NE 65th St Town Hall at Ravenna-Eckstein CC (LIVE COVERAGE; UPDATE)

August 12, 2013 by 55 Comments

On Monday, August 12, from 6:45-8 PM, Mayor Mike McGinn and the Seattle Department of Transportation will hold a town hall-style meeting at the Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center (6535 Ravenna Ave NE).

City officials will be on hand to to address residents’ and area business owners’ concerns about the Bicycle Master Plan Draft Update and the potential role NE 65th Street may play in it.

Our live coverage of the meeting will begin below, around 6:45 PM.

UPDATE (Thursday, August 15): The Seattle Channel has posted their video of the event, and you can watch it right here (Flash required):

 

 

Filed Under: Businesses, Live Coverage, Mayor's Office, Meeting, Ravenna, Ravenna-Bryant Community Association, Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center, Seattle Department of Transportation, Updates

Town Hall on Monday, August 12 to address NE 65th St/Bicycle Master Plan concerns

August 8, 2013 by 53 Comments

The time to comment on the Bicycle Master Plan Draft update is over.

Or is it?

According to the Cascade Bicycle Club’s blog, the Seattle Department of Transportation “received more comments on the NE 65th Street protected bike lane than any other project proposed in the draft Bicycle Master Plan Update.”

Not a surprising observation to hear, especially after a less-than-stellar open house on the BMP Draft on June 13 at Roosevelt High School, and a “small business owners/residents meeting” held on June 23 at the Varsity Restaurant on NE 65th St.

We think it is a fair point to make, for all sides of the issue of NE 65th Street’s place in the BMP Update, that there is a lot of confusion around the issue.

Which is why we are grateful to see that a neighborhood town hall regarding NE 65th St and the Bicycle Master Plan Update is being held at the Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center (6353 Ravenna Ave NE) on Monday, August 12, from 6:45-8 PM.

NE 65th St

Click the image above to view the Neighborhood Town Hall invitation in full.

 

If you yourself are not able to attend this meeting, and/or would like to read about it after the fact, the Ravenna Blog will be providing live coverage of the events. We’ll post the link here on Monday the 12th.

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If we may be so bold: If you are planning on attending the meeting, please consider taking an alternate mode of transportation than your usual. The journey might give you some insight into the concerns of others in the area.

Filed Under: Businesses, Mayor's Office, Meeting, Ravenna, Ravenna-Bryant Community Association, Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center, Seattle Department of Transportation

Birthday party time! Plus a few ways to help support the Ravenna Blog

August 2, 2013 by 2 Comments

5

This month, the Ravenna Blog turns five years old.

Can you believe it?! We hardly can.

We started the site back on August 8, 2008 with the following post:

The goal here is report on the doings and transpirings in Ravenna, a residential neighborhood in northeast Seattle.

Drop us a line if you see anything remotely interesting happening in the area.  As a new blog with no readers, we certainly appreciate any and all help.

Since then we’ve covered townhouses driving down the street in the middle of the night, made a video of President Barack Obama’s motorcade driving through the neighborhood, toured a still under construction light rail station, provided live coverage of 12 events, and taken pictures of the mayor with a goat.

And since we started keeping track on May 31, 2010, the Ravenna Blog has been visited 204,182 times by 121,443 unique visitors.

Pretty darn good for a five-year-old, eh?

To celebrate this mighty neighborhood news site milestone, we’ve put together a bunch of ways readers can help make the next five years pretty darn good, too.

Birthday Party!

Gosh, we’d love to meet you. And share some cake with you.

On Thursday, August 15, from 5-7 PM, we’re holding an open house-style birthday party at Zeeks Pizza (2108 NE 65th St). There will be cake, pizza, free Ravenna Blog pins, a few of our new Kalevetica t-shirts for sale, a “News Tips” Jar for those who would like to make a donation to the site, and us!

Please be sure to RSVP to the party — we need to make sure there’s enough cake for all!

 

New “Support the Ravenna Blog” page

We’ve heard from regular readers for a while now that they’d like to help support the site in some way. We have advertising for local businesses available, but nothing in place for everybody else.

