The Red and Black are back!

Guest Posting
by Will Lomen

A new soccer season is about to get underway; and when it does, there’s no doubt that the McGilvra Youth Soccer Club will again be fielding some pretty formidable contenders. Last year, two McGilvra teams were All-City Champs: the McGilvra Chargers (shown above) won the Girls Under 12 title and the McGilvra Sparklers (shown below) won the Girls Under 11 title.

The Club, whose colors have always been Red and Black, was originally formed in 1973. Back then, all players played eleven-a-side on a regulation field and the McGilvra Club provided the opportunity for approximately three hundred kids to play soccer in the Seattle Youth Soccer Association. Over the years the club has experienced steady growth; and in 2010, 37 years later, the club stands at more than five hundred players coached by over fifty volunteer coaches. McGilvra Soccer now includes not only boy and girl teams for each year between Under-10 and Under-19, but also boy and girl teams from Under-6 to Under-9 that play using modified rules. These modifications for the younger players include reduced rosters, shorter fields, fewer on-field players, shorter games and a smaller ball.

One consistent characteristic of the Club over the years has been the outstanding volunteers who have kept the McGilvra Soccer organization (mcgilvrasoccer.org) running efficiently. In some years a few individuals have done most of the work, but in other years a new generation of enthusiastic parents has come on board to fill the many essential officer, coordinator and coaching positions.

One of these great volunteers is Kendall Culwell, who has been the Club’s head registrar for the past five years. She will be stepping aside and moving to California as soon as this season’s registration is completed (she swears that the reason for her move has nothing to do with intensity of the job). She admits that the May to August registration period can be hectic, but it’s also very satisfying to see the new teams come together with names like Go Girls, Sparklers, Lasers, Stampede, Green Hornets, Superfriends, Speedy Cats and Hotshots. It is a testament to Culwell's efficiency and dedication that during her five years she has twice been designated the Seattle Youth Soccer Association volunteer of the month. The SYSA (sysa.org) has sixteen clubs and over thirteen thousand soccer players under its umbrella.

Although one of the smallest clubs in the SYSA, the McGilvra Red and Black is competitive with any of the larger clubs and has many City Championships to show for it. Last year, in weather not fit for a polar bear, four of the Club’s teams fought through the marathon rounds of the City Tournament and made it to the finals. On that cold and rainy of December 19th at the Nathan Hale and Summit field complexes, the Sparklers coached by Bruce Clarkson and the Chargers coached by Mike Riley won their respective City Championships in heart-stopping performances. The Go Girls (Under 13) coached by Scott MacIntire and the Nighthawks (boys Under 11) coached by Joe Nickerson finished as the gutsy runner-ups in their classifications.

The new season begins in September; and based on the enthusiasm of the volunteers, the anticipation of the kids, and the winning tradition of the Club, we can look forward to another outstanding year for McGilvra soccer.

July 2010 Real Estate Report

Stable overall, but Broadmoor breaks out

The Madison Park real estate market may not exactly be taking off, but it’s certainly not in the doldrums of last year either. “The market is definitely better than it was,” says Windermere agent Kathryn Hinds. “What I’d call it now is stable.” That assessment seems to be borne out by sales figures for the last six months showing that the average number of monthly sales in Madison Park (Broadmoor and Washington Park included) is now eight, versus six per month during 2009. That’s a 33% uptick. During the worst six months of the local market, from October 2008 through March 2009, there were only two sales per month on average. So we’re certainly out of that trough.

And just to put this into focus, here’s a breakout comparing Madison Park home sales (condos included) for the first six months of the past four years:

But the real story of the past couple months has been the turnaround in Broadmoor, where nine sales were recorded in June and July combined. That is equal to the total number of sales in Broadmoor during all of 2009, a year in which there were four months when not a single house sold there. During 2008 there were 20 homes sold in Broadmoor, so the fact that there have been 18 sales in the first seven months of 2010 demonstrates a pretty significant turnaround for that Madison Park enclave.

Perhaps this also means that at least a part of the upper market is coming around, much like the under-$1 million market did earlier this year. The average sold price of Broadmoor homes in 2010 has been $1,453,000, which represents a 10% average discount from the seller’s original asking price. That is a higher discount than houses at the lower end of the market have been selling at. Only one house in Broadmoor has sold for over $2 million this year, which is particularly interesting given the fact that the median price of the 21 Broadmoor houses on the market is $2,950,000. Clearly, it’s easier to sell at the “lower end” of the market, even in a place like Broadmoor.

