Stormwater project and streetlight replacements may cause traffic back-ups

Madison Parkers may experience a traffic set back or two this summer while traveling to and from the Park. Two unrelated City utility projects have the potential to slow progress on both Madison Street and Lake Washington Boulevard, though neither is expected to result in major congestion.

The biggest operation by far is Phase II of the Madison Valley Stormwater Project, which will be getting underway in July. As previously reported here, a pipeline will be constructed to collect stormwater from the northwest section of Madison Valley and channel it to a newly built mostly-below-ground tank located near the ball field in Washington Park. Bryan Nicholson, the project engineer for Phase II at Seattle Public Utilities, tells me that the project will begin next month with some excavation work related to the replacement of a major water main along Madison Street. No water outages are anticipated for Madison Park residents.

By late July we may see some traffic impact resulting from site work on the Washington Park end of the project. An access road will be created off of the north side of Madison Street, with the road’s entrance situated about halfway between the Madison Lofts Condos (2914 E. Madison) and Lake Washington Boulevard. On the site map above, which shows the landscape plan for the completed project, the “pedestrian entry” is also the location of the construction access road.

The pipeline itself will be an underground affair, with the impact of above-ground construction expected to be fairly limited—unless you happen to live in Madison Valley near the site of the staging area (shown in blue on the map below) or near one of the eight pipeline shafts. Construction of the pipeline will begin at the Washington Park end (shaft 8) in August.

There will be a lot of “spoil” removed from the pipeline route, which will have to be trucked out of the area. Originally, Lake Washington Boulevard through the Arboretum was designated as a possible truck route. According to Nicholson, it is much more likely that the trucks will exit the Valley by heading up Madison (travelling west) and approach the freeways by going north on 23rd Avenue. For one thing, it would be difficult for the double-long dump trucks to navigate the Arboretum, which is already over-burdened with traffic. A final route has yet to be approved by the City.

Phase II has an 18-month construction schedule, culminating in the fall of 2011. Nicholson reports that traffic along Madison Street should seldom need to be stopped during construction as there is enough width to allow two-way flow, even when construction is occurring along the side. For more information on the Madison Valley Stormwater Project, visit the City’s official site. Questions can be directed to a 24-hour hotline: (206) 455-5345.

The second City utility project with potential traffic impact is also long-term, but far more limited in scope. Over the course of the next year and a half crews will be replacing more than seventy Arboretum streetlights with new light-emitting diode (LED) lights. This project, which began last week, is focused on all of the streetlights along Lake Washington Boulevard, from the entrance at Madison Street on the south end to the entrance at Broadmoor at the north end. Unfortunately, the electrical cable for these lights is located underground and is deteriorating. For this reason, the cable will have to be replaced--in addition to the lights and the light poles--which means there will be boring and trenching operations. Because there is only a two lane road through the Arboretum, on occasion traffic will have to be stopped in one direction while work is underway. Flaggers will be in evidence during the project.

According to Seattle City Light spokesperson Mark VanOss, work will be scheduled to minimize disruption to rush-hour traffic on the Boulevard. This summer’s phase of the project will concentrate on 29 lights from the Broadmoor entrance at E. Foster Island Road to a point 500 feet south of the pedestrian bridge over Lake Washington Boulevard. These replacements should be completed by the end of October, with the work on the remaining 42 lights to begin sometime next year.

[Stormwater graphics courtesy of Seattle Public Utilities.]

Luc to open Thursday

Madison Valley gets another French restaurant this week with the much-heralded opening on May 6 of Luc, owned and operated by the famous Thierry Rautureau, aka “The Chef in the Hat!!!”tm, whose principal claim to fame for many years has been Rover’s, just down the block. Where Rover’s is a very high-end sort of place, the concept for Luc is—well, let’s just say not the same. And by now, I should certainly know the difference.

It’s a difference that was pointed out to me several years ago when my wife and I dined at Rover’s for the first time. While there, it seems I made a bit of a mistake. When Rautureau came over to our table to ask if we were enjoying our meal, I let drop the fact that we were new both to Madison Park and to his restaurant. I told him that we were at Rover’s because we were looking for a really good neighborhood eatery. Bad move. “This is NOT a neighborhood restaurant” he told me in no uncertain terms. “This is a destination restaurant!” He asked where we had lived before. View Ridge, I told him. “Well, you could have driven here from there!”
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And that was pretty much the end of the discussion.