So, in honor of our five years (so far) of local news and events coverage, we’ve launched the Support the Ravenna Blog page.

support_closeup_arrow

We’ve come up with four ways that readers can help support the work of the Ravenna Blog:

1. Reoccurring support: “Subscribe” to the Ravenna Blog at a level that works for you and your household.

2. Flat donation: Make a one-time donation — tell us who you are or be anonymous.

3. Swag: We’ve taken five long years to come up with a t-shirt that (we believe) fits the spirit of this parking-strip-planting, modern-life-loving neighborhood — and you can be the proud owner of one.

4. Advertising: We love seeing local businesses represented on the site. And the Ravenna Blog averages 12,250 pageviews and 5,200 unique visitors a month, so these ads get seen.

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But no matter what, dear reader, thank you for coming here. Thank you for the new tips, the questions, the pictures-from-the-scene, the “Why is that helicopter over my house?” inquiries, and all the words of encouragement. They have meant more than we can say.

We hope we have represented you well these past five years.

Filed Under: Businesses, Events, metablog, Northeast Seattle, Ravenna

Heavy police activity in area Thursday afternoon (UPDATES)

August 1, 2013 by 1 Comment

Not long after 3 PM on Thursday afternoon, Seattle Police Department officers with a K-9 unit began searching yards in the area of 25th Avenue NE and NE 65th Street, assisting the Snohomish County Sheriff’s office with a robbery case.

 

Cops in the hood and helicopters overhead

A neighbor in the area got a picture of a group of officers searching along 26th Avenue NE.

 

Cops in the hood and helicopters overhead

As officers searched, streets were blocked by SPD patrol cars. Southbound 25th Avenue NE was blocked for a time, then officers moved eastward.

KIRO’s Chopper 7 was in the area for some time, and we snagged a couple screenshots from the live feed:

K_9

This (fuzzy) shot is of the K-9 unit searching down an area street.

 

white_van

And this shot is of a white van on the 2100 block of NE 61st Street that may be related to the case. Police were calling for a tow truck for this vehicle (per scanner) during the time when all the other activity was happening in the area.

We’ll update this post when we have more information.

UPDATE (4:33 PM): MyNorthwest.com is reporting that the suspect is Timothy Lussier, a convicted felon being sought by Everett police in connection to an armed robbery in July.

A violent offender task force tracked [Lussier] down to the Kenmore area Thursday, where he fled in a stolen car.

“There was a brief pursuit that followed and the suspect then ditched the stolen vehicle in the Ravenna area,” Ireton [with the Sonohomish County Sheriff’s Office] said.

Lussier is considered armed and dangerous. If you see him, call 911 immediately.

Picture of Timothy Lussier (Washington's Most Wanted)

Picture of Timothy Lussier (Washington’s Most Wanted)

UPDATE (4:52 pm): The Everett Herald describes Lussier as being 6 feet tall and weighing about 200 pounds. He is 35 years old.

UPDATE (11:37 PM): Lots of folks, ourselves included, reported hearing hovering helicopter noise again this evening, starting around 10 PM.

Turns out it was air support courtesy the King County Sheriff’s office, looking for the suspect. But they didn’t find much:

Filed Under: Bryant, Crime, Photos, Ravenna, Seattle Police Department, Updates

Joint work on the NE 45th St Viaduct starts next Monday

August 1, 2013 by 1 Comment

We can’t let Sand Point Way NE have all the lane closure fun, can we?

The Seattle Department of Transportation sent out an advisory this week about upcoming work on the NE 45th St Viaduct that will cause various lane closures from August 5-19.

Structures crews from the Seattle Department of Transportation will close one lane at a time on the Northeast 45th Street Viaduct starting next week to repair an expansion joint. They will start on the outside, westbound lane and progress to the opposite side of the roadway. When the eastbound lane is closed, eastbound traffic will be shifted to temporarily use one of the westbound lanes, providing one lane in each direction. The closures will be from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. from August 5 to August 19.

But on the bright side, it’s good to get this work done before the UW students come back to town, right?

