Our North Seattle

Welcome to North Seattle
Our Community. Our Home.

Author: Nate Strong

About Nate Strong

Customer Success Lead at @Socedo. Marketer. @SeattlePacific Grad. @ournorthseattle Blogger. Lover of #sql, @marketo, #data. #AvGeek. Skier. ENTJ.
Crime

Burglaries/Property Theft in North Seattle

Neighbors – I am hearing more and more reports of forced entry burglaries in the North Seattle community. I want to thank those who have spoken up about the burglaries that are happening because while these are terrible events, the more they are shared, the more we can be aware.

SPD has a great map that shows all of the recent police reports filed in the city.  Check North Seattle, and you’ll see the usual amount of green squares (this is property theft and damage), but what seems to be a growing amount of burglaries, specifically nonresidential.

Theft in North Seattle

Please keep aware of this map, report any suspicious activity, and report anything that happens to your property to the Seattle Police, even if they don’t respond directly, this helps them with gathering data on our community, and may increase police presence.

Thanks, neighbors, and stay safe out there.

Politics

Ballots due TODAY!

Time to vote! This is just a reminder that your ballots are due TODAY! If you would like to see your vote guide, you can look it up here.  On this ballot should be two ballot measures, both for currently expiring property tax levies supporting schools.

Make your voice heard on this beautiful sunny Seattle day.  Make sure North Seattle is a big voting block.  Vote!

Also, if you can’t get to a mailbox, a reminder that there’s a drop box in Magnuson park today.

Blog News

One Week In: What I’ve Learned

My Buddy, Denali

My Buddy, Denali

Here I am, one week in to starting Our North Seattle officially, and I’ve already learned a lot.  So don’t mind me as I settle in next to my little buddy here to reflect on some of the things I’ve learned about North Seattle as a community.

North Seattle Community Members Care
Nothing has been more clear than the fact that North Seattleites care a great deal about their community.  Within hours of kicking off my first post, I was inundated with messages and emails from caring neighbors who wanted to meet up to talk about their love for this neighborhood.

Local Businesses Still Struggle
Yes, our economy is booming.  However, I still see local small businesses struggling, especially here in North Seattle.  My hope is that as we continue this blog, I can help be a voice for local businesses.  I have some thoughts on how to connect more community members with local businesses, but please let me know if you have any thoughts yourself! Small business is so important to our community and I hope to encourage this as much as possible.

North Seattle Gets the Short Shrift
Yes, we all know that we lack sidewalks.  However, because of how we were annexed to the rest of the city, it’s becoming more and more clear to me that we are unable to centralize, organize, and represent our views.  As we were added onto the city, considerations were not given to optimizing community.  Since then, the city has largely been able to ignore our area because of our lack of representation on City Council and City boards.

North Seattle has the Most Potential
Take all of the above and put them together – we have the biggest room to grow as a neighborhood or collection of neighborhoods.  I think with the people that are here – these people who care so much, with a couple of pushes, we can become one of the leading areas of Seattle

What else should I learn in the next few weeks?  How do you think we can help our community grow together? I welcome your thoughts – and thanks for joining me!

Highlights

This Week’s Highlights: Feb 7-Feb 13

Welcome to our second edition of This Week’s Highlights for North Seattle!

This will be a list that we’ll start aggregating, but we can only be as good as our sources.  If you’d like to submit something to our highlights list, email us at highlights@ournorthseattle.com.  Not all will make it in, but we’ll try to make sure we have a solid list.

Mail in Your Ballots!
They’re due this week!  You can turn them in at Magnuson park, which will be at a van parked in one of the parking lots.  Check the link to see exactly where it will be – Link with Map

Cine-City
Monday, Feb 8 6:30-8:30pm @ Naked City Brewery – Map :: Link

Roosevelt Ale House Trivia – Roosevelt Ale House
Every Wednesday at 8pm @ Roosevelt Ale House Map :: Link

Family Nature Class
Thursday, Feb 4 9:30am @ Arboretum – $18 – Map :: Link

Why is this list so short? Because we need your help! Email us at highlights@ournorthseattle.com with cool event highlights that benefit our community and we’ll try to include them in our next week’s highlight post.

Politics

Drop off Your Ballots: This week at Magnuson Park

Neighbors – it’s that time of year again; time to vote.  On this ballot: two expiring property tax levies for Seattle Public Schools.  Regardless of your views on this, it is extremely important that we all vote on issues like this.

Obviously, you can vote by mail; which is probably the typical way for submitting your vote this year, but there will also be a drop-off van available in Magnuson Park this Saturday, next Monday and Tuesday.

Here’s a screenshot with a map of where the van will be:

Other locations include:

  • Ballard Library
  • Shoreline – Aurora Shopping Center
  • UW Campus
  • King County Admin Building

There’s also a few more on the Eastside and South County, all of which can be found here.

Happy Voting!

Housing

HALA Town Hall on Thursday UPDATED: With Correct Phone Number

When it comes to affordable housing, North Seattle seems to leave something to be desired.  However, we want to balance the amount of new housing being built with the existing housing and families that are here.

Mayor Murray has declared a State of Emergency when it comes to homelessness in Seattle.  While affordable housing does not equate to homelessness, housing as a whole is a big part of the homeless issue.  And, as we increase supply of housing at all levels of need will benefit.

One of the ways that we can help is with the Housing Affordability and Living Agenda – also known as HALA.  Fortunately, Mayor Murray wants to talk with a large portion of our Seattle residents about what’s going on with HALA.  Therefore, he is hosting a town hall over the phone on HALA.

