Starbucks manager moves on

After eight years with Starbucks, four of them as manager of the Madison Park store, Iaan Hughes hung up his green apron yesterday afternoon for the last time and bid at least a temporary goodbye to all of the many friends he's made during his tenure here. Although Iaan says he's not sure what the next thing is going to be, we understand he is not hurting for potential employment opportunities.

Why is he leaving? "It was time," he told us, noting that he'd been thinking about doing it for several months. The job has been great, he said, and he has enjoyed the relationships he's formed with Starbucks' patrons and others here in the Park. But he'd like to try something new, and now he has the time to figure out exactly what that'll be.

Meanwhile, he's keeping his two other jobs: disc jockey for radio station KBCS-FM 91.3--where he spins bluegrass, country, and rockabilly--and blogger (http://www.iaanhughes.com/). If you missed your chance to say goodbye to Iaan, his email address is iaanhughes@gmail.com.

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Iaan's replacement, Andrew Nix, was on the job today but had made a strategic exit from the premises by the time we swung by this evening to check him out. More on him later...

[Thanks to Barbie Hull for letting us (without her knowledge) steal this photo of Iaan from her blog.]

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McGilvra grapples with a new reality

As we reported last month, enrollment at Madison Park’s John J. McGilvra Elementary School will be increased dramatically in coming years as a result of a recent decision by the Seattle School District to end a decade-long agreement with McGilvra’s PTA. That agreement, which had limited class sizes in the School in order to improve and sustain the quality of the students’ educational experience, was covered by a formal contract which still has another ten years to run. The District recently concluded, however, that maintaining the agreement would not be “equitable.” As a result, the decision has been made that McGilvra’s enrollment, which had been capped under the contract at about 250 students, will be ramped up to a projected 300 students, perhaps as early as the next school year.

The implication of this new policy is that there will be a 20% increase in average class sizes at the School, something the McGilvra PTA says it is very concerned about. Although the parents briefly considered a legal fight, they concluded that rather than fight they will have to regroup and find a new way to accomplish the goal of ensuring “McGilvra remains a vital community school,” in the words of PTA Co-President Maria Bridge.

When the contract was first negotiated with the District in 2000, it was seen by the McGilvra PTA as the likely solution to a problem that had plagued the School for many years. Although McGilvra was ostensibly a “neighborhood” school, only 10% of the 235 students attending McGilvra in the late 1990s were from the School’s attendance area, according to the PTA. Moreover, the quality of education at the School was considered low. Neighborhood parents decided to change the equation and hit upon lowering average class sizes as the key to improving the educational experience and attracting neighborhood kids into the School. The parents agreed to fund the purchase of two portable classrooms and to annually raise funds sufficient to pay for approximately three new teachers at the School. The District, in return, agreed to the enrollment cap. The addition of the portables plus the conversion of an interior space into an additional classroom resulted in the average number of students per classroom being reduced from 26 prior to the contact to 21 thereafter.

The agreement appears to have achieved its goals, according to the PTA. Neighborhood enrollment at the School substantially increased (to about 50% of the School’s attendees last year), while the quality of the education received by its students dramatically improved. Students at the School consistently outperform both their City and State counterparts on standardized tests, and McGilvra was one of only five Seattle elementary schools honored during the last school year with a Washington State Achievement Award. From the PTA’s point of view, the contact was working as intended.

So what happened? School District spokesperson Teresa Wippel provided this explanation: “We recognize and appreciate the key role that our parents and our PTSAs play in supporting each of our schools. We also believe it's in the best interest of Seattle Public Schools to make centralized decisions about staffing and class size so there is equitable allocation of space. By owning the [McGilvra] portables, we can ensure the most efficient use of the school's classroom spaces and determine the appropriate staffing level consistent with our funding formulas.” She adds that the District is not abrogating the contract with the PTA but simply exercising its right under the contract to buy the portables back from the PTA (an expense the District estimates to be $60,000 or less). That, however, effectively terminates the contract at its half-way point, giving total control to the School District to determine future enrollment at McGilvra.

The McGilvra PTA now has to deal with what is a fait accompli. Before telling the PTA that the contract’s enrolment caps were no longer operable, the School District already had increased the number of students at McGilvra. For this school year, 270 students were enrolled at the School compared to 246 students last year. There are currently 266 students enrolled; and of these, 70% are from inside McGilvra’s recently enlarged student attendance area, which includes Madison Park and surrounding neighborhoods. The big enrollment increase came primarily in the Kindergarten class, which grew from 39 students to 54 students, year over year. The PTA’s immediate reaction to this has been to hire part-time tutors as a pilot program to help reduce the adult-to-student ratios in the two Kindergarten classrooms.