Filed Under: Construction, Northeast Seattle, Seattle Department of Transportation, Traffic, University District, University of Washington, University Village

Heads-up! The Fall 2013 Parks and Recreation Brochure is out!

July 31, 2013 by 3 Comments

We have had an amazing summer so far, have we not?

Still, it’s time to start planning for FALL.

The Fall 2013 Seattle Parks and Recreation Brochures are out! Pick up a physical copy at your local community center, or click the image below to download the Northeast Brochure now (2.95 MB PDF).

BEHOLD: The Northeast Seattle Parks and Recreation Fall 2013 Brochure. Click to download the 2.95 MB PDF.

BEHOLD: The Northeast Seattle Parks and Recreation Fall 2013 Brochure. Click to download the 2.95 MB PDF.

 

Registration opens on Tuesday, August 6!

Filed Under: Families, Northeast Seattle, Ravenna-Eckstein Community Center

Community meeting about proposed changes to NE 75th St (LIVE COVERAGE, UPDATE)

July 24, 2013 by 12 Comments

On Wednesday, July 24, from approximately 6:30-9 PM, Ravenna Blog will be attending the NE 75th St Design Alternatives Review meeting being held at the Wedgwood Presbyterian Church (8008 35th Ave NE), and will provide live coverage below.

The agenda for the meeting, released by SDOT’s Jim Curtin via the NE 75th St listserv on Monday, looks like this:

7:00        Welcome and Announcements

7:05        Recap of Spring Meetings

7:15        SDOT Presentation

7:45        Questions and Answers

8:15        Speak Directly with SDOT

9:00        Adjourn

If you have not yet done your NE 75th St homework, please look over the four SDOT proposed designs for the arterial here.

UPDATE (Thursday, July 25): SDOT has made the presentation available online, with a few updates made for the Thursday afternoon presentation (as requested with more visuals!). You can download the PowerPoint presentation itself here (5.7 MB), or just the slides in PDF format here (2 MB).

Here’s an example of some of the added graphics (this one of what NE 75th St might look like under Proposal 4 with increased pedestrian crosswalk features):

The text under this new slide in the SDOT NE 75th St redesign presentation says "Pedestrian refuge and crosswalk Business district improvement Easier to mark pedestrian "

The text under this new slide in the SDOT NE 75th St redesign presentation says “Pedestrian refuge and crosswalk, Business district improvement, Easier to mark pedestrian.”
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Filed Under: Civic Envolvement, Construction, Live Coverage, Meeting, Northeast Seattle, Roosevelt Neighborhood Association, Seattle Department of Transportation, Traffic, Updates, Wedgwood Presbyterian Church

Spoke & Food: Bike to dinner for good on July 30

July 23, 2013 by 4 Comments

How about we take a timeout from bicycle infrastructure matters, and get back to basics: It’s fun to ride a bike. Especially in the summer. ESPECIALLY to go meet friends for dinner, at a local joint.

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Thanks to our own sponsors in the last year, the Ravenna Blog was able to help sponsor another great local thing: The fourth annual Spoke & Food evening of dining and bikes!

20120507-110750.jpg

 

From the Spoke & Food website:

Participation is easy. All you need to do is to bike to and from one of our participating host restaurants on the evening of our event. Invite your friends or family to meet you, bring your neighbors, pack up your kids or go at it alone.

Each of our participating host restaurants have agreed to donate 20% of ALL of their patron revenues from the evening of the event directly to the local non-profit that we select each year.

 

Dine at any of the participating restaurants listed on the Spoke & Food website from 5:30-9:30 PM on Tuesday, July 30th, 2013, and 20% (or more) of your dinner bill will be donated directly to the Bike Works non-profit.

TWENTY different restaurants around Seattle are participating this year, two of which are in our neck of the woods:

50-North-Web-Logo

50 North

5001 25th Ave NE #100;

just south of the Burke-Gilman Trail at 25th Ave NE
VIOS-logo_sm

Vios Cafe & Pub

6504 20th Ave NE;

inside Ravenna Third Place Books

 

From the Bike Works About page:

Bike Works is an innovative organization centered around bicycles that combines youth development, community engagement, bicycle recycling and a social enterprise bike shop to help build a sustainable and healthy community.

