right turn only for traffic heading south on Montlake Blvd. Hopefully this will help reduce congestion that often backs up into the mainline 520 lanes.
As always, please send comments, questions and concerns to board@montlake.net.
Elvis and Priscilla have new young that are rapidly growing and getting ready to leave the nest. These young woodpeckers are a lot less aggressive than the crows and better looking as well. Inspect the photos, meet your new neighbors and learn their names as well on:
Have a great day on Union Bay…where nature lives in the city!
Larry