Back in the city

Been here 2 days - how can I be so not caught up?

Photographed on a morning walk on nearby Eastlake Ave. Much cooler temperature (thank goodness) and that glorious Seattle/water-droplets-in-the-air-but-not-rain!

My “onestreet".

The proposition for this site including these 2 houses on a busy thoroughfare was for 113 “congregate” bed-bath units (none with its own kitchen and with only two undersized shared kitchens) on a site that would allow no more than 14 apartments. Eastlake Community Council did it’s best to fight this, but the $20K donations did not nearly keep up with the legal costs. The best the neighborhood could get without a stronger law, was 1)to convert five bed-bath units to apartments by adding their own kitchens, 2)convert 4 bed-bath units to shared kitchens, including one of the two originally proposed so each floor will have a kitchen except the alley level floor which has a “wet bar’.(no stove) 3)provide tenants 3 !!!! covered parking spaces in the building across the street.4) provide an on-street loading zone and 5) move mailboxes from the 4th floor (back alley) to the first floor. Not exactly earthshaking! No more kitchens and no on- site parking. ECC is pressing the city council for legislative changes to discourage boarding houses, redefining micro housing as being efficiency apartments (minimum 220 sq. ft. average, each with a kitchen) and to allow each dwelling only one restricted parking zone permit. ECC would hope that all “congregate housing” be banned from Eastlake area. The fight to be continued, but I thought I’d record the “before” now that I’m back in the city with all it’s different sort of problems…it’s possible this could be the last of its kind… This site looks the same as pre-summer except for more graffiti. This info came from the newest Eastlake newspaper…
But I couldn’t come up with a good haiku tonight.. maybe later…