Fence or no fence?

The regular Madison Park Community Council meeting on Monday evening will include a discussion of the proposal to remove the fence at the "Swingset Park" (aka "the Dog Park," aka "Madison Park Beach-North").  The Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation has invited itself to the meeting for the purpose of discussing the idea and getting community input.

The Council's president, Gail Irving, is already on record as opposed to the idea, at least without other changes being made to the park as well.  Some condo owners in neighboring buildings have also expressed opposition in emails to this blog.

Tomorrow's meeting provides the opportunity for Madison Parkers to weight in on this contentious issue.  The Community Council meets at the Madison Park Beach Bathhouse (1900 43rd Avenue E.), beginning at 7 pm.

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Bringing us up to date on 520

You might well think that there just is no stopping the State from doing what it wants to do to State Route 520.  To be sure, the project has quite a bit of forward momentum.  For example, the revisions to the Eastside portion of the highway, including the creation of two additional lanes, are well underway (that's the Bellevue Way overpass above 520 being demolished earlier this month in the photo above). Meanwhile, the State recently published its final environmental impact statement (FEIS) for the I-5 to Medina portion of SR-520;  an apparently winning bid was received from a general contractor for the floating-bridge-replacement work; and the federal government weighed in with its approval of the project.  This thing is marching forward.

But while there doesn't seem to have been much press coverage of the fact, the opponents of the State's plans have by no means rolled over.  In fact, just this month the Coalition for a Sustainable 520 filed a federal lawsuit over the FEIS in which it asks the court to "declare that the defendants' actions as set forth in this Complaint are arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, not in accordance with law, not supported by substantial evidence, and without observance of procedures required by law, and therefore must be set aside."  The defendants are both the federal and State governments, so this is pretty strong stuff.

The State still thinks the whole replace-the-bridge program is a fine idea, it still doesn't have anywhere close to the money needed to complete the project, and the opponents are still up in arms.  Oh, and the tolling that was supposed to begin on the floating bridge during the spring?  Maybe next year. That pretty much covers the 520 story since our last posting on the subject.  Consider yourselves up to date.

Tomorrow, you will have your chance to weigh in on "the urban design of the new corridor." That's the currently unfunded portion of the new 520, everything between Foster Island and I-5, including the new Montlake "interchange" and freeway lid.  From 9 AM until noon there will be a presentation of the "Seattle Community Design Process" and an opportunity to "meet" (and presumably talk to) the SR 520 design team.  The session will be held in Mary Gates Hall at the University of Washington (south of Suzzallo Library, north of Drumheller Fountain, for those familiar with the campus layout).

[Photo courtesy of the Washington State Department of Transportation, whose website for the SR 520 Bridge Replacement and HOV Program can be found here.]

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Tile artists return to the Park on Saturday

Madison Park's Pioneer Hall is the venue again this year for the Handmade Tile Festival, presented by Artisan Tile NW.  Over twenty tile artists will be participating in this, the 6th Annual Festival.  Many of these artists will also be submitting their works for a juried show at the conclusion of the Festival.

The theme for the show this year is “Signage." This is a reference to the old tradition of fronting shops, professional offices and residences with tile signs. In the period before widespread literacy, such signs often used images and symbols rather than words.  Many of the Northwest tile artists in this show will be doing a contemporary take on this old tile-signage art form.

This is the fourth year in a row that the Festival has chosen Madison Park for the event.  There will be a public-invited reception and preview of the exhibition on Friday evening (5-8 PM) at Pioneer Hall, with the show itself taking place on Saturday, October 1, from 10 AM until 5 PM.  Pioneer Hall is located at 1642 43rd Avenue E.

The artists will be on hand at the Friday reception and throughout the day on Saturday. Most of the tiles on display during the show will be available for sale.

Artisan Tile NW is a non-profit handmade tile-makers group dedicated to the creation, promotion and preservation of the art and craft of handmade tile.  You can see more examples of tile art at the group's Flickr photostream.

