From Golden Gardens Park in Ballard to the northern shores of Lake Washington and beyond, walkers, joggers, skaters and bicyclists travel on a series of trail sections maintained by both the city's parks and transportation departments.
In Ballard, the trial begins at Golden Gardens Park, follow street traffic along Salmon Bay, linking up with a separate paved trail near the Fred Meyer store on Northwest 45th Street and continuing to Fremont and beyond.
Bergen Place Park in downtown Ballard is located in the heart of the business district on the triangular site between Leary Avenue, 22nd Avenue NW, and Market Street.
Redesigned in 2004, benches and trees line the open square. The park is home to Artist Jenn Lee Dixon's "Witness Trees" and a community information kiosk.
Bergen Place was named for Bergen, Norway, one of Seattle's International Sister Cities.
Ballard Playfield, adjacent to Ballard Community Center and Adams Elementary School, is a multi-purpose playfield featuring a children's play area and a soccer/baseball/softball field.
Ballard Commons Park opened to the public in 2005 and features a skate bowl, water feature, engaging public art, relaxing seating areas and lawns and ADA accessible walkways. The park forms part of a new municipal center in Ballard, with a Seattle Public Library branch and Neighborhood Service Center located across the street in an award-winning building that also opened in 2005.
The dedication of Baker Park in 1997 culminated years of work by community members to transform the park, acquired with Open Space Bond Program "opportunity fund" dollars, into a little gem of a park in an underserved part of the city. The park complements the curriculum of neighborhood daycare and after-school programs.
Baker Park has a small play area with wood chips, a pedestrian path that meanders through it, and Totem Pole made from a monkey puzzle tree.
The Seattle Department of Planning and Development last night presented to the public a plan they said could improve the quality of townhouses without adding substantial costs, while also streamlining the design process and addressing common problems.
Currently, most townhouses do not undergo design review, unless the applicant volunteers for administrative review in order to seek departures from city land use code development standards. The city says this has created townhome developments that are poorly designed and or do not fit in with the character of the neighborhoods.
Following a directive last summer from Mayor Greg Nickels, who proposed new regulations for building townhouses, the department said the more streamlined version of the current Administrative Design Review could reduce permit process time and costs associated with it while still addressing design issues, said Geoff Wentlandt, senior planning and development specialist for the planning department.
Nickels' proposal for new regulations for building townhouses aims to ease concerns to those who oppose so-called cookie cutter town homes.
With one match remaining, the Ballard High School soccer team is flying high. The team beat Garfield 3-2 May 1 and has only lost two of its last nine matches.
Greg Testa put the Beavers on the board in the 14th minute with a goal off a Nick Christie assist. Five minutes later, Kentaro Bowzewski supplied the ball to Balin Larson for another Ballard goal.
Garfield evened the match in the second half, but Bowzewski got a late goal of his own to give the Beavers the win.
It was Ballard's highest-scoring match of the season.
In the past five matches, Testa has scored four goals and Larson and Bowzewski have two apiece.
The team is at 6-5-2 overall and 4-4-2 in the conference. The Beavers have won five and tied one of their last eight matches.
Ballard's final match is against Eastlake at 7:30 p.m., May 5 at Eastlake High School.
Reopening for the season, Kitty Harbor, a cat and kitten rescue facility on Harbor Avenue just north of the Spokane Bridge, started adopting Saturday, May 2 when more than 25 cat-lovers waited for the front door to open.
More than 20 cats and kittens were adopted by the day's end.
More adoptable cats seem to be coming through the front door these days as a result of the recession, according to owner Dylen Kosbab, a West Seattle resident.
"It's a sign of the economy," she said. "More people are losing their homes because they can't keep up with their mortgages, and they can't keep their pets if they move into a car or move in with relatives. This is what we deal with in rescue, a lot of situations with people losing their pets under duress."
Northwest Multiple Listing Service members reported pending sales for April surged 11.4 percent compared to twelve months ago – and rose 21.3 percent from March, according to a press release from the service.
Brokers reported 6,918 pending sales during April across the 19 counties that make up the Northwest MLS market area. That’s up from the year-ago total of 6,208, and the March figure of 5,701 pending sales (offers made and accepted, but not yet closed).
For the four-county Puget Sound area (King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish), brokers notched 5,372 pending sales, the highest total since August 2007 and a jump of 26 percent from March.
Inventory is shrinking and prices are showing some signs of stabilizing, according to data in the latest report from Northwest MLS. The median price for last month’s closed sales of single family homes and condominiums area-wide was $270,000. That matched the figure for March, but still lagged prices of a year ago (down 12.9 percent).
The Ballard High School softball team jumped out to an early 2-0 lead against Roosevelt May 4 but couldn't hold on, losing its 10th game in a row.
The Beavers lead 2-0 at the end of the first inning, but by the end of the sixth, Roosevelt had a 3-2 advantage. Roosevelt iced the game with four more runs in the top of the seventh for a 7-2 victory.
Ballard showed an improved performance against Roosevelt, a team that had beat the Beavers 10-0 twice this season.
Kyra Calnan went one-for three for the Beavers with two RBIs, and Sophie Overlock-Pauley went two-for-four with a double and one run scored.
Overlock-Pauley pitched all seven innings and struck out seven.
Ballard matched Roosevelt with five hits in the game, but the Beavers also committed five errors.
Ballard (1-13 overall, 1-12 conference) plays Bothell at 4:30 p.m., May 6 at Bothell. Bothell won the teams' last meeting 9-4 May 1.
