Lake City Visioning Project Open House

Date and Time:  Saturday, March 30th from 2:30 to 5:30pm
Location:  Lake City Library conference room

The University of Washington students who have been working on the Lake City Visioning Project will be holding and open house to showcase their work to date. The students have been working on design concepts for the Pierre Properties and a "tool kit" to assist our community with urban planning.

In addition, a Landscape Architecture class at the UW is currently in progress. Students from that class will be at the Open House sharing their work as well. They are working on 16 different concepts for specific projects throughout the Lake City area. The  projects are looking at:

Improvements to specific parks, including but not limited to the Lake City Mini Park, Homewood Park, and Little Brook Park.

Right of Way improvements to specific streets to improve safety and usability.

Connecting our parks, trails, nature areas, business district, and other public assets with a unified and well marked trail system. Included would be public art to help create a sense of identity and place, a signage program unique to our neighborhood, interpretive exhibits describing unique features of the Thornton Creek Watershed, etc. 

Everyone is welcome to attend. It is informal, so drop in when you can and stay for as long as you like. This is still an ongoing process and the students are looking for more community feedback and ideas.

You can follow the Visioning Project on their blog.

North Helpline Upcoming Events

The Lake City Lions are sponsoring an Italian dinner fundraiser for North Helpline on Friday, April 19th at the Lake City Community Center.

The dinner starts at 5:30 and goes until 8:30. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children. You can order tickets for an Evening in Italy here.

North Helpline is a service center that provides human services to over 1000 clients each week in an effort to reduce the impact of hunger and poverty in Greater North Seattle. You can learn more about them here.

A calendar of other fundraising events for North Helpline is below:

Men 'selling magazines' raise suspicions of multiple neighbors

A pair of men have been visiting homes in our neighborhood the last few days, knocking on doors and engaging residents that answered with a magazine sales pitch.

We want to preface the following that these men may be completely innocent and actually selling magazine subscriptions.

However, a few things made a few DPC neighbors suspicious of the men.

First, the two men approached the homes in a suspicious manner. A third man was seen walking with them, appearing to stand watch nearby with a cell phone at the ready.

When met by neighbors, they said they were students selling magazine subscriptions with money going to a program to augment their educational fees via community outreach.

The materials provided were vague and unprofessional.

Also, a neighbor did a web search of their organization and were unable to come up with the name they gave for their organization.

One of the men was said to be someone that has been seen lingering at Virgil Flaim Park.

They are described as 2 African American men, ages 30 +, about 5'-6". One wore a blue down jacket and a baseball cap with a straight brim.

Again, and we stress, these men may be completely innocent and genuinely be selling magazines. However three community members found their actions and method suspicious.

Man discovered trapped overnight in wrecked car on edge of ravine

John Shearer came outside to an unusual sight in his yard just off Hiram Place NE, south of Virgil Flaim Park on Tuesday morning. There was a wrecked car in blackberrry bushes, on the edge of the ravine, pointing downward into Thornton Creek far below. When Shearer went to investigate, he discovered a man trapped in the car, laying under the dashboard. The man had been there all night.

Firefighters arrived after Shearer called 9-1-1. They had to cut the roof and steering wheel from the car to free the 67 year-old man.

Shearer said that cars often drive down the driveway, led astray by GPS devices that seem to be unable to make sense of streets around the ravine near Hiram Place NE. News crews using GPS devices even had a difficult time finding the location as some ended up on the southwest side of the ravine.

The man was transported to Harborview Medical Center in stable condition, according to Seattle Fire Department Spokesman Kyle Moore.

The Seattle P-I has a post with photos showing firefighters rescuing the man and showing the car after the rescue in their post here.

Update: Photo added (below) from other side of ravine, courtesy of a neighbor.

 

PHOTO: Spring is coming

The sun had a pretty nice run on Sunday morning. Clouds seem to be moving in this afternoon, but the warm, bright rays earlier in the day were a good sign that winter is ending— at least these crocuses (and my allergies) are pretty sure that the seasons are changing.