(This will appear in the 10/7/09 Capitol Hill Times.)

•

I just signed a contract with Wilderness Press to produce a walking guide to Seattle.

Of course, Capitol Hill and First Hill will be major locales in it.

After all, The Hill is one of America’s finest examples of a walkable neighborhood. You’ve got residences (in a variety of styles and price points), shopping, dining, entertainment, schools, churches, parks, medical facilities and more, all within a healthy stroll along sidewalked, tree-lined, lighted streets. Add the Hill’s adjacency to downtown and you’ve got the state’s biggest concentration of jobs, major stores, and tourist/scenic attractions.

The Hill also has extensive bus transit, both within the neighborhood and out to downtown, the UW, and the south end. (And there’ll be a light rail station on Broadway sometime in the next decade.)

Civic advocates, such as the Seattle-based Feet First, have long touted the many benefits of walkable neighborhoods. Such places foster a greater sense of community, bringing people into face-to-face interaction even if they don’t live or work in the exact same building. They save on energy and other natural resources.

And they offer more intangible benefits as well. Neighborhoods with a lot of foot traffic are simply more “alive” than places where everybody’s stuck inside either a building or a vehicle.

So it’s natural to find officials in other localities trying to figure out how to add the magic of walkability (and bikeability) to what have heretofore been car-dependent suburbs.

One local example: “The Landing In Renton.”

Out by the Boeing and Kenworth factories, where Cirque de Soleil used to be, and where Clay Bennett once claimed he wanted to put up a new sports arena for just a gazillion taxpayer bucks, a different kind of suburban district is forming.

Some of its retail blocks (particularly the Target and the Fry’s electronics superstore) are built in traditional strip-mall style, with storefront entrances recessed behind giant moats of parking.

But other blocks, including a “main street” intersection, are built direct to the curb, with storefronts opening straight onto real sidewalks.

There’s also a block-long apartment monstrosity, also built to the curb, with indoor/underground parking. A second apartment complex of this type is currently under construction, despite the nationwide building slump.

The Landing, in its current form, is a good start. But it’s not enough. Sidewalks, by themselves, do not a neighborhood make. The Landing’s developers know this. On their web site, they promise that by the time the whole project’s done, it’ll be a real pedestrian-friendly place. “Wide, vibrant sidewalks—lined with lively cafes, dynamic retail shops and cozy residential buildings—will encourage pedestrians to stroll throughout the varied streets. A collection of restaurants surrounding a strong retail core will create a venue vibrant enough to be a year-round destination.”

Until then, The Landing might be a nice place to shop, but it’s not quite the stuff for a walking-tour book. It’s a collection of your basic suburban strip-mall and big-box chains, designed and arranged a little differently.

Even when The Landing is complete, it’ll be something manufactured from scratch, representing what one developer/landlord believes are the shops and businesses and housing-stock types a neighborhood needs.

But traditional urban neighborhoods like Capitol Hill didn’t just grow organically either. They were planned and platted and nurtured by zoning laws. Much of Seattle’s urban cityscape was essentially built up from scratch in relatively short timeframes (from a few years to a few decades). Every building and block in our town has evolved since it was built, but they all were built by humans.

Places like Capitol Hill can be built again. Perhaps not with the same materials (those old houses and apartments used a lot of no-longer-cheap ingredients, including labor), but with the same sense of scale and vibrancy. Will they?

•

Back to the walking-tours book:

I already know plenty of spots on Capitol Hill to send the book’s readers to—Volunteer and Anderson parks, Lakeview Cemetery, 15th Avenue, Broadway, Pike/Pine, St. Mark’s, the mansions. And on First Hill there’s always the SU campus, the Stimpson-Green Mansion, St. James, the Frye Art Museum.

Where else should I send the book-buying walkers?

Let me know at walking@miscmedia.com.

…may be on pause, but that’s not stopping landowners from greasing the legal wheels in hopes of future development projects. Just last week, the City said owners of the former Bon Marche livery stables on Western could go ahead and tear down the 101-year-old clapboard structure, should they ever choose to do so.

Besides being a relic of the horse-drawn-delivery days, and one of the last buildings its age remaining in greater downtown, it’s also one of Belltown’s last buildings containing real artist spaces. (Note: On this Web site, architectural offices are not considered to be “artist spaces.”) It was in that building that I spent much of the 1994-95 winter and spring in Art Chantry’s former graphic design studio, assembling my book Loser.

I’m on a marathon temp job this week and next. Until the 24th of this month, I’m basically doing little but working, commuting, sleeping, and perhaps eating. Expect few if any posts during this time.

Instead, consider a peek at writer-composer Igor Keller’s new blog, Hideous Belltown. Keller claims to have just recently noticed that a lot of Seattle’s artificially flat neighborhood “is downright hideously ugly.”

Well, it always was such, ever since Denny Hill was removed early last century and the resulting lowland became downtown’s low-rent district. It became a place of printing plants, car lots, union halls, social service agencies, warehouses, storefront taverns, and a few stoic lo-rise apartments and hotels.