[Photos courtesy of the artists: Maria Root (top),  Karen Morrice (middle), and Deborah Bacianga (bottom).  The "Seattle, Buy Local" tile shown at bottom is the commemorative tile for this year's Festival, available for sale at the show in a limited edition for $35.]

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Musings on the real estate scene

Madison Park: not hot, not cold

Though we’re still a month away from our third-quarter report on Madison Park real estate activity, it’s already clear that the summer is ending on a pretty solid note.  There have been many more sales per month than in earlier quarters, and there’s a large number of properties pending sale. This bodes well for a potentially strong close to the year, at least in terms of sales.  It may also be the case that the average price-per-square-foot achieved by sellers is now trending up rather than down.  So while it’s too early to be breaking out the champagne, these markers, combined with a decline in market inventory, do give sellers reason for hope.

Nevertheless, Seattle, like most U.S. metropolitan areas, remains a “buyer’s market” in the opinion of national real estate research consultants such as Altos Research.   SeattleBubble.com. meanwhile, recently looked at Northwest Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data, comparing the 2011 numbers to the historic “high” and “low” points for the last decade in King County. That analysis showed that sales in the County this year are at about 60% of the decade’s best year, while pending sales are at about 70% of the best year. In terms of closed sales, pending sales and inventory levels, the King County market is still below the averages for the Century’s first decade.   The conclusion of SeattleBubble.com:  “Sure, we’ve moved out of the gutter, but we’ve got a long way to go before we get back to anything resembling a ‘normal’ market.”

Madison Park is probably no exception.  Real estate website Redfin did some interesting statistical research on Seattle neighborhoods earlier this summer and found that Magnolia, Ballard, Northeast Seattle, Queen Anne, and Northwest Seattle were the hottest neighborhoods, at least in July.  The relative “hotness” of each neighborhood was rated, among other things, on the year-over-year price change for sold properties (up 8.4% for Magnolia and 2.7% for Queen Anne), and the number of months of inventory (2.0 months for Ballard, 2.3 for Northwest Seattle).  How did Madison Park compare? The neighborhood showed a year-over-year change in the average sales price per-square-foot of 2.5%.  At that point we had an 8.2 month supply of inventory (total listings divided by total sales for the month). While we may not be hot, neither are we cold.  Redfin gave that designation to the Lake Union, Rainier Valley, and Lake City neighborhoods.

A final bit of encouraging news was provided by Zillow, which at the end of July reported that its Home Value Index for our neighborhood (excluding Broadmoor) was up 5.5% year over year.

‘A buyer for every house’

I sometimes attend “brokers’ opens”, which are held in this area on Thursdays.  These open houses are designed to showcase new listings to real estate professionals so they’ll know what’s available in the market.  The listing agent (or a surrogate) usually sits in the house for a couple of hours around lunchtime and answers questions put by the other agents and the occasional passerby who might show up. Part of the listing agent’s job is to shill for the seller: talking up all the pluses of the property while downplaying (or completely overlooking) any minuses.  A good agent will be able to make a potential negative into a positive (for example, talking about super-tight spaces as “warm and cozy” or positioning a house’s lack of yard as a great situation for those tired of landscape maintenance).

I was visiting with an agent during an open house recently, while she did her thing.   As various agents wandered through the place, she would occasionally call out to them: “Did you notice the lovely inlaid wood floors in the master bedroom? It’s all original!”  Having walked through the house earlier, I asked her about the weird floor plan.  She admitted it was pretty bad.  And that was hardly the only problem with the house (lack of street appeal and a musty interior smell were among the other downsides).  So, I wondered, how are you going to unload this thing? She had a ready answer:  “There’s a buyer for every house, Bryan!”

