The return of the box

The block style rides a wave

In the go-go years of speculative home building in Madison Park (say, prior to 2010) there was a lot of teeth gnashing by certain traditionalists over the fact that cute little cottages were being torn down by developers for the purpose of building large box-like structures that did not conform to supposed neighborhood values.  The idealized character of the neighborhood as "a lakeside village" was, according to this attitude, being disrupted by outsiders who really had no appreciation of the history or ambiance of the Park.

Of course Madison Park has always had a wide variety of housing types, especially when you throw into the mix the mansions in Broadmoor and Washington Park and the many "multi-family" apartment and condo structures that impact both the feel and the sightlines of the area "North of Madison."  We live in an eclectic neighborhood overall, and one that gives residential appraisers fits. That's because of the built-in difficulty of making valid value comparisons between houses that are even in close proximity to each other in the neighborhood.  House styles, sizes, and original construction dates are all over the map, even for any particular block. It's been many years since there was any kind of uniformity for much of the area that comprises Madison Park.

The recent tear-down of the "Rainbow House,"which we chronicled in December ("Another cottage comes down"), brought home for many the fact that the "village" ideal for any part of Madison Park is rapidly becoming outmoded. And as speculative development accelerates, we can assume that our neighborhood's level of eclecticness will be further enhanced.  That's because developers are more likely than otherwise to build angular structures that make use of most or all of the legally available footprint of the property.  Though not using all of the space technically available, the builder of the big abode that will replace the "Rainbow House" is using most of it.  But the company is simply creating in Madison Park what it believes a prospective buyer will demand.

A new rendering of the structure replacing the "Rainbow House"

In our real estate column for this month's edition of the Madison Park Times we quote the builder of the new 3,219 sq. ft. house as saying that the cottage that previously sat on the site was not the kind of residence people would desire in a place like Madison Park.  "We want to be around for the long term," said Isola Home's Colt Boehme, "so when we're building we need to take into account what the market wants. The buyer today is looking for efficiency and livability--and that's what we're hoping to deliver."

Isola also thinks that the style buyers are interested in is "contemporary."  For many spec builders this translates into a boxy modernism, though Isola itself claims to eschew boxes.  But as speculative building picks up in Madison Park, it's inevitable that more boxy structures will be added to the neighborhood mix. A good example of what we're talking about is this entry being constructed by another builder in the same general area as Isola's property:

A new spec house on 42nd Avenue E., North of Madison

There seems to be a bit of a trend here, and we're aware of other small houses that will soon be coming down to make way for larger, state-of-the-art structures. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with it. But if these houses are easily sold, it may well portend the relatively quick end to the ideal of Madison Park as a village.

For now, what we do know where we've come from:

An "ungentrified" row North of Madison

What we don't know is exactly where we're headed.  It could be this:

Two full-footprint houses on 30-foot-wide lots in Washington Park

[Blogger's Note:  Before anyone accuses us of being anti-box or anti-spec house, take note that we ourselves live in a box (a New England saltbox, to be sure) which we purchased from a speculative builder in 2001.  The house, which holds 2,400 square feet, replaced a teardown cottage of perhaps 800 square feet. So if replacing the old and small with the big and new is a problem, we're part of it.]  


[Graphic courtesy of Isola Homes.]

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Cormac becomes 'pilgrimage worthy'

Madison Park Conservatory's Cormac Mahoney has been named one of the ten Best New Chefs in the country by Food & Wine Magazine.  He was one of two Puget Sound area chefs so honored, the other being Blaine Wetzel of Willows Inn on Lummi Island. According to seattle.eater.com, which broke the story locally yesterday, the Best New Chef award is "one of the most coveted distinctions in the food business."  And it's apparently unprecedented for two Seattle-area chefs to make the list in a single year.

In its press release, Food & Wine, which is not modest about its annual list, states "this prestigious award recognizes talented chefs with a unique culinary vision." And Editor Diana Cowin goes on to say, "It is such a delight to honor these incredible chefs, who have made a tremendous impact on the culinary world in a short period of time. They’ve created truly pilgrimage-worthy restaurants."

Though the awards will not be featured in the print magazine until the July issue, you can read a lively synopsis of Mahoney's favorite things and an overview of from whence he has come at Food & Wine's on-line site here.  Trivia question: Cormac has cooked dinner for the President of which African country?

[Madison Park Conservatory is located at 1927 43rd Ave. E.]

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Another pizza option! Just what we needed

Pagliacci Pizza to usurp Spotless Cleaners site

The Central District News, a neighboring blog, reported last week that Pagliacci Pizza will be invading Madison Valley later this year with a new store on Madison, just barely outside of Madison Park.

Pagliacci will be building a new, larger and LEED-certified building to replace the existing Spotless Cleaners structure at 3015 E. Madison St., according to the report. No date is given for anticipated completion.  Those with long memories may recall that prior to Spotless Cleaners, this was once the site of another fast-food restaurant: Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Pagliacci was founded in 1979, with its first store in the University District.  There are currently six pizzerias in the chain, plus 16 "delivery kitchens" in various locations in Seattle, the Eastside, and to the North.  This location will apparently be a full-service pizzeria which will deliver "all over the CD and Capitol Hill, even going as far south as Leschi."  Presumably Madison Park would also qualify.