McGilvra’s PTA has been raising well over a quarter of a million dollars each year to support quality education at the School. Last year, this funding represented about 20% of McGilvra’s operating budget, according to the District. In spite of the changed circumstances, says PTA Co-President Bridge, “Our PTA will continue to raise money to support our teachers and students at McGilvra. We think it’s more important than ever to do so.” She notes that funds raised by parents will most likely be used for academic enrichment, such as supporting the School’s arts programs and the library. Additionally, the PTA may give assistance in core academic areas, such as providing math specialists and tutor support.

Nevertheless, there’s concern by parents that larger class sizes will have a negative impact on the quality of education their children receive at the School. Ann Skrobut, who has two daughters at McGilvra, says she’s been frustrated with the School District’s leadership, though she understands there are a lot of very big issues on their plate and respects the work they are doing. Nevertheless, she adds, “One would think that they might focus their energy on the schools that actually need their help and leave the ones that are doing well alone. I feel like we have had more than our fair share of turmoil: poor leadership, lack of support for special education, and now too-big kindergarten classes.” That said, however, she believes that the McGilvra community will come up with creative solutions to deal with this new challenge. “The volunteers I’ve worked with aren’t going to let something we have worked so hard to build be compromised,” she adds.

Corinne Crabs, a McGilvra parent actively involved in the PTA, is also concerned about the new enrollment levels. She says that studies show that lower class sizes are especially important for children in Kindergarten through at least the second grade. Her husband, Karl, shares this concern, adding that the process also bothers him. “I’m always suspicious of greater centralized decision making,” he told us. “I hope the central planners at the District actually have some ideas about how to keep parents engaged at the individual school level. It seems that the District should be facilitating all that funding and energy coming from the PTA, instead of becoming a bigger bureaucracy.” He adds that he’s still hopeful the PTA can find a way to keep McGilvra an outstanding school.

For its part, the McGilvra PTA is being circumspect, at least in its public pronouncements. Co-President Bridge admits, however, that the termination of the ten-year contract with the District is a disappointment. “We as a parent community felt strongly that this agreement benefitted all of the children at McGilvra, as well as the School District,” she says. “Under our contract we were able to not only educate significantly more students by increasing the capacity of our school at parent expense, but to do so with excellence.” She adds that the PTA was “very flexible in trying to negotiate a fine-tuning of the agreement to meet all of our needs, but the District stated that they were not interested in the same kind of partnership that we have had together.”

Bridge tells us that the McGilvra PTA will be investigating how some Seattle public schools with larger class sizes than McGilvra’s have still been able to maintain high academic achievement. The PTA will simply have to consider assisting the School in some new ways. “Our teachers and parent community have met daunting challenges before,” she says. “Suffice it to say that the parents at McGilvra will do whatever we can to continue to support our incredible teachers and do the best for our students.”

[The McGilvra PTA met last night to discuss the implications of the School District’s decision to ramp up enrollment. We will provide a full report on that discussion in a posting later this week.]

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Island Video calls it quits

After 30 years in business, Island Video decided to pack it in earlier this month, shutting down its one remaining location, the Madison Park store at 3109 E. Madison Street. We overlooked the closing, which was brought to our attention by MPB reader Kent Edebohls, who sent us a photo of the notice from Island Video owner Kent Smith posted on the door.

In the notice, Smith stated that negotiations with the landlord over a lease extension had been unsuccessful. He noted that the landlord had given Island Video rent reductions over the past two years, but that "the current level of business no longer supports the high costs of operating in the Madison Valley/Park area."

Film fans in our neighborhood had been among Island Video's most loyal customers, keeping this location going long after the Company's stores in other neighborhoods around town were shuttered. But the business model was simply no longer in tune with the times, given Netflix, Redbox and the numerous online video-streaming options now available. Sadly for some, the neighborhood movie-rental store has now gone the way of the neighborhood bookstore.

A couple of other businesses in the area have also decided to close shop in the last few months. Near the end of last year, Suess Chocolates in Madison Valley shut down, seemingly overnight. When it opened in 2009 we wondered, rather indirectly, if the neighborhood really needed another chocolate shop. It may be that the market provided the answer, though no reasons for the closing were given to Suess Chocolates' Facebook fans before the page was, like the store, suddently terminated.

