All about the West Seattle neighborhood around Beach Drive
Update: Here’s another photo provided by the home owner showing two prowlers.
At 5:18 am this morning, a neighbor’s Ring (video system) caught a potential prowler appearing search for hidden keys to gain access to the home just off Beach Drive on Jacobsen Road.
You can view the video here. If you recognize this person, please call 9-1-1.
The intrepid reporter, Scupper, and I attended the meeting tonight. We lived streamed the meeting, as much as our internet connection would allow, on Facebook. For those of you not on Facebook, you can check out the video here.
Overall I thought the meeting went well. It was a nice turnout of neighbors despite no wine or cheese being served 😉 Seriously, great questions were asked and provided.
Garrett Farrell invites you to contact him directly with any questions or concerns:
Phone:(206) 233-7921
Email:Garrett.Farrell@seattle.gov
The Seattle Parks Department will continue to update their website: http://www.seattle.gov/parks/find/parks/emma-schmitz-memorial-overlook
From Nextdoor.com, printed with permission:
“We had the police in our yard this morning at 4:40 am. We live on the 6000 block of Beach Drive. They arrested a man was coming out of our beach house. Evidently he had been trying to break in to several houses north of us and one had a ring doorbell. That provided a picture of the dude. The scary part was that he had a 10 inch butcher knife. We have a ring doorbell, but I think we are going to invest in more surveillance equipment!”
Back in late April, neighbors on 4700 block of Beach Drive found a man walking along the private bulkhead coming from the south (quite a ways from public beach access) with a full back pack. This was also reported to the police.
Stay safe, Neighbors!
A crew from the City of Seattle are out this morning measuring the newly reinstalled speed bumps along the 4700 block of Beach Drive. I tried to talk to one of the gentlemen who seemed to be supervising, however he was less than chatty. He told me the group is there to measure “tolerances”. As I was not able to pry another word out of him, I’m assuming this was to see if if the humps can be raised higher while allowing emergency vehicles to “tolerate” the bumps.
I told him that the neighbors would really like to see more done on this stretch of Beach Drive as it’s often difficult to cross the street and unsafe with how some drivers use it as a freeway to and from Alki. I pretty much just received a blank stare. Maybe next time I’ll bring them coffee. 😉
A few days ago, KOMO4 news addressed the speed cushions and how the neighborhood is less than impressed with the effectiveness. It’s my guess that their coverage is what dragged the City back to the bumps.
Bumps, humps or cushions, it doesn’t matter to me what the term is, we need more done to stop the speeding and the passing that is constantly taking place in our neighborhood. Two nights ago, while walking our dogs, a neighbor and I witnessed two cars passing two cars flying north on Beach Drive. If someone would have been trying to cross the street, they would have had nowhere to run to get out of the way.
I hope that it doesn’t take a serious accident to have the City take real action to make Beach Drive a safer road for all of us. I don’t think that raising the cushions an inch is going to help deter the speeders – especially when they just scoot to the center of the road where the slope is lower (as it’s intentionally designed for emergency vehicles).
Is it time for our neighborhood to create a community organization to address issues like this?
The long awaited speed bumps are being installed along Beach Drive between SW Angeline and Beach Drive Terrace SW.
We can all take a deep breath and relax with total faith knowing that these traffic calming improvements are going to slow down the speeders.
Or will they? They don’t appear to be enough to slow down a Suburu appearing to go the speed limit prior to flying over the bumps. So why are the bumps so minute?
Beach Drive is considered a main road and the new asphalt bumps are apparently as high as they are allowed for emergency vehicles.
We’ll see if the speed bumps provides Beach Drive any calm with the increased summer time speedy cruisers.
There was an emergency call out yesterday afternoon at Me Kwa Mooks Park. Scupper and I decided to check it out and discovered that a young man had a seizure. The response was significant with a fire ladder truck, police and a “paddy wagon” due to the type of call that required at least seven to respond.
We didn’t know what to expect as we approached the park. The park and all along Beach Drive is busier with the warmer weather and there are more people who are camping along the street. Scupper and I said nothing as we approached the scene passing people who were completely enjoying their Sunday afternoon picnicking with friends, reading their books and soaking in the sun.
