The newest thing in the neighborhood

Opens tonightWhen we wandered by the place this afternoon, they were cooking away madly, getting ready for Madison Park Conservatory’s opening at 5:30 this evening. Chef Cormac Mahoney admitted to being both excited and stressed, hardly surprising given the logistical requirements of getting a new restaurant properly launched.Judging by the turnout for Saturday’s open house, there’s certainly a lot of buzz surrounding the Park’s newest eating establishment....

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Lowballing in an unsettled market

By Bryan TagasHome sellers—and many real estate agents—hate to even hear the term lowball offer, let alone be the recipient of one. But there’s anecdotal evidence that as buyers have tried to gain an advantage from the dysfunctional nature of the residential real estate market, lowballing has been on the rise.There are no statistics that confirm this trend, if it exists. That’s because there is no uniform definition of what a lowball offer is. One...

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Early snow 2010

National news coverage of the snow in Seattle last week included commentary by several weather experts predicting that our early snowfall could be a sign that the region is in for a cold and snowly winter. We’re a bit skeptical of weather predictions, for good reason, but it’s certainly better to be prepared for another snowstorm than to assume we’re only permitted one per season.It's certainly true that early snow planning by our Community Council...

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October Real Estate Report

There’s no getting around the fact that it’s just not over. The decline in activity in the local real estate market, that is. The October numbers released by the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (MLS) for our area of town show sales, pending sales, and median sales values all down for the month, compared to October a year ago. And 2009 was hardly considered a good year in the local market.For MLS’s Statistical Area 390 (which includes Madison...

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Madison Park Conservatory ready to make music

Open house on SaturdayBy Bryan TagasBefore we get to the blah blah blah portion of this posting, let’s go directly to the reveal: Madison Park Conservatory, the latest culinary incarnation to inhabit the onetime Sostanza space, is going to have its soft opening on Tuesday; and in advance of that, the neighborhood is invited to tour the refurbished digs and meet the new restaurant’s team at an open house to be held this Saturday, November 27, from...

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Snow, the morning after

First the good news. The bus is running and some cars are successfully navigating E. Madison St., which appears to be reasonably clear—at least for drivers with experience and the right kind of vehicle. On the other hand, the side streets are a bit treacherous in some places, especially where the thin covering of snow has been removed by traffic to reveal a dangerous layer of ice underneath. Inclines may be tricky. Here's a good photo of the conditions...

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Remembering the Big Snow of 2008

There was a brief flurry of snowflakes over the Park this afternoon, and a winter advisory just issued raises the possibility of real snow in the forecast for Monday. All of this provides a fine excuse for posting more of the great photos sent in by blog readers showing what it looked like when the Park was briefly severed from the rest of the City during the Great Snowstorm of 2008.Although the mid-December storm that year only dumped about eight...

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IndieFlix charts a new course

It’s not every day that a Madison Park business becomes the focus of national media attention, but that’s what happened this week when The New York Times ran a flattering story in its Sunday edition on IndieFlix, an independent film distribution company based right here in the Park. The article describes IndieFlix’s innovative product, Film Festival in a Box, as the centerpiece of an “unconventional” strategy to get short, independently produced...

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December happenings

If you are looking to time your holiday party this year so that it coincides with the arrival of the Christmas ships, it would be wise to plan your event for Saturday, December 18. Argosy Cruise’s “Christmas Ship” and its festive flotilla of followers are scheduled to appear off of Madison Park Beach between 4:55 and 5:15 that evening. The Vivace! Cathedrals Choir will be providing the live music.Other than boat-borne concerts using our fabulous...

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Police Blotter 11/15/10

Animosities lead to disturbancesThere were a couple of unlikely criminal episodes in the neighborhood during the last two weeks, each apparently resulting from failed relationships, real or imagined. The most serious incident was reported by a resident of an apartment in the 4200 block of E. Blaine Street. According to the victim, at about 7 pm on 11/12, a woman pounded on the door of his apartment saying that she was there to pick up her friend,...

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A survey of Madison Park road ends: Part Two

“Hidden Beach” at E. Harrison StreetMadison Park’s southernmost road end (like our rustic northernmost road end, which we profiled earlier), is a bit off the beaten path. In spite of the fact that it’s actually not the most obscure or hard-to-find waterfront road end in the neighborhood, it’s still well deserving of its local moniker: Hidden Beach. You have to venture down “Devil’s Dip” to get to it, and unless you know what you’re looking for you...

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Planning begins for the next Big One

You may have noticed that the City came out with its new Snow Plan yesterday. The official Snow Map puts Madison Park squarely into the Level 2 category: if it snows, E. Madison Street will be plowed to provide one “bare and wet” lane in each direction. Presumably this means quickly plowed, which if true would represent a major improvement on whatever City plan might have been operative during the last Big Snow. As we well remember, E. Madison Street...

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Google does Madison Park

Tina Brown of Tina’s on Madison put us onto this story by mentioning that Google had recently spent an hour and a half or so in her shop taking photos and videos of the place. A quick check of other neighborhood merchants revealed a pattern: Google has been systematically working the Village in recent weeks. So what’s it all about?The answer is Google Places, an “overarching initiative” currently underway by the dominant internet search engine to...

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Starbucks Madison Park to get revamp

Our neighborhood Starbucks will be undergoing a makeover sometime in the next six months, but don’t expect the end result to be anything like what’s recently transpired at certain other Starbucks locations in our fair town. Madison Park Starbucks Manager Iaan Hughes calls the upcoming changes simply “a refresh.” He notes that the store has been in its present form for eight years, and he thinks it’s time for a bit of updating. The changes anticipated...

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