That piece of insight certainly seems to hold true, even if the seller may have to wait a long time for that buyer to finally come along. Right now, according the MLS, there are 17 homes in Madison Park that have been on the market for 200 days or more.  And seven of these have been on the market for more than a year (one for over 500 days). These properties range in price from $265,000 (for a Canterbury Shores condo) to $5,400,000 (for a Broadmoor mansion at an “undisclosed” address), so it’s not all about the “price point.”  While a lot of the problem may be that theses homes are priced above their actual market value, it may instead be that the “right buyer” has simply not come along to claim them.  That’s what the sellers certainly hope.

Every once in a while a house will sell after a long spell on the market, even without a steep lowering of the initial offering price.  When that happens, it’s a wonderful vindication for the seller (and perhaps for the agent as well, unless the agent had been arguing unsuccessfully for price reductions as the home sat unsold).  There was a “right buyer” in those unusual cases, just as there was a “right buyer” in the more typical long-term situations where the buyers struck deals only after the sellers made significant price concessions.  But in the end, most homes one way or another do end up with the “right buyer.”

There are many examples in Madison Park of houses that ultimately found a buyer when it seemed that a sale was unlikely, or at least a sale at the initial offering price.  One such house in my neck of the woods is a 7,000 sq. ft. speculative house built in 2005.  At the time it was put on the market it was the subject of a laudatory article in the Madison Park Times in which the builders stated that they were trying to recreate a little bit of their native Russia right here in the heart of Madison Park.  Much to the consternation of the neighbors, however, they had torn down a classic house in order to build a gigantic home that featured a pastiche of different window, column, and railing styles. When the builders said that the house was reminiscent of St. Petersburg, one neighborhood wag suggested its style was more like “St. Petersburg as interpreted by Las Vagas.”  At a neighborhood party about the time the house came onto the market, the host invited guests to compete for who could come up with the best word to describe this new neighborhood structure (I’ve forgotten what the winning word was, but my vote in absentia—since I was not invited—was “egregious”).  There was just no way this house was going to sell to anyone.  So we thought.

Just a few months later, however, the house sold at close to the asking price of $4,400,000.  The buyer was an insurance executive from California. At that time and in that place, at least, the “buyer for every house” adage certainly proved true.  But maybe not today.  That same house was just withdrawn from the market after having been first listed for re-sale in May 2009, at $4,700,000.  The asking price was reduced to $4,250,000 in early 2010 and to $3,600,000 in 2011.  Still no buyer.  But someday...


The ‘art’ of selling houses

One of the chief jobs of the listing agent is to entice prospective buyers and their agents to take a look at their listed property.  One method of drumming up interest is through the artful wording used in the description of the home.  That’s the paragraph used that’s in ads, on the agent’s and other real estate websites, and given to the MLS.  I often get a chuckle out of these little essays.  My favorite real-estate-agent adjective is the word charmer, a very much over-hyped term that’s sometimes appropriate but is often used to mean, at best, “fixer-upper.”

Of all the real estate property descriptions I’ve read over the years, however, this recent entry for a probable teardown in Madison Park certainly is the most incomprehensibly overwrought:

“A Lake Washington treasure ~ tucked away on a lakefront peninsula of history in the heart of Seattle. The diary of this quiet, no-through avenue in Madison Park/Washington Park community is a journal of significant citizens and signature properties, drawn together by attitudes: superb positions, civic pride, world interests. 60’ of gentle shores; 15,500 sf street to beach. The lore of an Elizabeth Ayer legacy before retiring. Eclectic fire of sunsets against towers of glass; jagged Mtn. peaks.”

Must have worked. The property is rumored to be going pending.

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A fine mess: City to detour E. Madison Street through Madison Valley beginning Monday

One-week closure has merchants up in arms

It wasn't supposed to happen this way.  When the Madison Valley Stormwater Project was conceived, nothing other than the intermittent blockage of E. Madison St. was anticipated.  That was then, this is now.

Next week, due to "unavoidable" circumstances, Madison Street will be closed to traffic through the Martin Luther King, Jr. Way E./28th Avenue E. intersection (the red area shown on the map below). The 18,000 vehicles that transit the area daily will be channelled through side streets for five straight days,  beginning Monday morning and continuing at least until sometime Friday afternoon.

