Greenway Information and comment forms available online

A big thank you to those who attended our recent drop-in sessions for the Central Area Neighborhood Greenway! We heard a lot of great comments and enjoyed talking with you about this exciting project.

If you weren’t able to attend, all of the boards and materials are available on our website:http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/centralgreenway.htm. You’ll see that we’re considering route options for Phase 2 and Phase 3 of the greenway (the south and north ends, respectively).

Your feedback is important now, as we’ll be making final route decisions by the end of August in order to begin design in the fall. The comment form used at the drop-ins is posted on our website along with other event materials. We’d love to hear your thoughts! Please submit comments by August 8th.

Another pair of drop-in sessions is being scheduled for late August to present the final selected routes for Phases 2 and 3. We’ll be in touch with you again once dates and times have been finalized.

If you have any questions in the meantime, please contact me directly.

Sincerely,

Maribel Cruz

Sr. Communications Advisor

City of Seattle Department of Transportation

O: 206.684.7963 | F: 206.615.1237 | maribel.cruz@seattle.gov

(My personal take was that the 22nd Avenue route could have advantages:
• The traffic calming features could help with the cut-through traffic that uses 22nd after turning off 23rd
• mixing 2 way bike traffic, school buses and cars on 21st by the school seems problematic. 
Andrew Taylor)

Block Party, Tues Aug 5th, 6-10pm

We've reserved our block (21st Ave between Republican and Thomas) for Seattle Night Out. What's Night Out? This is the annual night when neighborhoods around Seattle can close their streets to cars and use the space to play, bbq, and mingle.

This will be our second annual "Miller Park" block party. Like last year, it will be a potluck / BYOB affair. We'll have a bbq out for anyone to use.

What: Night Out Seattle

Where: 21st Ave E between Republican and Thomas st.

When: Tuesday, August 5th, 6-10pm
Who: You and your friends/neighbors.
Bring: Food to share, drinks for yourselves, and any games you think would be fun.

In the meantime, we're looking for volunteers who would like to pitch in. Please let me know if you could help with any of the following:

- Games. Anything that you think would be fun (e.g., sidewalk chalk, water balloons, etc.)

- Chairs / Tables. We'll have a few, but not enough -- anything you could contribute would be great.

- Plates / Cups / Napkins / Utensils. You get extra points if you bring your own non-disposables :).

My email is: guillaume_mauger (at) yahoo (dot) com

We had a lot of fun last year, including a (non-emergency) visit from the fire department, and cute toddler dancing.

Hope to see you there,

Guillaume

Drop in Info Session for Central Area Greenway: July 17th

Please join us at a drop-in session next week to learn more about the Central Area Neighborhood Greenway and share your input. Since our last public meeting in February, we have refined route options for Phases 2 and 3 (the north and south ends of the project, respectively). Phase 2 is from South Jackson Street to Rainier Avenue South, and Phase 3 is from East John Street to East Roanoke Street. Each drop-in will correspond with a phase of the project.

Drop-in Dates

Phase 2: South Jackson Street to Rainier Avenue South

Tuesday, July 15, 4:30 – 7 PM

St. Mary’s Church School House (611 20^th Avenue South)

Phase 3: East John Street to East Roanoke Street

Thursday, July 17, 4 – 6:30 PM

Miller Community Center (330 19^th Avenue East)

Please feel free to come to either session, as we will have knowledgeable staff available to answer your questions and hear your feedback about all phases of the project.

If you can’t make it to a drop-in session, please feel free to email me with any questions, comments or concerns you may have regarding the project. You may also view our website for more project information: www.seattle.gov/transportation/centralgreenway.htm

Madison Street Bus Rapid Transit: your thoughts?

Next Wednesday morning I will be interviewed about the proposed Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) for East Madison Street. I would like my replies to reflect the views of the neighborhood, and invite you to submit your thoughts as comments on this post. All I know is contained in the original E-mail (below) and the link in it: http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/madisonbrt.htm

I presume we will be able to invite them to a meeting if it becomes reality, but it would be good to register our views early.

My personal view is that Bus Rapid Transit only works well if there is a dedicated bus lane. Present Seattle BRT efforts appear to me to be mostly window-dressing: buses painted a different color and marked "Bus Rapid Transit".  See this Lake Union Trolley example I saw recently:

Good afternoon, Andrew –

The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is now getting started on the yearlong study of options for bus rapid transit (BRT) service along the Madison Street corridor. Madison is one of five corridors identified in Seattle’s Transit Master Plan as a priority for investing in high-capacity transit service.  Better, higher quality service is needed to keep pace with the growing demands of businesses, major institutions, and residents along and around this corridor.

An Important Land Use Code Issue, from "Concerned Blanchet Neighbors"

(This arrived unsolicited by E-mail. I know nothing of this group, and pass the information on for your consideration Here's the file they supplied with their E-mail and here is their website )

Notes: 1) Their Lawyers (Gendler and Mann) are probably a descendent of the Law Firm (Bricklin and Gendler) that Miller Park and friends used in the early 90's to prevent a 1000' TV tower being built on Madison (see our newsletters from 1991 and 1992). I note this as an example of a successful neighborhood appeal.

2) I was a member of the Joint Athletic Facilities Development program process (see lawyers' letter).

