---

Down the road a few blocks, LA-based megapromoters have bought the Showbox and Showbox Sodo nightclubs. Ex-Showbox owner Jeff Steichen will still run the clubs for AEG Live/Anschutz Entertainment Group. That company's owned by Philip Anschutz, the Denver financier and promoter of various right-wing causes. Outfits he owns, in whole or in pieces, include Qwest, Regal Cinemas, a string of free daily tabloids (in DC, SF, and Baltimore), and the film company that made The Chronicles of Narnia and Atlas Shrugged. Organizations he's supported include Seattle's own Discovery Institute.

---

What should be done with the ex-Public Safety Building block downtown, which has been a big hole in the ground for more than two years now? Some city officials (read: Mayor Nickels) would like a "civic square" project. This turns out to be, as you might have guessed, a privately-developed office/condo tower with a bit of a bricked public plaza at the base.

---

In the year ahead, Pike Place Market officials want to raise $80 million, presumably from public sources. They claim the money's needed for essential infrastructure improvements, some of which weren't done when the Market was "saved" in the '70s.

---

You know that surface parking lot at the northeast corner of Third and Virginia? Its landlords have posted a Master Use Permit application with the City to establish its future use-as a surface parking lot. Could this be the first sign of the national housing-market slowdown finally reaching the Belltown condo development biz?

---

The Church of Mary Magdalene, a vital ministry to downtown's homeless and formerly-homeless women and their families, needs a short-term home. It's been based at First United Methodist, which will vacate its historic building in 2008 and move to smaller, newer quarters. Seattle Center's promised the Magdalene folks a permanent new home, but that won't be ready 'til sometime in 2009 or 2010. They've found a temporary space, but it costs $1,800 a month, twice what they'd been paying the Methodists. To help, contact churchofmarymagdalene.org.

---

Lawrence W. Cheek, who writes occasionally about architecture for the P-I, isn't easy to please. But he likes the Mosler Lofts on Third Avenue near Broad Street. In a Dec. 26 column, he called Mosler "the most interesting and provocative residential high-rise to appear in Seattle since World War II...Urban life is all about ambiguity and complexity, and this building reflects it better than any of the slicker, more overtly luxurious towers around it."

---

Belltown activist Dr. Harold F. "Hal" Weeks, 81, passed away on Nov. 17. Born in Portland, he worked as a physician on the Eastside, moving to Belltown upon his retirement. John Pehrson, head of the Belltown Housing and Land Use Subcommittee, called Weeks an "advocate for Belltown. He was a vice-president of the Belltown Community Center and a loyal, active member of [BHLUS] from its beginning. When he moved out of Belltown we made him an emeritus member, our only one." A private memorial for Weeks will be held in January.

---

Belltown composer Igor Keller, creator of the satirical opera Mackis v. O'Reilly, is on a quest to write a new brass-ensemble piece every day (or so) until he reaches 300 compositions. Check his daily progress (with synth audio files) at onedaywonders.blogspot.com.

---

Art Beat: McLeod Residence, 2209 2nd Ave., celebrates its one-year anniversary on Jan. 4 with Ingrid Schultz's Seasonal Therapy, a 3-D display of bright, warm scenes intended as a "photography cure for Seasonal Affective Disorder." The show also includes a "video quilt" installation by Cynthia Norton and an "electronic textile" installation by Maggie Orth.

Form/Space Atelier, 2407 1st Ave., continues Shawn Foote's "Fringeshift" painting series. On Jan. 11, Belltown Messenger editor Clark Humphrey signs his new Seattle's Belltown history book there.