Of course Madison Park itself is not without numerous existing pizza options (as we've pointed out before), but Pagliacci will arrive on the scene with a solid reputation, and its pizzas have won numerous awards.  So, one more pizza choice for the 'hood!

Pagliacci, by the way, should not be confused with Piecora's, which has a location on E. Madison St. in the Pike/Pine neighborhood.

[Photo of meatball pizza courtesy of Pagliacci Pizza's blog. Of course we are kindly using the term "usurp" in the sense of a legitimate, not illegitimate, takeover of the site.]

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Snippets from the food & drink scene

Deli: moving from "too weird" to "family friendly" ?

The rumor was circulating earlier this month that Park Place Deli was up for sale, a story that seemed all too likely. Over the past few months we'd been getting reports of strange and inappropriate behavior by the deli's staff, which apparently included their yelling at each other and sometimes at the customers.  In fact the atmosphere in the place had apparently deteriorated to the point where at times it was, in the words of one former patron, "just too weird." The tense situation in the shop was compounded by stories, true or not, about the public behavior of owner John McCormick in the neighborhood.  So the idea that he had decided to throw in the towel after five years of owning the place did not seem farfetched.

As it happens, however, Park Place Deli is not for sale.  When we went in to check out the rumors we were met by a very friendly bunch of employees who reported that selling the store was under consideration "for about two hours."  But in the end, McCormick apparently decided to counter the deli's growing Seinfeldesque reputation by bringing back some old hands and conjuring up a "family friendly" environment.  Deli manager Nic Albice, in an email to us, confirms this scenario and reports that he himself had previously worked for John for three years, and other staffers are also former employees.  "The Deli is not for sale and is here to stay," he says. "I plan on changing a few things, giving the Deli a little makeover and a revamped menu." Patrons should expect "the same great deli with a new look and feel."

Stay tuned.

[Owner John McCormick has responded to this posting.  Click on "Comments" below to view his response.]

Kudos for MPC's Cormac Mahoney

Madison Park Conservatory's chef/maestro Cormac Mahoney came in for a pretty heady honor this month when Food & Wine Magazine named him as a "People's Best New Chef" nominee for the region.  The chefs from only ten restaurants across the "Northwest & Pacific" were nominated by the magazine for what was an on-line beauty contest, where anyone could vote.  The magazine's "regional" coupling of the Pacific Northwest with Hawaii is the first of its kind that we've seen--and in fact the winner turned out to be the one chef in the contest from Hawaii.

Nevertheless, the honor of the nomination is the thing.  Here's part of what F&W had to say about Mahoney:  "WHY HE’S AMAZING: Because his irreverent take on global cuisine is drawing crowds to Seattle’s tony Madison Park neighborhood."


Cafe Parco expanding seating

One of the great things about the old Madison Park Cafe was the fun of sitting outside on a warm, sunny day and enjoying the ambiance of Madison Park.  Since Cafe Parco took over the space last year, however, there has yet to be a single day on which that finely balanced combination warmth and sun was just right for outdoor dining.  We're sure that day will come.

In the meantime, Cafe Parco has embarked on an project to create a private dining room on the lower level of the building, where the restaurant had initially placed its racks of fine wines.  Some MPB readers had asked us what exactly had happened to those prominently displayed bottles, and Cafe Parco's blog provided the answer. Manager Nic Norton, who is doing the remodel work himself, reports that the new space will be used for small parties, which cannot be easily accommodated upstairs.  He also notes on the blog that lunch will be returning to the schedule April 11, though it will only be available on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The menu will be similar to the weekend brunch menu, he says.

In case you missed it, Cafe Parco, was the subject of a rather mixed two-star review in The Seattle Times last month.


Karen's next thing

And speaking of both Madison Park Cafe and wine bottles, Seattle Met Magazine reports that the Cafe's longtime owner, Karen Binder, is back from vacation and on to her next role as proprietor of wine shop Binder's Bottles. Its strictly an on-line affair where, according to the magazine, Karen states that patrons can get "anything they've tasted or seen in a shop or want me to find for them."

[Photo of Cormac Mahoney by Karen Loria, swiped from the Food & Wine website.  Park Place Deli is located at 4122 E. Madison St.; Madison Park Conservatory is located at 1927 43rd Ave. E.; and Cafe Parco is located at 1807 42nd Avenue E.]

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The new floating bridge gets real

If the building of those giant pontoons in Grays Harbor didn't make us take notice, and if the the recent though belated imposition of tolls on the 520 floating bridge didn't wake us up to the fact, then this week's announcement from the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) should bring the reality of the situation into sharp focus for us all: the building of a new floating bridge across Lake Washington is soon to begin. And Madison Park is going to have a front-row seat.