Another business which recently closed in Madison Park was Aree Perlman at 4031 E. Madison St. (next to Scoop du Jour). Opened in 2004 by Ruth-Ellen Perlman, a former Microsoft communications executive, the store offered a small selection of contemporary and antique fine jewelry. Perlman held a final sale, thanked her patrons, and closed the business earlier this month. The space now houses Get Young MD, the rejuvination clinic of Dr. Teri Burnett, which had previously been located in Spa del Lago.

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The pothole that ate The Edgewater?

Well, it’s not quite a sinkhole, and—assuming the City finally gets around to filling it in—it probably doesn’t really have the potential to collapse The Edgewater, which is just across the street. But this pothole at the intersection of 42nd Avenue E. and E. McGilvra Street has certainly become a major pedestrian and bicycle hazard in recent months. Vehicle drivers also need to take caution when approaching the intersection, since the barricades the City has placed there are routinely knocked onto ground by passing trucks and busses, thereby adding to the accumulated danger of this particular depression.

The situation was brought to our attention a week ago or so by MPB reader Peter Davidson, who requested that we mention the problem and provide a link to a website, SeeClickFix, which has as its raison d’être bringing citizen concerns to the attention of government. In theory, according to Davidson, the more people who go to SeeClickFix to look at the page listing the 42nd and McGilvra issue, the quicker the City will be in fixing the pothole. Perhaps.

Or, more likely, the City will be fixing this pothole when it’s good and ready to. A recent article in The Seattle Times notes that at the end of last year the City had reports of 1,200 potholes that had yet to be investigated and repaired. Although the number of SDOT’s pothole-fixing crews has been increased from three to nine, our several-feet-wide, several-inches-deep pothole has yet to make it to the top of the repair list. But we may be moving up. Last week someone, presumably from the City, painted a bunch of incomprehensible markings on the street at the site.

So far, there have been 117 views of the relevant fix-this-pothole page on SeeClickFix. As a result of these views SeeClickFix notes that it has sent emails about the problem to “Seattle Times pothole reports” and to the “Department of Neighborhoods East District.” We hope that last one is not the office recently shut because of budget cuts.

[Thanks to The Laurelhurst Blog for bringing the pothole article in The Seattle Times to our attention. As the blog notes, the SDOT has an on-line form for reporting street problems, including potholes. To access it, click here. There is also a pothole and street repair hotline number listed there.]

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Police Blotter 1/26/11

It’s been a tough month for the denizens of 39th Avenue E., in the area north of E. Madison St. Only one such crime was deemed worthy of posting on the Seattle Police’s neighborhood crime map (above), but residents say that officers told them there’s been a recent “rash of burglaries” in the area. The one getting the most attention is a break-in at a house on the 2200 block of 39th on January 19. The resident came home at about 6:00 that evening to find that her front door was open; and without entering the house she could see that drawers were open and that a window had been broken. She called the police, who soon arrived and “cleared” the house (meaning they made sure no bad guys were still on the premises). The homeowner later discovered that a laptop and checkbook had been stolen, along with other items. No suspect has been identified, and it appears that the robber(s) wore gloves while committing this crime.

Naturally, neighbors have become wary, especially because there have been sightings of suspicious characters in the neighborhood. A recent block-watch email reports that a resident discovered a guy wandering around various neighbors’ backyards. When confronted, the interloper claimed to be looking for a place to wash his hands. Meanwhile, the police have asked residents to be on the lookout for a silver 1990’s four-door Buick (or a similar car) with a temporary license posted in the back window. The car has apparently been fingered as a suspect vehicle.

The only other area crime posted by the police to the official crime map is the incident involving this wheel-challenged Mini Cooper, shown here parked near the intersection of Madison and 39th.

MPB reader Ken Myrabo pointed this out to us. He says that the car’s owner told him that the perpetrators, after jacking up the car and removing the wheels in the dead of night, were considerate enough to lower the car onto some rocks they had brought along for the purpose, thus preventing damage to the car’s disc brakes. Nice guys! And all of this while working their crime within clear view of the neighborhood’s major arterial, too.

Crime did occur in other areas of the Park over the past week as well. One burglary took place on the 1500 block of 41st Avenue E. during the evening of January 6. No details have been provided. There was one case of trespassing reported, this on the 1800 block of McGilvra Boulevard E. on January 20. A realtor reported discovering that someone was apparently squatting at a vacant house that she has listed for sale on that block. While inspecting the house, she said, she noticed food wrappers and cigarette butts at various locations, not to mention (although we are obviously mentioning it) urine in the toilets!