The purpose of this temporary closure is to repave the intersection, which happens to be the location where four large boulders were discovered by the tunneling machine near the end of last year.  The machine was boring an underground tunnel for the pipeline that will be used to divert stormwater into the new high-capacity tank being constructed near the ball field in Washington Park.  The boulders, however, proved to be immovable objects, other than through above-ground excavation.  As a result, the intersection had to be torn up--and this caused, in the parlance of Seattle Public Utilities (SPU), "a differing site condition." Meaning, therefore, the implementation of a "street restoration plan." In other words, big-time repaving.

According to Grace Manzano, SPU's project manager, Madison Street's repaving will involve a significant amount of concrete pouring and the integration of steel rebar into the works.  This is in order to properly distribute traffic loads on E Madison.  It's "unfortunate," she tells us, that the area will be further disrupted by this additional work, but it's all in a good cause.  "SPU wants to complete the work as quickly as possible so the merchants can return to earning their livelihoods," she says.  "This is the end phase."

When the City announced the detour plan earlier this week, Madison Parkers may have detected a wailing sound coming from the Valley. Those were the Madison Valley merchants, whose general response to this unexpected challenge seems to be "You're killing us!!!"  Anger and frustration boiled over in an email sent by Marie Harris of Veritables earlier this week.  Accusing SPU of being "tone deaf" she railed, "We were assured you would be out of our business district by the end of summer...We have cooperated to the point of rolling over and playing dead."  She requested that the project be put on hold at least until January, after the holiday selling season is ended.

Madison Valley Merchants Association (MVMA) president Larry Levine, meanwhile, sent the Mayor a letter on behalf of the Association.  In it he stated that "many merchants have given up publicly expressing their concerns or contacting SPU with their concerns.  They feel that their concerns fall on deaf ears."  A later meeting at Cafe Flora between SPU and some of the merchants did not result in a delay of the repaving, however.  It is moving forward as planned.

In here (28th E. )

Here's the rundown of how the detour will work.  Westbound traffic will be detoured onto 28th Avenue E. (at the corner where the restaurant Luc is located), it will be channeled onto E. Mercer Street after one block, and then be routed onto 27th Avenue E. for one block back to E. Madison Street.

Out here (27th E.)

Traffic moving in the opposite direction will be detoured off E. Madison at 27th E. and head eastbound on E. Arthur Place for a block before being re-routed back onto E. Madison.  There will be limited parking, if any, on these detour streets, although parking will still be allowed on E. Madison St., other than in the area of the intersection repaving. There is a separate truck detour route which is a far longer, more cumbersome way into and out of Madison Park:

The Madison Valley Community Council has come out with an announcement encouraging all area residents to patronize the Valley's merchants during the construction period.  Signs will be posted reminding everyone that the district is still open for business.  It is hoped that all paving will be completed before the dinner crowd arrives in the Valley on Friday evening.

For what it's worth, SPU's Manzano tells us that everyone on the project understands the merchants' frustration.  We're giving the last word, however, to Madison Valley resident Richard Winsler II, who in an email to the MVMA summed up the frustrations of people living in the construction zone.  He said he opposed any efforts by neighborhood businesses to have the repaving delayed until next year. "While we may sympathize with the local businesses," he wrote, "we will do everything we possibly can to have the construction over with ASAP. We will NOT allow for it to be put on hold."

"Please don't forget," he added, "that the residents agreed to have the night work happen to help out the merchants back in March. While all the business owners were home sleeping soundly, nearly every single resident was kept up every night for two weeks during the night time construction. The residents have had enough and want this construction to be done with promptly and with no interruptions."

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Police Blotter 9/22/11

A month without a break-in?

For a period of 29 days (August 18 through September 15), Madison Park did not experience a single residential break-in (or at least not one that was reported to the police). It was looking like we might actually experience a full month without a home burglary in the neighborhood. But it was not to be. On September 16, a late-afternoon break-in at a residence on the 3800 block of E. Crockett Street, in Canterbury, ended the run.  Nevertheless, it may be that we're beginning to see the usual end-of-summer decline in this kind of activity.  To date, at least, there has not been another such incident reported.

