The 2008 parks levy paid for work on the Lower Woodland Park playfields and for a playground at Gasworks. The playfields were done right away because they saved the parks department on maintenance costs, and the playground at Gasworks has been put off to next year because it adds to maintenance costs (the levy didn’t include money for operations, so that’s how parks sorted projects). The Gasworks playground is currently scheduled to open in March 2016 after construction this fall, but it is running behind schedule. I’ll post plans when they are done.

While you wait, a number of other …

The Wallingford Community Council meeting this past Wednesday did not have an agenda posted before hand, so attendance was light, although 2 city council candidates did attend. Kudos to Catherine Weatbrook and Michael Maddux for coming! Catherine Weatbrook is running against Mike O’Brien, who skipped the Wallingford debate in the last election cycle at the last possible second, with the excellent excuse that he needed to attend a fund raiser in Eastern Washington somewhere. More impartial reporting:

The first topic was live-in campers on N Northlake Way and the related problems. Related problems include trees used as camper fuel, human …

Stephen Fickenscher submitted the following:

Last Wednesday Wallingford Toastmasters Club 252 had a retirement party for Dick Hendricks. Dick is 105 years old and a founding member of our club from back in 1960.

The celebration was attended by 40 guests. Many of the current members and past members in attendance hadn’t even been born when Dick started the Wallingford club, although one former member in attendance has known Dick his entire life and helped Dick get the club going back in 1960.

Dick’s career was with the Federal Government working for the United States General Services Administration (GSA). At …

(note: this is an April 1st post, which I can now freely say as it is no longer April 1st)

I went to the Move Transportation Levy meeting at Roosevelt on Monday night. I had figured the levy would just amount to adding a couple crosswalks to the neighborhood and then focus all the real money on Northgate and other light rail stops, but the draft proposal currently includes funding for making 45^th and 50^th one way streets. SDOT is maintaining the proposal will alleviate long standing complaints about East / West throughput in our area while also …

Paul Dorpat style “Now and Then” posts in Wallingford are easy. Just go to 45th or Stone, take a picture, then look at what Google Street View has for the same place. Here is the site of the new CVS that will be replacing what was Moon Temple, Tully’s, and the Wallingford Neighborhood Office. The new store is supposed to keep the architectural look of the original building, so I assume the stonework at the top is just temporarily removed:

There’s also a nice memorial at the site. Note the apodments looming in the background:

The memorial last week had …

The project proposing to prevent Tangletown cut throughs by blocking easy I-5 access from Tangletown received 90 comments, more than all the other NPSF projects put together. Justin wrote the following, which seemed to encapsulate the general tone of many of the comments:

I live on NE 51st St at the corner of 5th NE, literally 50 feet from the proposed barriers. Yes, plenty of traffic “cheats” and cuts through the neighborhood rather than sit through the snarl that is the 50th St on/off ramps during rush hour. There is a pretty constant stream of cars past my house in …

My hope is that the calendar will be of use to people that are sitting around with their coffee on Saturday morning wondering what to do with themselves or their kids. The calendar tab is now back in the Wallyhood menu and the calendar is up to date. I also cleaned up the page so it hopefully more legible and useful.

So that you and I don’t forget the calendar is there, my plan is to have an article featuring events every Saturday morning that I write up while updating the calendar every Friday. I’m going to focus on local …