Madison Park Seattle
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Well, it was inevitable that our local crime holiday would end. Unfortunately, criminal activity returned to normal levels in the neighborhood during the past month. Where we had nothing to report in our last Police Blotter (2/16/11), we have plenty to report this time.
We’ll start with the five car prowls reported during the period: on 2/17 (the 2400 block of 42nd Ave. E.), on 2/22 (the 4000 block of E. Madison St.), on 2/24 (the 2000 block of 43rd Ave. E.), on 2/26, (the 1000 block of 34th
Today marks the 260th anniversary of the birth of the man for whom, indirectly, Madison Park was named: James Madison, fourth President of the United States (1809-17). Madison, known as “The Father of the Constitution,” served two terms in office, preceded by Thomas Jefferson and succeeded by James Monroe. As President, Madison presided over the War of 1812, which resulted in the British setting fire to the White House, but which also culminated in future-president Andrew Jackson’s triumph
Obviously, not everyone is into the local real estate scene to the extent that we are or necessarily wants to be confronted with the details, especially if the news is bad. Madison Park Blogger covers
Brooke Westlund reports that she's currently in the process of creating a functioning art studio/gallery "down under" in the Pike Place Market. It's Space #328, and it'll be ready for its close-up (we mean opening-night blowout), on Thursday, March 17 (5-7 pm). Meanwhile, Brooke and her friend Sam Taylor are jointly
A Madison Park resident reports that while out for an early-morning walk last Tuesday she spotted a “scrawny” coyote at Madison Park beach. She tells us that at about 6:30 am she was strolling along 43rd Avenue E., near the Bathhouse, when the coyote suddenly ran up from the beach, crossed the street, and stopped to survey the Park from the high point of the embankment, near the children’s play area. Moments later, an unsuspecting squirrel crossed the street under the watchful eye of the coyote,
Last week, sales of condos and townhouses in Seattle climbed to 52, up from 31 the week prior. In browsing the list of 52 condos and townhouses sold, you might be interested to hear:
Escala secured two more condo sales last week: #1402 and #1007. The 14th floor unit (2bd/2b, 1607 sq ft) was originally listed for $869K and sold for $844K. The 10th floor unit (1bd/1.5b, 952 sq ft) sold for $444K, down from listed price of $454K. That makes 5 sales at Escala for the month of February.
If you thought that the recent dustup between the McGilvra PTA and the Seattle School District would lead to a decline in parental support for the school, it appears you’d be wrong. The PTA is, in fact, about to embark on one of its most ambitious fund-raising efforts to date: a month-long partnership with local businesses to raise both money for and awareness of our high-achieving neighborhood public school. The PTA hopes to benefit the businesses as well, urging McGilvra Elementary’
| Winter Sunrise in the Methow Valley by Paul Butler (Methow Valley News) |
In the nearly two years that we’ve been producing the Madison Park Blogger, we’ve never taken a vacation from the blog—until last week, that is. Though we considered making an announcement of our planned hiatus, we thought better of the idea when we reflected on the fact that a blog is very much like Facebook or any other social networking site. In other words, it’s probably not a good idea to post information that
InJuly of 2000, bought 2 portables for their school to lower class size and to increase the overall capacity of the school. When they bought the portables, they and the district signed an agreement about their use.
So
About 18 months ago we reported on the decline of speculative building in Madison Park, noting that several single-residence developers then active in our market, including Chaffee Homes and Blueline Developers, had decided to stop building new houses here. Other developers were scaling down operations or just finishing off their properties then under construction.
