BCC and BBA launch "Belltown Cleanup" program.
Neighborhood streets and sidewalks are getting spruced up and de-littered twice a week this summer, thanks to a "Belltown Cleanup"
program cosponsored by the Belltown Community Council and the Belltown Business Association.
The cleaners are assigned by the Seattle Community Court to community service in lieu of jail. Eight of them worked the first two-day shift in mid-June. The crews wear orange vests and are supervised by members of AmeriCorps.
The service consists of weeding, sidewalk sweeping, and trash removal; primarily along First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Western Avenues and their respective side streets (particularly Bell and Vine Streets). Depending on the results of the current trial, the work may later expand to a daily schedule.
The Community Court initiative, directed by Stephanie Tschida of the Seattle City Attorney's office, arranges alternatives to jail time for "adult non-violent misdemeanor offenders."
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Antioch University/Seattle is here to stay, in spite of financial troubles at its sister campus in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
In June, Antioch University (the parent organization) chose to shut down Antioch College (the undergrad operation at the original Ohio site) after the upcoming 2007/08 school year, due to shrinking enrollments and rising costs.
But not only is the Seattle Antioch still going strong, it might pick up some of Yellow Springs's students with unfinished degree programs.
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The eastern blocks of Belltown were the last to be regraded from the old Denny Hill (in the late 1920s). These blocks have remained relatively less touched by western Belltown's recent building boom.
This may change, and soon. Clise Properties, owned by one of Seattle's oldest families, is putting 15 parcels totalling 12 acres up for sale. All are in the "Denny Triangle" between Fifth, Westlake, and Denny Way.
Most of this land is currently occupied by surface parking lots, with a few low-rise buildings (including the Hurricane Cafe) scattered about. The blocks are currently zoned for office and condo towers up to 500 feet tall. The Clises are holding on to their existing taller structures, including the Westin, United Airlines, and Denny buildings.
A Post-Intelligencer article quoted Clise Properties CEO Alfred Clise as saying his family wants the tracts to become a "thriving world-class development on par with New York's Rockefeller Center or London's Canary Wharf." The paper cites unnamed "local experts" as claiming the sale could fetch up to $200 million.
Alfred Clise's grandfather, Charles, started buying up the Denny Triangle tracts as they were being regraded eight decades ago.
At least one of the Clise tracts up for sale already has a high-rise development announced for future construction. That's the old Cadillac dealership where Teatro ZinZanni's high-tech "tent" has housed dinner-cabaret spectaculars. ZinZanni's last show at
the current site will be on Aug.
5; it will reopen Nov. 8 at 222 Mercer Street.
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The Rendezvous restaurant-lounge and its Jewel Box Theater space, 2322 2nd Ave., celebrate their 80th anniversary. Early Messenger readers can attend a celebration on Saturday, June 30, 8 p.m. Performers include Dodi (the rock band named after the former empress of the Rendezvous bar), K-Pop and the Coalition of the Willing, and Buttersprites. There's no cover.
The Rendezvous first opened as an adjunct to the B.F. Shearer Theatrical Supply Co., part of the old Second Avenue "film row." The
Jewel Box was both a screening room where theater managers could view upcoming attractions and a sample of the Shearer firm's theater-design operation. The Shearer company folded in 1972. The Rendezvous was bought by longtime Film Row worker Wayne Schwarzkopf in 1988; it was bought and remodeled by Steve Freeborn and Tia Matthies in 2002.
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Another old-school drinkery, the Virginia Inn at First and Virginia, is displaying posters and photos inside the former Market Graphics storefront next door, denoting the VI's century-plus existence. Included is "The Oldtimers," a 1990s scale model of the VI bar depicting several of its deceased former patrons and employees. Co-owner Patrice Demombymnes, who's been at the VI since 1981, says he's negotiating to expand the VI into the Market Graphics space, but that the deal's still being worked out.
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Art Beat: Longtime Belltown artist David C. Kane has a career retrospective show, "Flat Mambo," now through Oct. 7 at the Frye Art Museum, Terry and Denny on First Hill. Admission is free. The exhibit explores more than two decades' worth of paintings, drawings, and prints, in styles ranging from surrealism and cubism to socialist realism, with subjects ranging from science fiction and film noir to doomed lovers and classical ruins.
On Friday, July 6, an "Interactivity" group show opens at the McLeod Residence (2209 2nd Ave.). Billed as exploring "the convergence of art and technology," it features works by The Barbarian Group, Maggie Orth, Joel Kollin, and Felix Livni.
The following Friday, July 13, Suite 100 Gallery (2222 2nd Ave.) explores similar territory in "Reclaim: Artistic Examinations of Circuit Bending." The show includes a wall-sized interactive installation by Michael Robson, circuit drawings by Kim Edwards Jr., and "inventive instruments" by Christopher Olsen.
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FareStart, the Belltown-based group that trains the formerly homeless for food-service careers, holds its third "Guest Chef on the Waterfront" fundraiser July 11, 5-9 p.m. at Bell Harbor's Pier 66 and Elliott Hall. It includes dishes by the chefs of over two dozen Seattle restaurants, plus a wine tasting and live music. Tickets are $60; it's 21-and-over only; call 267-6223 or visit farestart.org.
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TheThird-and-Lenora-based Jewish Transcript Publications has started Jew-ish.com, a community Web site aimed at under-40 Jews in the Northwest. It features film and book reviews, blogs, and forums aimed at folks who are still trying to integrate their Jewishness in with the rest of their lives.
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A BELLTOWN MANIFESTO
49.
Sex: It's not just for women anymore.