Like the sales figures, inventory levels are also stable in the overall Madison Park market, standing at 103 listings in July. That was in line with June’s 102 listings and the 101 units listed in May. Of the 77 current single-family home listings, only 12 (16%) are listed at under $1 million, and the median price is down to $1.8 million (it had been holding at almost $2 million for most of the year). There were 18 new residential listings during the last month, of which only three were outside of Broadmoor or Washington Park. There were also six new condo listings, bringing the total condo inventory in the Park to 25. The median condo listing is $640,000, which gets you about 1,200 sq. ft. The median-priced house has about 3,000 sq. ft.

Here’s the breakdown of Madison Park sales during July:

Houses

Sales: 6
Median Sales Price: $1,348,000
Average Sq. Ft.: 3,718
Average Price per Sq. Ft.: $396
Average Number of Days on Market: 75
Average Discount from Original List Price: 11.8%

Condos

Sales: 2
Median Sales Price: $1,325,000
Average Sq. Ft.: 1,778
Average Price per Sq. Ft.: $745
Average Number of Days on Market: 17
Average Discount from Original List Price: 10.0%

The Northwest Multiple Listing Service (MLS) reports that there are a fair number of pending sales in our market this month: eight houses and five condo units, many of these residences having been built in the 21st Century. Still, there’s something to be said for old and comfortable. One of the houses that is pending sale this month was constructed in 1907.

[Photo: This classic Washington Park home located at 833 34th Avenue E. is one of the new listings in Madison Park this month. Built in 1904, it has five bedrooms, 3.5 baths, and a total 4,100 sq. ft. of living space. It is listed at $2,498,000 (Val Ellis/Coldwell Banker Bain Real Estate). Thanks to Wendy Skettitt of Windermere Real Estate for her help in compiling July sales information and to Redfin for supplying current listing information from the MLS and other sources. Aerial photo of Broadmoor is from Bing Maps.]

Reminder: floating bridge closed this weekend

Nornally, I don't do postings about issues that you are likely to read or hear about in the major media. But since it's clear that not everyone pays attention (or necessarily has a very good memory) I thought I might just mention the fact that if you're planning to cross the water this weekend for a bit of fun on the other side, you better use I-90 or take your boat. At 11 pm on Friday night, August 20, the Evergreen Point (Albert D. Rosellini) Floating Bridge will be closed for its annual inspection and maintenance. It will not reopen until 5 am on Monday morning, August 23.

While the bridge is closed, SR-520 will be open between I-5 and the Montlake Boulevard E. exit. Make your plans accordingly.

Medina to Madison Park in an hour or so

They piled onto the Madison Park shore this morning in five separate waves. Swimmers (306 of them) and kayakers (80 of them), all having plowed across Lake Washington to benefit a very good cause. It was by far the biggest Swim for Life in the 13 year history of the event, which raises funds for the Puget Sound Blood Center (PSBC). Last year there were only 250 or so participants, and it was not that long ago (perhaps two years) that there were only about 30 swimmers making the race.

So Swim for Life, the brainchild of banker Scott Leopold, has come a long way since 1998 when, according to PSBC President James AuBuchon, Leopold did the very first Swim for Life solo.

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The weather didn’t quite cooperate, making the course choppy (“wicked fierce” said one participant); and the air temperature was a bit bracing for the swimmers when they arrived on the beach after their 2.25- mile workout. But shivering or not (and most were not), everyone seemed to be having a good time, spectators included.

For reasons of safety, a kayaker was a part of each of the 80 teams participating. With a maximum of four swimmers per team, the kayakers were able to effectively monitor the progress of each of the team's swimmers as they navigated the straight-line course to Madison Park.

Swim for Life this year was successful in raising almost $50,000 as of the start of the race. And it’s not too late to donate, so click here to do so. All funds raised from the event this year will go to fund registration fees for the national bone marrow registry.

President visits Madison Park (sort of)

We can technically claim a Presidential visit to Madison Park today, though his time in the neighborhood was rather fleeting. While on his way to a fundraiser at the waterfront home of Real Networks founder Rob Glaser, President Obama’s motorcade used Lake Washington Boulevard as “a long on and off ramp to and from 520.” He thus rather inadvertently entered Madison Park along our western border before heading south on the Boulevard and into Denny-Blaine, where Glaser’s house is located.

Ironically, the media gave credit to Madrona as the site of the Presidential visit. But as regular readers of this blog well know, Denny-Blaine is not part of Madrona, a fact acknowledged by the Madrona Community Council. So ironically, while the President actually did pass through Madison Park and did not travel into Madrona as far as we can tell, Madrona got the glory in most of the media.

Oh well, we know better. And so, presumably, do the residents of Denny-Blaine, many of whom must have been negatively impacted by the various security measures.

At any rate, the President’s brief excursion through our neighborhood was a big thrill for those lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. The picture above was taken from the phone camera of Thao Nguyen of Therapeutic Associates Physical Therapy in Madison Court as the motorcade entered the Arboretum at the intersection of E. Madison and Lake Washington Boulevard. The staff of Therapeutic Associates reports that they waved to the President and that he actually waved back.

There are some good pictures of the motorcade, the security detail, and the exterior of Glaser’s house on the neighboring blog, Central District News. That blog, which actually covers Madrona as part of its beat, was the only media outlet that I could find today that correctly reported that site of the Presidential visit was “near Madrona.”

[SPD Command Vehicle photo by Will Lomen.]

Arboretum seeks big-time reduction in traffic

“Traffic calming” coming soon to a road near you!

If the Arboretum gets its way, the number of cars using Lake Washington Boulevard to transit the Park each day will be reduced by as much as 80%. And when it comes to traffic mitigation, what the Arboretum wants, the Arboretum may very well get. Frankly, the Park’s recent track record on this issue, though not widely heralded, has been pretty impressive.

Among the various constituencies of the Coalition for a Sustainable 520 (that amalgam of interested communities and interest groups, which includes Madison Park’s community council), the Arboretum was, in fact, the only immediate winner when the Governor last spring announced her new “Preferred Alternative” for 520. Rejecting the previous Option A+ Plan crafted by a legislative workgroup, the Governor eliminated the Arboretum on/off ramps from the design for the west-side approach to the new floating bridge. This, as we earlier reported, means that there will be no Arboretum off ramp from 520 beginning in 2012 (based on the current construction schedule) and no Arboretum on ramp to 520 beginning in 2015. The permanent elimination of the on/off ramps was what the Arboretum had argued for—and it’s what the Arboretum achieved.

But that’s hardly the end of the story. The Governor also mandated that the State Department of Transportation work with the City and the Arboretum to develop a “traffic management plan” that reduces the impact of cars on the Park. That’s something else the Arboretum wanted and got.

But what exactly does “traffic management” of Lake Washington Boulevard mean? I went right to the top to find out. In a narrow-ranging interview with Arboretum Foundation Director Paige Miller earlier this summer, I asked her what ideas were being debated for re-routing traffic and what kind of process will take place for developing a new traffic plan for the Arboretum.

But first, a word about Miller. She’s an attorney (Yale Law), former Seattle Port Commissioner, and one-time candidate for the Seattle City Council. She became executive director of the Arboretum Foundation three years ago. She has the reputation of being very smart and politically astute. Though she is modest about her role in the Arboretum’s recent success with the Governor ("It was a tremendous effort of a lot of people concerned about protecting the Arboretum") it’s pretty clear that the Arboretum’s cause has been advanced significantly by having Miller leading the parade.

With regard to the Arboretum’s traffic reduction objective, Miller did not mince words: “Our goal is to slow down traffic and discourage people from using the Arboretum as a through route.” And where will the traffic that now uses the Arboretum go? Miller is clear on that as well: “People should be encouraged to use 23rd Avenue E., which is a four-lane City arterial street and not an Olmsted Boulevard.” Her Olmsted reference, which is perhaps a bit obscure to some, comes from the fact that the City’s boulevards—developed in the early 1900s by the Olmsted Brothers—were intended to be parkways linking the City’s parks. When they were designed and built they were not intended to be major conveyors of through-traffic. But in the case of Lake Washington Boulevard, at least in its Arboretum portion, that’s exactly what it has become.