So don’t call Rover’s a neighborhood joint. But I think Rautureau might not mind it if you applied the term to his new venture. This is what he had to say to SeattleDining.com about Luc: “My goal is to have it be a neighborhood anchor, the kind of place where you walk in and find just what you want, whether that’s solid or liquid. I want it to be fun, accessible and warm; a nice, fun place to be. It will be a casual, inexpensive American and French café with a bar. Food will be good, clean and simple. We’ll feature items like boeuf bourguignon, hamburgers and both French and American classic and contemporary food. I won’t be reinventing the wheel; everything will be recognizable."

A neighborhood joint!

It’s even got takeout. Well, after several months of renovation of the old Fast Frame shop location (2800 E. Madison Street.), it looks like things are ready to go (there was a private party there tonight to get things started). Those interested in knowing more about the concept of Luc can check out the details here. The restaurant’s new website isn’t precisely up and running yet, but Luc’s phone number is 325-7442.

Area community center unlikely

The Central District News, a neighboring blog, reported last week that the Seattle School District had received four bids for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School site located at 3201 E. Republican Street. There are a couple of reasons why this story may be of interest to residents of Madison Park, even though the school, which closed in 2007, is a couple blocks south of our community.

For one thing, the Bush School, which is contiguous to the MLK School site, is apparently the top bidder for the property. Although the School’s main buildings are—like the MLK School—in Madison Valley, Bush’s Gracemont Upper Campus actually is located in Washington Park, so I think we can legitimately claim the Bush School as one of our own.

Another bid for the site has been submitted by a group of community activists, Citizens for a Community Center at MLK (CCC), which is the second reason the story could be interesting from the standpoint of Madison Park. Right now there is no community center located anywhere within the area, unless you want to count the Miller Community Center (330 19th Avenue E.) on Capitol Hill, or the Montlake Community Center (1618 E. Calhoun St.) as “within the area.” If the Madison Valley activists have their way, there would be a community center located practically on Madison Park’s doorstep.

However, it looks like it is just not meant to be. The CCC’s bid to purchase the site for $2,400,000 is 36% lower than the Bush School’s $3,750,000 bid. Two other bidders, Hamlin Robinson School (a non-profit private school for children with learning disabilities) and the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, each have lower bids than The Bush School. All of the bidders also provided the school district with proposals for renting the property, with The Bush School offering significantly more than any of the others.

The district, of course, is not obligated to take the highest bid; but given the Seattle Schools’ budget problems, the school board would certainly come in for some justified criticism if it didn’t take the money and run. Additionally, it is not clear that either the CCC or First AME actually have the cash in hand at this time to back up their bids. So it looks as if the idea of a community center for the area may just be one of those pipe dreams you hear about.
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Impact of stormwater project on Madison Street traffic expected to be negligible

For many of us in the Park, I suspect that the ongoing Madison Valley Stormwater Project has been one of those out-of-sight, out-of-mind things. Yes, there is that big billboard that the City installed on Madison Street overlooking the baseball field, but almost all of the actual project construction to date has been outside our normal field of vision. Next summer, however, planned construction will be moving much closer to home; so I decided to investigate how the final phase of the project might impact our neighborhood.

Phase I of the project, now in its final stages, involves the expansion of an above-ground stormwater holding area at 30th Avenue E. and E. John Street. This facility will have the capacity to hold 1.7 million gallons of stormwater during very large storms. In the City’s estimation, however, even with this expansion there will be an insufficient amount of holding capacity to prevent a stormwater surge of the magnitude experienced in 2006. That was the winter in which a "series of extraordinary events" led to the drowning death of audio-book narrator Kate Fleming in the flooded basement of her Madison Valley home.

