January 2008

The original Ballard city plan

By Kay F. Reinartz

The past two years Ballard has experienced a substantial amount of change in its streetscapes. Like it or not the physical appearance of the community is changing.

Long-term Ballard residents, including your historian, regret the six and eight story buildings going up on Leary Way (originally Leary Ave.), 24th Northwest (originally 4th Avenue West) and other streets. The current battle over keeping the old Mannings Restaurant, a.k.a.

Editor's Note: This letter was sent to George D. Bartell, CEO of Bartells Drugs with a copy to this newspaper.

Dear Mr. Bartell:

I recently learned that you are thinking about moving your store from downtown Ballard to the new building planned for the old Denny's site on 15th Avenue. Please don't.

I understand that you are short of parking and that you'd like a bigger store. I'd like you to have more parking and a bigger store, too, but I'd like you to have it right where you are, and where you've been since the 1940's.

For many things in life, education brings appreciation. The more we know about Ballard's Manning's/Denny's building, the better we can appreciate it.

Thank you, Ballard News Tribune, for the thoughtful discussion about the landmark process and whether the building deserves landmark status. The debate so far has neglected one significant fact for Ballardites - specifically that the building honors Viking architectural tradition.

Changing face of Ballard

By Maureen Kearney

Ballard. A separate city until it was annexed by Seattle in 1907. Originally, Ballard was settled by Scandinavian mill workers, boat builders, and fishermen.

Ballard is where my husband, children and I lived when we moved from the East Coast in 1978. We rented a little apartment in a house on 59th Street owned by a Ballarite, Mr. Kapp who also owned a filling station on 24th Street near Market.

NO: 07-4-06547-1SEA

PROBATE NOTICE TO CREDITORS

RCW 11.40.030

In the matter of the estate of:

KENNETH P. GRONVOLD,

Deceased.

Construction will begin this year on Ballard's first hotel, which the city planning department approved to be built on land zoned for industrial businesses.

The project, a 170-room, six-story Silver Cloud hotel, was approved with a number of conditions attached, such as the hotel must serve primarily people who work in the industries that it will surround.

The hotel will be built on property adjoining the site of the old Yankee Grill restaurant, along Shilshole Avenue Northwest in the Ballard Interbay Northend Manufacturing and Industrial Center, one of two industry-prese

New signs are popping up around the city that read "Alaskan Way Viaduct closed.

The second meeting of the Alaskan Way Viaduct Stakeholders Advisory Committee is 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 24 in the Bertha Landes Room in City Hall, 600 Fourth Avenue. The meeting is open to the public.

See profile of Ballard member Mary Hurley, Page 8.

In their monthly meetings, members of the committee will listen to a series of proposals on what will replace the viaduct, to be razed by the state in 2012 - either a new raised expressway, a cut-and-cover or a bored tunnel, surface streets with more transit, or even a cable bridge.

The franchise owner of the Denny's restaurant, which for 23 years occupied the building now up for landmark status with the city of Seattle, said it wants to re-open at the popular Ballard diner site, or maybe another site here.

DWO, a franchise company based in La Palma, Calif., purchased the Denny's at the northwest corner of15th and Market Street in June, but had to shutter in September to make way for a planned mixed-use development.

Gene Erdman, director of human resources for DWO, contacted the News-Tribune early Monday, Jan.

Ballard High School lost a good friend when Barbara McFarland Treece passed away from natural causes on Dec. 22.

As a key member of the Ballard High School Foundation, foundation members gathered recently to talk about Treece and the contributions she made to her old school. She graduated in the Class of 1955.

Nine years ago, Treece joined the Ballard High School Foundation and had been the group's secretary for the last three years.

Treece took on many projects for the foundation. "Nothing was too big or too small.