This shift was a big change from the previous ten years or so, when it became the norm in the Park for any cottage
The reason for
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McQuesten FineArt’s gallery in Maison
As we reported when the deal was first announced, Key is ostensibly coming to the Park to be
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
I stopped by the Madison Park Conservatory last week to get a look at the new restaurant that replaced Sostanza. Yeah, I loved it. So much so that by the time I hit the road for home -- with snow falling fast and Seattleites driving like eejits -- it was all I could do not to turn my car around, conserve my emotional energy and head back to the far end of Madison Park. I envisioned myself begging to spend the night upstairs in the Conservatory's "Library Study Lounge," a somber moniker for a handsome
Readers may recall the dustup we covered earlier this year over the permit requests of two Madison Park property owners who each wanted to short plat (subdivide) their properties. The two applications were coincidentally for different properties located on the very same block. Both of the lots already had two existing longtime rental units on them, and this fact effectively grandfathered the real estate as suitable for short platting under City ordinance, assuming certain
By Bryan Tagas
For several decades the owners of two waterfront properties in Madison Park have taken for their private use the public road end which sits between their two properties. By doing so, they have effectively excluded the public from what is publicly owned waterfront. This encroachment on the public right-of-way, which may have begun in the 1950s or before, was initially accomplished through the planting of hedges and other landscaping across the road
The most notable burglary occurred at the Seattle Tennis Club on Friday, December 10. Early that evening, several STC members reported to staff that personal items of theirs had been stolen from the men’s locker room. One member reported that he had seen someone going through
We’ve seen a fair amount of gloomy commentary in recent weeks about the state of the Puget Sound real estate market. An email we received from Redfin earlier this month, for example, described sales volume in Seattle as “dead as a doornail” during November. That’s harsh, but not entirely inaccurate. The number of closed sales in November was down 32% from the same month a year ago, and in our part of town (Capitol Hill are the surrounding neighborhoods), sales actually
We’ve seen a fair amount of gloomy commentary in recent weeks about the state of the Puget Sound real estate market. An email we received from Redfin earlier this month, for example, described sales volume in Seattle as “dead as a doornail” during November. That’s harsh, but not entirely inaccurate. The number of closed sales in November was down 32% from the same month a year ago, and in our part of town (Capitol Hill are the surrounding neighborhoods), sales actually
As we reported in April, Madison Park was one of several contiguous neighborhoods that jointly won the CleanScapes 2010 Neighborhood Waste Reduction Rewards competition. The Thursday pick-up area, which includes Madison Park, had the greatest reduction in non-recycled waste during the competition period. As a result, Madison Park and the other winning neighborhoods were each asked to submit proposals for a neighborhood project to be funded by CleanScapes. Thirteen proposals were received and
Although not technically located in Madison Park, Madison Valley’s Luc is cited as a Madison Park restaurant and hailed in the Best of 2010 issue as winner of the
The big swing set in the play area of Madison Park was suddenly missing its swings last week, though the cause was not immediately evident. On Wednesday, however, an explanation was provided by the parks department, which reported that it had removed the swings due to safety concerns.
It seems that during a routine safety check, an inspector detected that the swing set’s top rail, which is twelve feet high, tends to bow considerably, especially when “a large person”
In that incident, which occurred on November 18, the female vendor reported to police
In rejecting
By Bryan Tagas
Home sellers—and many real estate agents—hate to even hear the term lowball offer, let alone be the recipient of one. But there’s anecdotal evidence that as buyers have tried to gain an advantage from the dysfunctional nature of the residential real estate market, lowballing has been on the rise.
There are no statistics that confirm this trend, if it exists. That’s because there is no uniform definition of what a lowball offer is. One buyer’s idea of a realistic offer may be a seller’
It's certainly true that early snow planning by our Community Council occurred none too soon this year. We’re told that
By Bryan Tagas
Before we get to the blah blah blah portion of this posting, let’s go directly to the reveal: Madison Park Conservatory, the latest culinary incarnation to inhabit the onetime Sostanza space, is going to have its soft opening on Tuesday; and in advance of that, the neighborhood is invited to tour the refurbished digs and meet the new restaurant’s team at an open house to be held this Saturday, November 27, from 6 until 9 pm.
Now, on to the narrative:
Cormac Mahoney,
There were a couple of unlikely criminal episodes in the neighborhood during the last two weeks, each apparently resulting from failed relationships, real or imagined. The most serious incident was reported by a resident of an apartment in the 4200 block of E. Blaine Street. According to the victim, at about 7 pm on 11/12, a woman pounded on the door of his apartment saying that she was there to pick up her friend, who was a former girlfriend of the victim. He admitted
Madison Park’s southernmost road end (like our rustic northernmost road end, which we profiled earlier), is a bit off the beaten path. In spite of the fact that it’s actually not the most obscure or hard-to-find waterfront road end in the neighborhood, it’s still well deserving of its local moniker: Hidden Beach. You have to venture down “Devil’s Dip” to get to it, and unless you know what you’re looking for you might very well miss the entrance.
The answer is Google Places, an “overarching initiative” currently underway by the dominant internet search engine to provide higher-quality information about businesses
As we’ve said many times on this blog, when it comes to guarding against crime it pays to be vigilant. The sagacity of this advice was brought home to each of us in the past few weeks when we learned of the orange-vest-wearing home-burglary suspect and later heard about the guy with the supposedly lost ball who was probably an arsonist and burglar. Each of these men may not have been what he, on first glance, appeared to be; and most likely there were serious consequences
Our informant reports that he and his wife returned to their Madison Park bungalow on a Sunday afternoon earlier
Madison Park Conservatory: getting close
Since neighborhood favorite Sostanzawent dark in July, many Madison Park gourmands have been waiting with eager anticipation for news about its replacement, Madison Park Conservatory. Co-owner Cormac Mahoney added to the buzz last week by making the rounds of Village shops and charming the owners—or at least several of the female ones. We heard all about it, of course, and that prompted us to go direct to the source and ask the really important questions: