The Local Sightings film festival juxtaposed The Beacon, a film about a break-dancing studio fighting to survive in South Seattle, with a film about Wallingford grappling with change and potentially embracing a more inclusive, diverse future.
Seattle is in a housing crisis, not a land crisis. We have plenty of land in this city. So much land we have the luxury of having more than 165,000 homes dedicated as single structures on a large lot. Single-family zoning takes up 30 square miles in this city,
We cannot escape the echoes of history. I live in and own a house in a formerly redlined section of Wallingford. This house was built in 1916, just north of an industrial district, during a period of rapid development in the neighborhood, 47 years after Seattle was re-incorporated in 1869
An up-and-coming neighborhood sandwiched on the border of Fremont and Wallingford has added 2,000 apartments in a decade, and another wave is on the way with eight-story projects. The Stone Way corridor has changed a lot over the past decade. Thousands of new apartments have replaced warehouses, parking lots,
Route 44 is a workhorse, but itâs far from a racehorse. 9,300 daily riders pack themselves into the lumbering beast of burden and suffer the routeâs sluggish pace and unreliability. Running east-west 5.3 miles across town from Husky Stadium to the Chittenden Locks, the Route 44
An extended transit-only lane is in the planning process for Wallingford. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is proposing a small rechannelization of N 45th St between Midvale Ave N and Stone Way N, which could reduce dwell times in the westbound direction for Route 44, a workhorse in the
On Monday, two projects went before the Northeast Design Review Board, each for their second round of Early Design Guidance. Each promised to deliver more than 100 homes, but in markedly different ways. The first project is on a spacious 35,000 square foot lot at 4106 Stone Way. The
Stone Way and the surrounding Fremont and Wallingford blocks continue to be a focal point of new construction. In 2015, I predicted this neighborhood, which some have dubbed âFrelingfordâ, was developing a retail district to rival Fremontâs 36th Street and Wallingfordâs 45th Street corridor. That trend has continued,
Last year members of the Wallingford Community Council (WCC) threw a mock funeral for the âneighborhood voiceâ at the Seattle Office of Planning and Community Developmentâs open house on the Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) rezone maps. The democratic process was being subverted, they argued. The City wasnât listening
Alchemyâs proposal for 40 small efficiency apartments in Wallingford could get the green light at its Design Review Recommendation meeting on Monday. As tenants feel the pinch of rapidly climbing rents, we need more projects like this one to provide more housing choices, especially targeted at moderate-income folks. A
The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is considering changes to on-street parking regulations in Wallingford. The neighborhood has two Restricted Parking Zones (RPZs), which set time limits on certain blockfaces for non-RPZ passholders. SDOT conducted a parking utilization study in May for over 300 blockfaces in the neighborhood and found
The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) installed a new bike lane in Wallingford a week ago. The one-block bike lane should provide a welcome measure of safety to people biking in front of Dickâs Drive-In, a bustling burger joint. The bike lane, located on the south side of NE
Seattle City Council candidates Teresa Mosqueda and Jon Grant will expound on their platform will special attention to housing at a forum organized by Welcoming Wallingford. Paul Chapman will moderate and field some questions from the audience. Welcoming Wallingfordâof which Iâm a founding memberâis a group launched
On the former site of Bill The Butcher in Wallingford, Alchemy Investments is planning a mixed-use project with a large storefront and approximately 43 apartments across a spectrum of sizes from small efficiencies to one bedrooms. What they arenât proposing is parking. No parking for cars is required because
Wallingford is booming around Gas Works Park. AMLI Partners recently opened twin apartment buildings with 239 units, and the big Northedge office building (pictured above) is mostly completed and has been filling up quickly. Rapidly-growing data visualization software company Tableau rented up the entire office building and has been moving
Welcoming Wallingford is a new group seeking to engage in the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) dialogue in the Wallingford neighborhood. This is a cross-post from Wallyhood. Here in our wonderful, walkable Wallingford, weâre neighbors. Some of us have been in Seattle, or in Wallingford, for decades. Some
Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT) announced last week that the Burke-Gilman Trail would be closed in Fremont until November, but recanted this week after a bit of backlash. The reason for the closure was that WSDOT wanted a storage space to stage cleaning and painting equipment for the George Washington
Wallingford is an idyllic neighborhood, but itâs dealing with issues typical to much of Seattle: transportation woes, skyrocketing housing costs and an elevated risk of pedestrian, bicycle and motorist injuries on its streets. Broadly speaking, Wallingford should seek to become a more multimodal neighborhood with stronger transit, better bicycle
The Wallingford Community Council had its annual meeting Wednesday night and elected a new slate of board members, and, to make a long story short, I ran for one of three at-large board positions and lost. Everyone ran unopposed in advance of the meeting, but a community council member (who
The bus stop at 38th Street and Fremont Way â the glorified name for the Aurora Avenue on-ramp â does the heavy lifting for transit users in Lower Fremont. From there itâs a quick ride Downtown on Aurora. One bus you wonât be catching there though is the RapidRide E.
At a Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) Community Conversation in Wallingford last Wednesday, more than a hundred area residents showed up to participate. A few seemed there to rally behind HALA, but the majority opposed it. From my breakout session, I learned parking and urban tree canopy were two
Wallingford could become a flashpoint for backlash against the Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) judging by recent events. Last month, the Wallingford Community Council held a public gripe session and wouldnât allow newly elected Councilmember Rob Johnson join their panel due to his support for HALA. The Wallingford
Itâs easiest to document the changes taking place outside your own window, which for me looks out on Woodland Park Avenue and Stone Way. From my vantage alone, I can see two large construction sites. Frelingford is undergoing a transformation. What is Frelingford? What is Frelingford, you ask? Well
Over the weekend, I drove through Wallingford after picking up some groceries and along the way one particular row of houses caught my eye. At first glance, I thought they were just some nice brick homes that all happened to look similar. But upon closer examination, I realized that lining
Interstate 5, like freeways everywhere, is a real barrier between Seattleâs U-District and Wallingford neighborhoods. Currently there are only four street connections between the two, down from 12 before the freeway was built. Recent discussions at community meetings have brought up the idea of a pedestrian-bicycle bridge over the