Madison Park Blogger has posted 30 stories about the floating bridge over the past three years.  Though some of these have been about weekend closures, many have been about the controversial nature of the new bridge and the practical implications for Madison Park of both the construction and the eventual bigger, higher, and broader floating structure that is to be built (e.g. "Say bye bye to those Arboretum ramps!").

We intend to continue chronicling the progress of this project and its impact on our community, but those who are interested in learning first hand about what to expect will have an opportunity to hear the story right from the source (WSDOT, that is) at public presentations to be held at the Museum of History and Industry (2700 24th Avenue E.) at 5:00 pm and again at 6:30 pm on Wednesday, March 28.

One of the biggest impacts of this project on Madison Park will be the removal of the ramps to and from SR 520 in the Washington Park Arboretum.  In the original project plans, the westbound exit ramp to Lake Washington Boulevard was to be closed in 2012, near the start of construction. The eastbound ramp from the Arboretum was not to be closed until near the end of construction in 2015.  At project end, the "ramps to nowhere" were also to be demolished and trucked away.  Is this still the game plan?  We've asked WSDOT to confirm this schedule, and our sources there tell us they are working on an answer.

The construction project team conducted a press conference today which we were unable to attend, but WSDOT was kind enough to send us the press information, which we've just begun reviewing.  We believe this is the first time that WSDOT has provided close-up graphic views of the bridge from water level (aka "elevations").

Here is what they show as a view of the bridge from the vantage point closest to Madison Park (click to enlarge):

Here's a close-up of that image:

The WSDOT package has a lot graphics that we will be sharing with you as the opportunity presents itself.  For more information on the construction project's steps, click here.  Construction, by the way, will begin on the Medina side.  A link to more renderings of the new bridge is available here

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There's a new vet in town

Teri Byrd sells her practice

Without fanfare or even a public announcement of the fact, ownership of Madison Park Veterinary Hospital changed hands on Tuesday morning and Dr. Barry Katz, having just arrived on the scene from Atlanta, took charge. The clinic's four-year owner, Dr. Teri Byrd, apparently decided to sell her practice in February but did not want that fact generally known. We understand that she didn't tell many people of the impending management change until several days before it became a fact.  Though we don't know what factors may have prompted Byrd's decision to sell, we hear she felt she was ready for a sabbatical---one which has apparently already begun in Maui.

By Thursday, Katz had formalized his arrival in the neighborhood with an "Hello Madison Park" letter on the clinic's website.  In it, he says "we have chosen the Madison Park area because it immediately felt like home to us. My wife, Jenya Katz, is from the west coast. She grew up in Southern California, where her family still resides. Now that we have a family of our own, we knew in our hearts that we needed to move out west so our kids can be closer to their grandparents. Seattle was the place for us!" Katz tells us that he drove into the neighborhood and decided he liked the place before even having set eyes on the actual clinic he was considering buying.

He and his wife, who is also a veterinarian, have two young children. The rest of the family will stay behind in Atlanta until school is out and then join our new vet somewhere here in the Seattle area.  Katz is living temporarily in Bellevue; but ideally, he says, he would like find a place closer to the clinic before the family arrives.  His wife, he reports, will not initially be working at Madison Park Veterinary, though she may practice at another clinic at some point.

No major changes are currently planned for the clinic, Katz notes, except that Saturday hours will be added to the schedule later in the Spring.  Madison Park Veterinary will hold an open house on Saturday, March 31, 11 am until 2 pm, where you can meet Barry and quiz him on whether he's a cat person or a dog person.  Not that we expect him to tell you.

[Madison Park Veterinary Hospital is located at 4016 E. Madison Street.]

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Eagles return to Broadmoor

When Eddie, one of Broadmoor's breeding pair of bald eagles, died in a tragic mishap on the floating bridge last summer, it was unknown whether his mate would return to the nest that they had shared for many years. She definitely did disappear from the scene, but there was good reason to hope for her return.  In cases such as these, we were told, it is typical for the female to leave the area in order to search for a new mate.  If successful in that quest, she will often return to the nest with the new male.  Bald eagles mate for life.

For several months we have been hearing about the sightings of a lone eagle perched on a lamppost above the 520 floating bridge, but there are other breeding pairs of eagles in the general area and the initial reports from the Broadmoor ground crew were negative with regard to a permanent eagle presence at the golf course. So for some time it has not been clear whether Eddie had a replacement in the Broadmoor nest or just a successor to his old role of bridge sentinel.

Now, however, we seem to have confirmation that the nest, located at the golf course's 11th tee, is again inhabited.  The photo above, taken by our "staff photographer" from a position at 38th Avenue and E. McGraw Street, shows two eagles perched in the tree above the nest. Moreover, we have reports from Broadmoor that in addition to the two adults, there are also two fledglings in the eagle family.

So for Eddie's mate it appears that life goes on.  And for the rest of us, so does the show.

[Thanks to our "staff photographer" (and confidential informant), and to Broadmoor resident Laura Halliday for helping us get to the bottom of this story.]

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