Car break-ins, however, continued unabated.  There were nine car prowls in Madison Park proper during the period since our last Police Blotter on August 18, plus another nine incidents reported at various locations in the Arboretum.  Here's the run down of car break-ins in the neighborhood:  one on 8/26 on the 3400 block of E. Valley St., one on 9/1 on the 4000 block of E. Madison St., two on 9/7 on the 4000 block of 43rd Avenue E., one on 9/6 on the 1200 block of McGilvra Blvd. E. and on the same day another one on the 700 block of the same street, one on 9/8 on the 4000 block of E. Madison St., and one on 9/12 on the 1900 block of 42nd Avenue E.  There was also one car stolen in the neighborhood, that incident occurring at 5:30 am on September 6 on the 2300 block of 42nd Avenue E.

Other crimes included a case of harassment involving a landlord and tenant on the 3900 block of E. Madison St. (the giant exclamation point on the map above), with the tenant allegedly making threats (and apparently being hauled off by police for his efforts), a "bar fight" on the 4200 block of E. Madison on August 20 (that one involving an altercation between a patron and the female barkeep), and an arrest of a suspect under a warrant on the 1400 block of E. Galer St. on September 13.  And there was the usual slew of  lesser criminal incidents (theft of mail, dog off leash, credit-car fraud, and petty theft) to round off this month's Police Blotter.


"I need a locksmith" scam artist at it again

Apparently he's at it again. We've alerted our readers on more than one occasion to the well-known (at least to his victims and readers of Madison Park Blogger) scammer who preys upon certain sympathetic souls who fall for his well-honed line about being locked out of someplace and needing money for a locksmith. We received this report from Nat Stratton-Clarke at Madison Valley's Cafe Flora last week:

"There is a man conning people out of money going around the neighborhood saying that he is a janitor from Cafe Flora early in the mornings. He is slim, in his early twenties and African American.  He went to Ines Patisserie yesterday morning around 6:30 AM asking her for money and told her that it was his first day at the restaurant and that he needed $52 for a locksmith because he locked himself out. He also approached our executive chef two weeks ago with the same story while she was by herself at her car a few blocks down the road from Flora. She didn't feel comfortable confronting him ( and I am glad that she didn't!).  I just want make sure people know that he does not work at Cafe Flora. None of our janitors work that early in the morning and none of them can lock themselves out because they are always here with a manager. Hope this hasn't happened to anyone else!!!"  

While it could be a copycat scam artist, it's probably the same infamous guy.  It's not apparent in these incidents that anyone actually forked over any money, however, so perhaps the word is out.  In the earlier incidents people gave the cash and wondered at their gullibility after the fact. Of course using the line about being a janitor at Cafe Flora when trying to scam an actual employee of that restaurant would not be a winning strategy in any circumstance. Nevertheless, the "I Need a Locksmith" scammer is known in the past to have hit the very same house twice with similar "locked out" stories.  Its clear that when it comes to conning people, his attitude can be summed up in that old adage: bold is gold.


Criminal, or just weird?

We also received this report earlier in the week from a reader on 42nd Avenue E., south of E. Madison St.:

“I have just filled a police report regarding a man in the neighborhood who has shown up at my house three times in the past 24 hours.  He first appeared at my garden gate late yesterday (Sunday) morning, while I was working in the garden. He looked like someone from the neighborhood who had been out running. However, once he began talking, it was clear that he was either using something or perhaps had a mental condition.

He then left plants at my front door early this morning while my husband and I were out walking. We learned that the plants were purchased early this morning from a nursery in the Boeing Field area. We thought it concerning but not totally alarming until he showed up at the gate about 7:00 PM this evening with flowers. We called the police.