Andrew Taylor

***********************

To:  Various Community Organizations, incl. you relatively near us to the south:

• Wallingford Community Council c/o Lee Raaen
• Sustainable Wallingford c/o Cathy Tuttle
• Fremont Neighborhood Council c/o Stephanie Pure
• FAWN - Fremont, Aurora Wallingford Neighbors c/o Linda Clifton
• Greater Madison Valley Comm Council c/o Lindy Wishard 
• Miller Park Neighborhood Association c/o Andrew Taylor
• Madison Park Community Council c/o Gene & Liz Brandzel

We are writing you to alert you to a recent Federal District Court decision against the City of Seattle’s Land Use Code that could have important impacts on zoning issues throughout many of our neighborhoods.  I encourage you to write to City Council encouraging them to appeal the decision to the Federal 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals as described below.

This ruling originated from an appeal by our local neighborhood group, Concerned Blanchet Neighbors. We successfully contested that variance conditions were not met in a Blanchet application for a lighted football stadium in our area. Blanchet countered that public institutions are exempted from such variance and they should receive the same exemption, and the court agreed.

The issues:

The federal “Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000” (RLUIPA) prohibits city zoning from treating “a religious assembly or institution on less than equal terms with a nonreligious assembly or institution.”

Well-established principles of land use law recognize that public facilities enjoy a special status that justifies their exemption from generally applicable zoning regulations.  Traditionally, and under Seattle’s code, public facilities are exempted from many zoning regulations.

The district court’s decision ruled that since some public facilities are exempted from certain provisions of the code, similar exemptions should apply to religious institutions.  This seems to greatly expand the reach of RLUIPA and potentially would allow religious institutions such as schools, universities, and other church-owned institutions to evade many zoning restrictions that apply to other private entities.

Cayton Corner (19th & Madison Park) Meeting: 7/2/14

This little park is next to the Hearing, Speech and Deafness Center, across form Mount Zion Church.

The group planning its development is having a meeting tonight, July 2nd:

Hi Andrew....

Could you pass this along to the miller park community email list?  We just got another small grant from the office of neighborhoods and will be entering the next phase of the design process. 

We are currently going to be meeting at the miller park community center at 6:30 pm. on the first Wednesday of the month.  A couple members of our steering committee have left for life changes, such as going back to school, so we are looking for new core people for our steering committee.  We have subcommittees in design, fundraising, interim use and outreach, so can use the help.

We are also doing a night out at the park on tuesday August 7 or 8th ....whichever is tuesday and would love to invite people to attend.

Thanks

Karen Portzer <portzerkd@msn.com>

Our next monthly meeting is in one week on July 2nd at a new meeting location in the Miller Community Center (www.seattle.gov/parks/centers/miller). Meeting time is the same at 6:30 PM, we are in the multi-purpose room. I have sent this meeting announcement to our regulars and recent volunteers - please feel free to forward to anyone else you think might be interested. Please reply to me (not reply-all so our mailboxes won't get too full) with anything you'd like to talk about and I'll try to put together a general agenda to send out the day before the meeting.

- discussion from the July 1st meeting (design cost proposal, etc.)

- August 5th night out

- do we like this new meeting space at Miller CC?

- mural? (leah)

- printed swag? (allison)

- meeting with Ed's colleagues later in July

Thanks, see you soon!

-Allison

--

Friends of Cayton Corner Park

Cayton Corner Park (Facebook page)

Cayton Corner Park (Seattle Parks site)

Miller Playfield lights will be on: July 3rd & 4th

Edward B. Murray, Mayor

Christopher Williams, Acting Superintendentwww.seattle.gov/parks

                                                           

For immediate release                                                                                              July 1, 2014                                                               

Contact:          David Takami, 206-684-7241

                        david.takami@seattle.gov

Lights will be turned on at synthetic fields July 3, 4

Seattle Parks and Recreation will turn on field lighting on synthetic ballfields throughout the city on the evenings of Thursday, July 3, and Friday, July 4, to protect the synthetic surfaces. The ballfield lights will be turned on at 8:45 p.m. and will be turned off at either 10 p.m. or 11 p.m., depending on the field.

The lights will be turned on to discourage the use of fireworks. Fireworks are illegal in the city of Seattle and will destroy the artificial turf on the fields. The approximate replacement cost for the synthetic surface based on per average full-size field (110,000 square feet) is $1.2 million. All the fields have been renovated in the past several years and benefit field users including players of soccer, football, baseball, Ultimate Frisbee and lacrosse.     

The fields will be monitored by security from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m.

Lights at the following fields will be turned off at 11 p.m.:

·         Bobby Morris at Cal Anderson Park, 1635 11th Ave

·         Delridge Playfield, 4458 Delridge Way SW

·         Garfield #1, E Cherry St & 23rd Ave

·         Genesee Upper and Lower Playfield, 4316 S Genesee St.

·         Georgetown Playfield, 750 S Homer St.

·         Hiawatha Playfield, 2700 California Ave. SW

·         Jefferson Playfield, 4165 16th Ave. S

·         Lower Woodland Playfield #2 and #7, 5201 Green Lake Way North

·         Walt Hundley Playfield, 6920 34th Avenue SW

·         Washington Park Playfield, 2500 Lake Washington Blvd. E

Lights at the following fields will turned off at 10 p.m.:

·         Loyal Heights Playfield, 2101 NW 77th St

·         Magnuson #5 (Rugby), #6, #7, 7400 Sand Point Way N.E.

·         Miller Playfield, 330 19th Ave. E

For more information please call Seattle Parks and Recreation Security Manager Marlan Teeters at 206-684-7088.

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