When we reached the scene, a young man was laying motionless on the park lawn near the sidewalk. The police and firemen were around him. We were told that he “suffered a seizure”.
Everyone enjoying the park seemed oblivious by the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles parked along the park. Scupper and I starting walking back home as an ambulance headed back toward the park.
It wasn’t until we got home that we talked about how surreal the whole seen was. Have we become so used to extreme things happening, whether it’s crime, reckless drivers, homelessness, drugs OD’s or mental health issues that we’re completely unfazed? Were people in the park just trying to mind their own business or is this just another day in the park?
P.S. After getting back home, while we were taking the garbage out to the curb, we could hear someone screaming obscenities from the park for several minutes. No gun shots…thankfully!
Hubby, aka the Intrepid Reporter Scupper, and I were on a walk tonight as I was trying to tell him about how the City of Seattle has decided to increase police patrols in seven neighborhoods for pre-summer… and ALKI is not one of them!
As we are walking home, we see a red Ford Mustang flying south down Beach Drive passing another car. We continue our walk to find a bicyclist who was hit by a glass bottle tossed by the window of the Mustang. She reported this to the police.
I am stunned that Seattle would not include Alki on the list of places to patrol pre-summer and I am even more stunned that Seattle would select neighborhoods. Why not increase Patrol everywhere?
We have been keeping an eye on our mobile aps, WindAlert and PredictWind, which are both indicating that we could be in for quite a storm tomorrow morning. This, of course, coincides with very high tides of 12.8 feet at 7:00 am tomorrow morning.
Check out the tides predicted for tomorrow and how it potentially pairs with the wind forecast.
Here is the Puget Sound and Hood Canal Marine Forecast (last updated at 2:41 am):
FRI S wind 20 to 30 kt. Wind waves 3 to 5 ft. A chance of rain in the morning then rain likely in the afternoon.
FRI NIGHT S wind 15 to 25 kt easing to 5 to 15 kt after midnight. Wind waves 2 to 4 ft subsiding to 2 ft or less after midnight.
If this forecast holds, we think there’s a strong potential that we could experience waves slosh over our bulkhead… especially if the wind direction leans to the southwest.
Last but not least, we’ve used a picture of a howling golden retriever for our “barking dog” reports warning of potential weather issues. We thought you might like to see our retriever in action.
Hitch dedicates this song to his favorite gal, Indie.
From the City of Seattle:
Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) invites the community to provide input on the preliminary design for the Lowman Beach Park seawall project. Please join us at the upcoming public meeting on Thursday, February 28, 2019 from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at The Kenney, 7125 Fauntleroy Way SW.
Lowman Beach Park is a neighborhood park on the water located north of Lincoln Park at 7017 Beach Dr. SW. The Lowman Beach Park seawall is failing and needs to be removed. As visitors to the park have seen, the existing seawall is slowly falling over and sliding towards the water. It is SPR’s goal to remove the remaining seawall and continue the shoreline restoration work that began when the south half of the seawall failed in the mid-1990s.
In May 2017, together with Environmental Science Associates (ESA), the design consultant for the project, we presented design options to the community. We hired ESA as the design consultant to continue the design process that began with the feasibility study. The design will take into consideration both the habitat benefits of the seawall removal and the coastal engineering ramifications of that seawall removal. Given the design constraints for the project, the existing tennis court will be removed. A remnant of Pelly Creek that currently flows under the seawall will be daylighted as part of the project.
For more information, please visit https://www.seattle.gov/parks/find/parks/lowman-beach-park. If you have questions about the project, or if you need an interpreter or accommodations please contact David Graves, SPR Strategic Advisor, at david.graves@seattle.gov or 206-684-7048.
Thanks to the thoughtful neighbor who put up this sign at the top of Jacobson. 
The downed tree is now a neatly stacked pile of nice sized firewood along Jacobson…just look for the sawdust for the free firewood.
PS: Scupper says Jacobson Road is pretty much bare and wet.
Photo Credit: Scupper
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