Hence Phase II of the project, which will create an underground pipeline connecting the E. John Street facility to a newly built stormwater holding tank to be located near the existing baseball field in the Washington Park Arboretum (see graphic above). The pipeline is expected to run along the following route, crossing E. Madison Street at its intersection with Martin Luther King Jr. Way E. and 28th Avenue E.:

Fortunately, the City plans to use trenchless construction for the pipeline, meaning that except for the above-ground shaft locations (blue dots on the graphic above), all of the boring will occur underground. The construction method is shown in this cross-section illustration:

The area around each of the proposed shafts will be impacted by the construction in several ways. At a minimum, there will be noise, congestion, and the temporary loss of some parking spaces in the immediate vicinity. Additionally, work at the shafts will require traffic detours for all or part of the construction period, according to initial assessments. Although planning for Phase II is not completed, at this point the plan is to locate one of the shafts on 28th Avenue E., just to the north of E. Madison Street.

So what about traffic during the construction period on Madison, our neighborhood’s principal thoroughfare? According to project manager Brent Middleswart, we shouldn’t be worried about any restriction in the flow of traffic. Although there will be some early work on the south side of Madison near City People’s, “we will always maintain two-way traffic flow” along the arterial, he told me. Trenchless technology, he noted, will mitigate the need to block Madison during the construction of the pipeline. This is good, since there is really no suitable detour route.

Nevertheless, regular users of E. Madison Street will still see some traffic impact resulting from construction. Debris from the pipeline boring will be trucked out along both E. Madison and 23rd Avenue E., based on currently proposed hauling routes. If approved by the Seattle Department of Transportation, these hauling routes will alleviate the need to truck material through the Arboretum.

Construction on Phase II is likely to begin as early as June 2010, with completion scheduled for the summer of 2011. The total capacity of the integrated stormwater system at completion will be 2.1 million gallons. “Based on modeling results, stormwater would only appear in the Washington Park above-ground holding area during especially large storms like the two in August 2004 and December 2006,” states the Phase II report presented by the City at a community meeting last spring. A current conceptual landscape plan for the impacted area of the Arboretum shows a much-improved park space north of E. Madison Street:

For more information on the NW Diversion and Washington Park Stormwater Storage project, visit the Phase II website. I will be monitoring the progress of project planning and will do a posting if there are significant deviations from what has been outlined above.

[Illustrations courtesy of Seattle Public Utilities. Click to enlarge.]

Rover’s spawns new eatery

This is a little bit off of the Madison Park beat, but in case you missed the story of Rover’s owner Thierry Rautureau’s latest venture, the Capitol Hill Seattle blog has the details (click here). If you are one of Rautureau’s regulars, you’ve probably received an invitation to purchase $1,000 gift certificates to his as-yet-unopened Luc, which will be located next to Rover’s. Opening in early 2010, it’s supposed to have a more casual atmosphere than its stuffier French neighbor (there will be take out!).

You have to give Rautureau credit for novelty. His idea is to finance at least some of the cost of Luc with the proceeds of the pre-opening gift-certificate sales. If you’re ready to invest you may start the process by clicking here.

It could have been much worse

This was the scene at about 9:00 am today at the intersection of E. Madison Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way E., half an hour or so following an accident that left two cars totalled and sent one driver to the hospital with minor injuries. A dump truck hauling rock was headed east down Madison when, according to its driver, the brakes failed. After hitting the two cars, the driver swerved off the street and stopped his vehicle by raming into the brick wall of Madison Cleaners. Neither the driver nor the wall was seriously damaged in the accident, though the truck sure was.

My neighbor Jim Waltz, who covered the story as a cameraman for KIRO-TV, told me that the police administered the mandatory sobriety test to the truck driver, who in an on-camera interview with the station said that he swerved to avoid hitting additional cars and thought the brick wall should do the job of stopping the truck. It did.

Another of my neighbors was a witness to accident. He was sitting at the counter of Essential Bakery looking out the window when he saw the truck coming down the hill at a very very fast rate, he told me. The truck hit a parked car sitting at the curb (with the driver in it), careened through the intersection, hit a car turning into the Madison Cleaners parking lot, and then smashed into the wall. From his vantage point it did not seem to be a controlled crash. More of an out-of-control smashup.