We’ll be stopping by these locations on the night of the event to check in, and perhaps to nosh.

Filed Under: Events, Families, Food, Fundraiser, Northeast Seattle, Ravenna, Restaurants, Roosevelt, University District

Community along NE 65th St to gather and discuss Bicycle Master Plan concerns

July 22, 2013 by 48 Comments

Ahead of the Bicycle Master Plan Update public comment deadline of Friday, July 26, a group of business owners and residents near NE 65th Street are meeting to discuss the BMP’s proposed cycle track for the Ravenna thoroughfare.

Ravenna Bicycle Path Small Business Owners/Residents’ Work Group
Next Meeting Tuesday, July 23, 7 p.m.
Varsity Restaurant, 2300 N.E. 65th St.

Flyer about the meeting up just outside the Ravenna Varsity. Click the image to see the full version (6.4 MB file).

Flyer about the meeting up just outside the Ravenna Varsity Restaurant. Click the image to see the full version (6.4 MB file).

Concerns about NE 65th St and the BMP listed on the flyer include:

  • Loss of parking along NE 65th St, and cars being displaced to nearly residential streets;
  • Effects during special events (like University of Washington Football home games);
  • Emergency vehicle access to Ravenna Ida Culver;
  • Recommendation for a cycle track on NE 65th St was accompanied by “no empirical evidence to support it,” and no studies (environmental, traffic impact, or economic impact.

For more information about this meeting, residents are asked to contact Mark Briant at mcbriant@seanet.com.

Public comment on the City of Seattle’s 2013 Bicycle Master Plan Update can be sent to bmpupdate@seattle.gov. For a guide on making comments, you can use this form (Microsoft Word or PDF), supplied by the BMP Project Library page.

Filed Under: Businesses, City Council, Mayor's Office, Meeting, Photos, Ravenna, Ravenna-Bryant Community Association, Seattle Department of Transportation, Traffic

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee signs tougher DUI bill into law (VIDEO)

July 19, 2013 by 8 Comments

While Wednesday’s joint Mayor’s Office/Seattle Department of Transportation press conference was held at the intersection of last March’s DUI tragedy, the topic was overall street safety along NE 75th St and the SDOT proposed street design changes.

The next day, however, Washington State Governor Jay Inslee signed DUI legislation (SB 5912) into law down in Tacoma at the Washington State Patrol District 1 headquarters.

Screen grab from SeattleP-I.com's coverage of Governor Jay Inslee signing new DUI legislation into law. Click through to read the whole article, and see more photos from the event by Associated Press Photographer Ted S. Warren.

Screen grab from SeattleP-I.com’s coverage of Governor Jay Inslee signing new DUI legislation into law. Click through to read the whole article, and see more photos from the event by Associated Press photographer Ted S. Warren.

Dan and Marilyn Schulte both attended on their family’s behalf, and were joined at the signing by over a dozen legislators and law enforcement leaders, as well as family members of a woman killed by a drunk driver in 2010.

About the bill, Associated Press reporter Rachel La Corte wrote:

Under the new law, a driver suspected of a second impaired driving offense faces mandatory arrest and will have an interlock device installed on their vehicle within five days of being charged.

The state also will begin a pilot program in as many as three counties and two cities not in those counties to conduct daily alcohol monitoring of anyone convicted twice under the DUI law. Additional money will be put toward ensuring that local jurisdictions prosecute and punish more offenders more quickly.

The final version of the bill was passed unanimously by both the House and Senate.

Most of the law will go into effect on September 28 of this year; however, the monitoring program and a few other components will not go into effect until January 1, 2014.

You can read more about the path to the bill’s final version here (“How budget constraints narrowed Olympia’s DUI crackdown,” June 26, 2012, Seattle Times,” and read the full signed bill here (near the bottom, the link titled “Bill as Passed Legislature.”)

Video of the bill signing event was broadcast live by TVW, the “C-SPAN of Washington state” (our words), and also available below. Dan Schulte begins his statement at about the seven minute mark.

 

Filed Under: Crime, Events, Government, Northeast Seattle, Video
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