A theft occurred on the 1000 block of 37th Avenue E. on January 22 and cases of property damage were reported on the 1800 block of McGilvra Boulevard E. on January 13 and the 1300 block of Lake Washington Boulevard E. on the same day. As always, cars were broken into, one on the 1600 block of McGilvra Boulevard E. during the morning of January 7, and one on the 3100 block of E. Madison St. on the evening of January 23.

[Key to crime-map symbols: starbursts represent burglaries, solid cars represent car thefts, un-solid cars represent car prowls, spray-paint cans represent property damage, upraised hands represent shoplifting, dollar bills represent thefts, handcuffs represent arrests under warrants, guns represent weapons involved, and red exclamation points represent cases of harassment. This map covers the period from January 4 through January 25.]

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December Real Estate Report

The year ends with a big bang

The Madison Park real estate market was sizzling in December, with 16 sales recorded during the month. That’s double the sales activity of the previous month and bigger volume than existed at the height of the spring selling season last year, when 11 homes were sold each month on average. December’s sales were 80% higher than for December 2009.

Did the year ended on a fluke, or should we regard it as the precursor of good things to come? Unfortunately, at this point there are only seven home sales pending, which may make it tough for January to measure up to the December standard. Even so, sellers can still take heart from the fact that 2010 as a whole was a significantly better year for sales than any of the three previous years. And it’s now clear that at least in terms of sales activity the market is making a comeback. There were 104 sales of single family residences and condos in Madison Park during 2010, a 39% increase over the previous year’s total. House sales were up a whopping 48% year over year, while condo sales increased by a more modest 18%.

Here’s how December played out in Madison Park (Washington Park and Broadmoor included), based on sales data from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (MLS):

Houses

Sales: 11
Median Sale Price: $1,227,000
Average Sq. Ft.: 3,273
Average Price per Sq. Ft.: $413
Average Days on Market: 118
Average Discount from List Price: 13.8%

Condos

Sales: 5
Median Sale Price: $615,000
Average Sq. Ft.: 1,321
Average Price per Sq. Ft.: $408
Average Days on Market: 62
Average Discount from List Price: 4.3%

The median sales price of houses sold in December, at $1,227,000 million, was directly in line with the median price of all of the houses sold in 2010: $1,225,000. This is a 17% decline in the median price since the height of the market in 2007. The median price of condos, however, has held up much better, declining just 8% over the past four years. In terms of year-over-year decline, the median value of houses sold in Madison Park was down a modest 4% between 2009 and 2010:

As we always caution, Madison Park is a pretty small market, so these median prices may not reflect the actual decline in value of any particular house or even represent an average decline in values for the neighborhood as a whole. It’s more a question of which houses are selling in any given period; and as we know, the bottom end of the market has been much more robust than the upper market has been since the downturn. Windermere Real Estate’s Kathryn Hinds, one of the top agents in the market, says she thinks that house values have declined only 10-15% in Madison Park since the peak. “I feel we have seen a stabilization of home values and that we will continue to see a steady stream of sales in our neighborhood,” she tells us. She cites the Park’s proximity to downtown, the attractiveness of lakeside living, and the charm of The Village as chief selling points for the neighborhood.

Windermere’s Laura Halliday agrees that the market seems to have bottomed out. She notes that during 2010 buyers seemed to feel more confident that the market was not going to continue sliding, or at least came to believe that the rate of decline had leveled off. That, coupled with sellers being more pragmatic about pricing and buyers being able to finance at historically low interest rates, she says, resulted in a lot more sales.

Shockingly, the average discount from list price during December was a very high 13.8%, but this was the result of an anomaly. One house that changed hands during the month had originally been listed for sale at $1,900,000, but it sold for only $880,000, a 46.3% discount. With this outlier removed, the discount was only 5% for the other houses which were sold. And that’s based on initial list prices, not the list prices that existed after successive price reductions may have been incurred. The MLS numbers compare final list prices to sold prices, and by this measure the trend was is positive for sellers. There was an average discount of a hefty 11% suffered by house sellers in 2009, but this declined to 7.1% in 2010. Condo sellers also saw improvement, from a discount of 7.5% in 2009 to 5.6% last year. Nevertheless, that’s still well in excess of the low discounts experienced at the height of the market.

Another trend favorable to sellers is the average days on market for sold properties. From a low of only 78 days in 2007 to a high of 182 days last year, things definitely moved in the right direction for condo sellers during 2010. The time on market for sold houses also improved.