There have been two town hall meetings already, but one more remains, here are the details:

Thursday, February 4, 2016, 6 – 7pm
Call in at: (855)-756-7520   Ext.31028#

Thanks to open communication with our Seattle Mayor’s office, I’ve heard about this event.  Also, if you’re interested on serving on a HALA Focus group – here’s an application.  Please apply if you’re interested in serving the rest of the North Seattle Community!

Also, if you’re able to make the call, let me know.  Unfortunately I will be busy, but would love to know what happened.

Hopefully we can provide housing for everyone in Seattle, because this will benefit all of us!

Transportation

Here’s How Bad the Sidewalk Problem is in North Seattle

It’s well known – Sidewalks in North Seattle leave something to be desired.  When I walk to the bus in the morning from my house, I walk 3 blocks.  Only 1 of those blocks has a sidewalk on it, and I’m one of the lucky ones.  The rest of the time, I’m dodging cars on the side of the road.

But how bad is the problem? It’s pretty bad.  Here’s a file (Source: City of Seattle/SDOT) that really shows you just how bad this is.  Take a look at this diagram and you’ll see that North Seattle as a whole is the most shortchanged of all neighborhoods in Seattle.

And the issue is widespread in North Seattle.  All the way from the Sound to Lake Washington, we see Tier 1 sidewalks across the North Seattle region.

Yet, in reports, such as this one, or this one from the City of Seattle don’t mention any of the North Seattle neighborhoods once.  This means that in strategic plans produced by SDOT, they have essentially de-prioritized all of North Seattle.  No matter that we are a center of families and commuters to downtown, we just don’t end up getting a piece of the pie on sidewalks.

How to fix this? As a friend of mine once told me when I was dealing with what seemed to be an insurmountable problem: keep asking the hard questions.  Write to City Council. Talk about this issue.  Tell your friends.

North Seattle is underserved – and it’s clear from the lack of sidewalks.  Some of this is history, some of this is representation.  But none of this means that we can’t move forward with the rest of Seattle.

Local Business

Is Hellbent the New De Facto Lake City Hangout?

Hellbent Brewing Company (@HellbentB) is the newest Brewery on Lake City Way, and let me tell you – from anecdotal evidence it seems to be the new De Facto meeting place for all things Lake City.  Since opening just a little bit ago, this place seems to be the Lake City Hangout.

Since starting this blog, I’ve been scheduling times to meet with several local leaders and businesspeople to talk about what they do – and almost all of them end up being at Hellbent Brewing.  I also go there with my friends and it is always packed, even on weeknights.

But I can see why – it’s got great beer, is committed to the local community, is dog-friendly, and has a great atmosphere.  What’s not to love?

With Lake City being one of Seattle’s “up and coming” neighborhoods, though, this seems to be about right.  Here’s a place that can be looked to as a great community highlight as we’re showing the rest of Seattle that this is a great place to live.

Anyone else seeing a community shift to meeting/hanging out at Hellbent?

Transportation

Sand Point Way Closure Starts Feb 8 UPDATE: FEB 3

UPDATE 6:00pm 2/1/16: I just heard from SDOT that the closure will start on the 3rd.

I just received notification that Seattle DOT will be closing Sand Point Way at the 8500 block for emergency repairs.  I’ve heard reports that the actual closure might be on the 8th, and some have said it will start on the 3rd.  Currently they’re estimating around 3-4 weeks for the repair, which means a detour will be running for quite a while.

Here’s what the flier says that came from Seattle DOT:

  • No traffic through the construction zone in the 8500 block of Sand Point Way NE; detour will be in place using NE 70th Street, 35th Avenue NE and NE 95th Street – see map on reverse side
  • No access for bicycles and pedestrians through the construction zone; travel along the Burke-Gilman Trail will not be affected
  • Large equipment with heavy loads operating in the roadway 5 to 7 days a week, typically for 9-12 hours per day
  • Temporary relocation of utilities, potential short term service disruptions
  • Significant excavation work, boring for new support piles and retaining wall construction
  • For King County Metro service stop relocations and service advisories please refer to http://metro.kingcounty.gov/alerts/ (Editors note: nothing has been posted yet on the KC Metro alerts page)

Here’s a map of the affected area, courtesy of Seattle DOT:

Sand Point Way Closure

Courtesy of Seattle DOT

I’ll post updates as I get them.  Thanks to Phil on Nextdoor for the tip.

Transportation

Video: New Light Rail Extension

Check out this cool video from Sound Transit (@SoundTransit) that’s being discussed a lot among North Seattle residents.  Here’s the first foray that Light Rail will make into North Seattle.

Light Rail has a long and tumultuous history here in Seattle – several times the voters approved massive transportation system studies and encouraged the government move ahead with building grade-separated rail for easy transport. Every single time, these proposals failed.

Finally, Sound Transit cleaned up its act (and we really mean that) and started building Light Rail. Though this tends to be one of the least efficient ways to transport people, it’s what we’ve got and we need a lot of it.

Note in this video the proposed 130th St station.  This would be a big deal for North Seattle, if we could get this built.  Also, what if we had a line that went up through Ballard under 15th, followed Holman Road, went under Northgate Way, connected with the Northgate Transit system, hung a left at Lake City Way and went up to Bothell, Kenmore and eventually Woodinville.  We can only dream, right?

Make sure you stay in contact with Sound Transit if you’re interested in Light Rail.  They are typically helpful, and most of their recent projects have come in ahead of schedule and under budget.  Also, this is something that I’m very interested in, and can have a seriously positive impact on our neighborhoods here in North Seattle.

Check out the video and discuss!