The City estimates that 18,000 cars drive through the Arboretum on average each day. Of these, according to Miller, about 10,000 vehicles access the 520 on or off ramps. She notes that the Boulevard—which was designed to handle only 4,000 cars per day—is only a two-lane road, while the four-lane arterial through Montlake also processes about 20,000 cars on average per day. By implication, improvements to 23rd and 24th Avenues E. could easily increase access to Montlake. To keep people from using the Arboretum in order to enter or exit 520, “we need to make sure that the logical route is to turn at 23rd,” Miller told me. “The Montlake Corridor ought to have the capacity of taking more cars than the Arboretum does.”

In order to encourage that northbound turn off of E. Madison Street and onto 23rd, Miller proposes to make the left-turn light there longer and to have the City lengthen the turn lane to accommodate more cars. Miller also wants the City to investigate ways to improve bus usage in that corridor.

But there are other ways of discouraging Arboretum use which are also under serious discussion. Miller prefers to call these “traffic calming measures” rather than traffic management schemes, but here are the major ones:

--putting a toll on cars using the Arboretum to access 520

--reducing speed limits through the Arboretum

--increasing the number of pedestrian crossings

--introducing speed monitors to tell drivers their cars’ speed

--placing a stop sign at the Boyer Avenue intersection

Miller says that no decisions have been made, but the planning process is underway. She believes that the Arboretum and Botanical Garden Committee (ABGC) has been given jurisdiction by the State to develop the traffic plan for the Arboretum. The ABGC is composed of the Arboretum Foundation, Seattle Parks Department, and the University of Washington, and it jointly operates the Arboretum. The ABGC will be meeting this week (on Wednesday, August 18 from 8:00 am until 12:00 pm in the Graham Visitors Center in the Arboretum), and one of the items on the agenda will be “traffic calming and management in the Arboretum.” That discussion is expected to get started at about 9:30 and last for around 90 minutes, for those interested in attending.

Just to put the issue into perspective for those of us who use the Arboretum for something other than nature viewing, note that Miller is on record testifying to the Seattle City Council in April that the Arboretum would like to see the number of cars coming through the Park each day limited to about 4,000. That’s an almost 80% reduction from the estimated level of traffic flowing through the Arboretum today. To get to that number, a lot of cars are clearly going to have to go somewhere else—or not go at all.

Miller certainly is not apologetic about what she admits might be an unobtainable ideal. “You have to have a goal,” she told me. “Lake Washington Boulevard was meant to be a leisurely parkway and not a long on and off ramp for 520.” On her watch, she said, she intends to fight for the Arboretum as the urban oasis it was intended to be, not a place that’s convenient for people to “just zip through.”

[Lower photo: cars queue up eastbound on E. Madison Street at Lake Washington Boulevard to turn into the Arboretum on a late summer afternoon. Many if not most are heading for the 520 on ramp to the Eastside.]

Is there anything nicer than Madison Park beach on a hot summer’s day?

Apparently not. Or perhaps it’s just that our beach’s attractiveness on days like these comes from there being nothing nicer within close proximity. There’s certainly no doubt that this beach of ours is POPULAR. I live four blocks south of the beach, and when it gets so parked up around here that I’m unable to angle my car into a spot in front of my own house, it’s pretty clear that down at the beach the place is packed. That was certainly the story this weekend, and based on my observations both Saturday and Sunday I’d say the beach was at about 92% capacity, at least in the afternoons. There was still enough room to walk from end to end without actually stepping on anyone. But just barely.

And yes, those tanned and toned gay men were on the scene (in their regular spot north of the bathhouse) and the babes that we’ve been hearing so much about were also on view; but there were plenty of families and other regular sorts as well, both in and out of the water.

The diving platform was seeing plenty of action:

As was the pier:

Meanwhile, on the grass it appeared that many people had not been in the water and maybe didn’t intend to go:

This beach is a neighborhood amenity that many of us probably take a bit for granted. Capitol Hill's principal blog refers to the Madison Park beach as the “Capitol Hill Caribbean” and many users who write reviews of our beach—on the website Yelp, for example—rave about the place (well, the beach does rate four stars out of five overall). And for those Madison Parkers who don’t like having all of the commotion down here that a hot summer day brings? Not to worry. It’ll all be over for this year very soon.

[As with almost all photos found on this blog, click to enlarge.]