Madison Park’s real estate market seems to be out of sync with the City’s market overall. December sales were down almost five percent in Seattle, year over year, and listings rose by only 2.3%. Listings in Madison Park, meanwhile, are actually up 17% compared to the same point last year.

Here’s a look at the current market, using data from Redfin:

Houses

Listings: 53
Median List Price: $1,740,000
Median Sq. Ft.: 3,800
Median Price per Sq. Ft.: $458
Average Days on Market: 182
Percentage with Price Reductions: 33%
New Listings: 6
Pending Sales: 3

Condos

Listings: 22
Median List Price: $599,000
Median Sq. Ft.: 1,262
Median Price per Sq. Ft.: $475
Average Days on Market: 200
Percentage with Price Reductions: 41%
New Listings: 3
Pending Sales: 4

Based 2010 sales levels, the 75 current listings provide the market with only a nine-month supply of inventory. That’s dramatically down from the high point of 116 listings during the summer or 2009, when only five or six houses were being sold each month. The brutal 19-month absorption rate of those down months is something that sellers and realtors can apparently now call ancient history.

[Photo above: This house at 1820 41st Ave E., a listing of Windermere Real Estate broker Cathy Millan, was priced at $449,000 and sold (pending inspection) just five days after going on the market. It provides evidence that a well-priced house that is well presented can move fast in the current environment, says Millan.]

Thanks to Wendy Skerritt and Laura Halliday of Windermere Real Estate for providing statistical information on Madison Park sales.

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Pavilion days on Lake Washington

In Madison Park’s early days this was very much a beach community, with lakeside amenities including a boardwalk, a bandstand, bathing pavilions, boathouses, and a ball park. In the late 1800s and well into the early 1900s, the centerpiece of Madison Park entertainment was a large Victorian structure on the Lake known as the Madison Street Park Pavilion. The photo above, from the Seattle Municipal Archives, was probably taken around the turn of the century. The caption on the marquee is “Madison Park Theatre.” In her book, Madison Park Remembered, longtime Madison Park resident and author Jane Powell Thomas states that the Pavilion's auditorium seated 500 and there was outdoor seating for hundreds more. Another major feature of the building was its large covered observation deck at the top.

The photo below, from the UW Libraries Collection, taken around 1890 by photographer Arthur Churchill Wallace, shows the structure from the beach side. The photo is labeled “Seattle Pavilion at Laurel Shade, Lake Washington.” Laurel Shade was the name of the estate of Madison Park founder John J. McGilvra, to the south. The beach community was apparently known as Laurel Shade until McGilvra donated a large section of his Lakefront property for a park, initially known as the Madison Street Park, later shortened to just Madison Park.

This photo by Wallace, also from the UW Libraries Collection, shows the entrance to the Pavilion.

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Below is a great shot from the Seattle Municipal Archives showing the “Meiers Band” standing in front of the Madison Street trolley car, with the Pavilion clearly visible in the background. Based on this photo it’s evident that the Pavilion was located just to the south of Madison Street, two blocks north of McGilvra’s Laurel Shade compound (now known as the Reed Estate). According to author Jane Powell Thomas, the Madison Street Cable Railway was the builder and owner of the Pavilion. McGilvra had donated 21 acres of waterfront property to the Cable Railway to induce the Company to run the trolley line from the top of Capitol Hill to the Lake, she says. It was the Cable Railway that initially developed Madison Park "for the mutual economic benefit of the McGilvras" and itself. Thomas lists 1889 as the date the cable car began running to Lake Washington and 1890 as the date the Pavilion was completed. The structure burned to the ground in 1914.

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Down on the water there were three compatible and elaborate “bathing pavilions” or “bandstands,” depending on which caption you believe. Here’s how they looked, circa 1885, in another photo by Wallace from the UW Libraries Collection.

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This picture from the collection of the Museum of History & Industry shows canoeists enjoying a day on the Lake in 1910, with the mini-pavilions in the background.

Here is a great shot (provided to us by MPB reader Don Petit) probably taken around the same time, or perhaps a bit later. It shows the Lake scene looking south from a dock, probably at the end of Madison Street.

This is another shot by Wallace, which shows both the boathouse and two of the bathing pavilions looking south from the landside. Note the wooden boardwalk and swings.

There’s more, but we’ll stop here with this lovely photo shot by an unnamed photographer, circa 1892, showing a steamboat heading out from the Madison Street landing.

[Click on pictures to enlarge. To see all of the MPB postings on the history of Madison Park, including this one, click here.]

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