He is white, about 5'9" tall with short brown hair, clean shaven and in his early to mid 40's. This evening he was wearing jeans, a dark shirt, black baseball cap and dark glasses. He seemed confused when he saw my husband and did not recognize me; but did he remember that he had met a [houseguest] at the house. We told him [the houseguest] was gone to California. He said his name was David, and was heading for Arizona in a couple of months. He left quickly.

The police asked that if anyone sees him to please let them know. Sadly, there is now a lock on the front gate. We hope that it will not have to be there for long, but this just seems a bit too odd to ignore and we wanted to let others know, just in case he shows up at their home or yard." 


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More waterfront access for Madison Park?

City rethinking longstanding approach

Longtime Madison Parkers can remember a time when the "Swingset Park" at E. Lynn St. and 43rd Avenue E. was a lovely, sand-filled beach providing year-round access to Lake Washington. Somewhere along the way, however, the City decided to replace the sand with riprap and ultimately concluded that topping the whole thing off with a chain-link fence was a wonderful idea.  What was once a favorite neighborhood beach became, instead, a waterfront park without water access.  In fact, according to the Seattle Department of Parks & Recreation, it is the only piece of park shoreline in the entire City that is not accessible to the water.

Why this was allowed to happen is not obvious, and the Parks Department has been unable to provide us with an explanation. What we did learn today, however, is that the City is seriously looking at reversing course and seeking a way to provide public access to Lake Washington at the E. Lynn site.  According to Parks spokesperson Dewey Potter, a "briefing paper" has been prepared on the subject, which will soon be presented to a meeting of the Parks Board.

The catalyst for all of this, apparently, is a "citizen request" made by an open-spaces activist, Patrick Doherty, who wrote an interesting opinion piece concerning our little park on the Daily Journal of Commerce's "SeattleScape" blog in August ("Why is the City Fencing Off the Shoreline in Madison Park?").  Doherty states in his posting that he was told that the residents of Madison Park do not want the beach restored (though who told him that is unclear). "Well, excuse me," he exclaims, "but Lake Washington shoreline is a precious, very finite commodity and public ownership and use of any part of that commodity is not the sole province of the nearby neighbors."

A reader of this blog sent us the link to Doherty's opinion piece when it appeared last month and suggested that we look into the matter.  The Parks Department did not at that time respond to our request for comment.  Today we learned, however, that SeattlePI.com is working on a story about the City's possible new stance regarding the E. Lynn Park.  As noted, the Parks Department has now acknowledged as much.

Some MPB readers may recall that several years ago the neighborhood activist group, Historic Madison Park, raised the same issue that Doherty has now claimed as his own: Give Us Our Waterfront Access!  But the group's numerous suggestions for potential "improvements" to Madison Park were met with reactions ranging from outrage to indifference.  The stiff opposition of many in the Madison Park "establishment" to HMP's ambitions ultimately was the death knell for the group, which ultimately gave up its efforts and disbanded out of frustration, anger, and recrimination. Or at least that's the way we remember it.

At any rate, that inside-Madison Park group was ineffective in getting what Doherty has apparently accomplished from the outside:  a City review of a decision that was made decades ago and may not be the appropriate one for today's Madison Park.

We have been promised that when the 'briefing paper" is slated for a Parks Board agenda, it will be made available to us.   Hopefully, it will not only make recommendations concerning the E. Lynn park but will also include the history of the site and the rationale for closing it off to public access.

UPDATE:

This just in:  The Parks Department staff will be asking the Madison Park Community Council for some time at its October 3 meeting to discuss the "Madison Park North Beach" fence removal, according to Parks spokesperson Dewey Potter.  The Board of Park Commissioners will be briefed by staff on the issue at its November 3 meeting, and a public hearing will also be held.  The Board is expected to discuss the issue at its December 8 meeting and then make a recommendation to the Superintendent.  Apparently the issue at hand is simply removing the fence, not restoring the beach, however.

More to follow.

[Upper photo courtesy of Windermere Real Estate, used without permission. Satellite photo from GoogleEarth.]

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