Thanks to Barbie Hull of Barbie Hull Photography for the great shots:

Madison Park makes top-20 ranking

I’m not sure that this can be considered a particularly noteworthy honor, but Madison Park is ranked Number 20 on Seattle Magazine’s recent list of Seattle’s 60 best neighborhoods. “Madison Park enclave Broadmoor,” however, makes the list at Number 8, just behind Madison Valley, at Number 7. The list is highly subjective, and there appears to be no obvious method to the magazine’s madness in creating its rankings. There are multiple paragraphs detailing the source of information for the various categories used in creating the list, but there is no explanation of how these categories were weighted.

Given the magazine’s stated criteria concerning housing affordability as the “key to continued dynamic growth in our area,” it is interesting that Broadmoor (with its supposed $2,009,000 median house price) ranked so high, while Madison Park as a whole (with its stated $792,500 median house price) was so far down the list. I guess it’s just that Broadmoor is eminently affordable for the wealthy, while the rest of the Park is considered pricey for the less wealthy.

Or maybe the magazine places high value in its belief that the commutes to downtown Seattle and to Redmond (two of the ranking criteria) are significantly shorter for people in Broadmoor than for the rest of Madison Park. (Are are we really five minutes further away from Redmond; and if so, do very many of us care?) These are the only two categories in which Broadmoor ranked higher, unless you want to count the fact that $2+ million gets you more bedrooms and bathrooms per median house than $792,500 does. Crimes per resident, park acreage, and percentage of fourth graders passing the WASL were the other criteria for the rankings. Oh, and for some reason, the appreciation (or not) of median house values from 2007-2008 was an important element. (Madison Valley was down 1%, Broadmoor was up 1% and Madison Park was up 4%).

Personally, I suspect that Seattle Magazine’s staff voted on their favorite neighborhoods in order to create the list. The magazine certainly does not seem to be particularly aware of Madison Park. In the “Neighborhoods” section of the magazine’s website, for example, the “Madison Park/Madrona” webpage devotes 200 words to describing the pleasures of Madrona, but there’s not a single word about Madison Park. This didn’t help Madrona in the listings, however, as it was ranked Number 33. Leschi, on the other hand, barely made the list at Number 60, just below Judkins Park! Really?

Frankly, I think the list is screwy. However, for those who are interested but unwilling to actually buy the August issue of the magazine, here’s the top ten list: Queen Anne, View Ridge, Alki/Admiral, Phinney Ridge, Magnolia, Delridge, Madison Valley, Broadmoor, Capitol Hill, and Roosevelt. The Seattle and suburban Seattle neighborhood rankings are not available on the seattlemag.com website.

[Sour-Grapes Disclosure: My impression of Seattle Magazine’s neighborhood rankings is in no way influenced by the fact that a story on best neighborhood blogs in the same issue of the magazine did not list Madison Park Blogger as among “the cream of the crop.” Actually, this blog was not mentioned in any context, but neither was the Central District News, which certainly deserved comment.]

Free truffles for everyone!

In the apparent belief that no neighborhood can have too many chocolate shops, Suess Chocolates & Pastries will open its doors in Madison Valley (2909-B East Madison) on May 1, just down the street from the popular Oh! Chocolate, located in Madison Court. But whereas Oh! Chocolate has a French take on the subject, Suess (pronounced zoose) will specialize in German chocolates, pastries, and coffee.

The name means “sweet” in German, and the owners (Dennis Haupt, David Hua and Karl Kim) say they intend to create a family-friendly atmosphere in their shop. According to their Facebook page, they are “committed to bringing back the fun in all things chocolate through interactive chocolate making for everyone big and small.” All chocolates and pastries will be made on site, they say; and there will also be free wireless for those who choose to hang around and soak in the chocolate atmosphere. Classes in hands-on chocolate making will be offered for both adults and children.

The party begins on May Day (Friday) at 9:00, with free truffles promised. Suess is located by Café Flora, next to Missi Lu. Store hours are Tuesday-Sunday, 9am – 7pm. For details check out their website: http://www.suesschocolates.com/.

[Photo courtesy of Suess Chocolates via their Facebook page.]