Belltown was the unassuming generic cityscape in between the Space Needle and the downtown towers. It was what the Monorail helped you bypass between downtown shopping and Seattle Center entertainment. It was a relative nothing, in the middle of everything.

Which is precisely what made Belltown so attractive to artists and musicians in the 1980s and early 1990s.

It was a place of (relatively) cheap rents, funky loft spaces, dive bars, and endless possibilities.

Of course, real estate developers also saw the possibilities.

After a few starts and stops, successive mayoral administrations succeeded in pushing Belltown as a hi-rise residential mecca.

And, either in spite or because of the gentle nudges of city zoning policies, the neighborhood’s big new buildings were generally just as homely as the small old buildings they replaced.

Which, of course, is part of the area’s enduring charm. Seriously.

Yr. humble scribe attended two private events in Belltown on Tuesday.

In the morning, the Escala condo project (Seattle’s last still-under-construction residential highrise) held a “topping off” ceremony on its roof, 31 floors above Fourth Avenue. A city official was there to praise the project as a key component in Mayor Nickels’s “center city strategy.” (Since when did we start calling our downtown “center city” anyway? Sounds like Norm Rice’s failed attempt to rebrand the waterfront as a “harborfront.”)

The ceremony was followed by a champagne toast down in the project’s sales office nearby. Two scale models of the finished building showed it as a shining beacon of quality living. A chart on one wall listed one third of the project’s 270-some units as sold. Another third are currently available. The rest are on hold, withdrawn from the market pending an upturn in conditions.

The second big event came that evening at the Crocodile. It was an invite-only bash honoring the 50th birthday of Kim Warnick, the legendary Fastbacks/Visqueen singer-bassist. The joint was packed with folks who’ve loved Warnick and her work. An all-star lineup of Seattle musicians paid tribute to her on stage.

Here’s the climactic moment of the evening, with Warnick joining in with her ol’ band members Kurt Bloch, Lulu Gargiulo, and Mike Musburger.

And here are more musical moments from the evening.

The contrast between that scene and the Escala fete reminded me of what Jonathan Raban said about NYC as a city of “street people” and “sky people.”

In his definition, “street people” weren’t just those who lived ON the streets but also those who walk and converse and meet friends on the sidewalks, who live in the street-level milieu of bars and shops and cafes.

The “sky people” of NY are those for whom, as Fran Lebowitz described it, “outside” is what’s in between the building you’re in and the building you’re going to. Sky people live in the rarified air of high rises, have household staffs to shop for them, and socialize at private clubs and exclusive bistros. The Escala will have a private club, the first new one in town in 20 years (I believe since the Columbia Tower Club).

Times have been tough for street-level citizens for several years.

Now, they’re becoming tough for sky people as well.

The thing is, we who live close to the ground know how to survive. And to have a helluva good time while doing so.

…if you have a perversely cynical definition of “fun.” As more and more homeowners face foreclosure, condo and townhome homeowner associations could go bust. The result could be a “death spiral” of collapsing home values.

The City of Seattle might build a new jail on the current Aurora Avenue site of the beloved Puetz Golf driving range.

• “Skitch”: Once, it was the name of Johnny Carson’s first bandleader. Now, it’s a dangerous X-treme sports stunt.
• The historic building that houses HistoryLink is getting upscaled, beyond the fiscal reach of many of its current tenants.
• One group’s plan to help solve the debate over a new 520 bridge: Put an on-ramp where the Museum of History and Industry is now.
• The NY Times discovers one small slice of Boeing’s employee-club culture. Wait ’til they discover the Boeing employees’ psychic fair…
• Now available to the future-conscious who’ll become part of the past: “Eco-friendly burial options.”

…could possibly resist the clarion call of Obamamania? Douglas County, that’s who.

In other nooze:

• As you probably don’t recall, the reason WashState has both caucuses and primaries is because Bush pere’s people cried foul after Pat Robertson’s people swamped our ‘88 GOP caucuses. This time, it’s Huckabee’s people crying foul.
• Your Museum of Flight: Singlehandedly bringing back the stewardess fetish.
• Note to KEXP main man John Richards: You can host a local Seattle show, or you can move to NYC. Choose one.
• Developers’ plans for the part of First United Methodist that won’t be saved: One of them angular, reflective glass towers you see in 60 Minutes segments about emerging Far Eastern capitals.
• Doesn’t anybody wanna buy Getty Images?
• Actual headline (for the print version of this story): “How far will Microsoft go to overcome Yahoo’s rejection?” Some handy tips: Chocolate, self-esteem classes, regular gym workouts, a ‘pity party’ with friends, a nice cry, then get on with your own life.

…on the Obama speech soon. You can read about Clinton’s Tacoma event at Horse’s Ass. In other nooze:

• You won’t get to shake it like a Polaroid picture much longer. The company’s shutting down production of instant-film cameras, and will stop selling the film next year. A moment of silence for the billions of instances of immediate gratification past.
• That pitching ace the Ms were out for? Signed.
• Golf’s U.S. Open is coming to Tacoma (at a public course!) in 2015.
• A Seattle police officer has been fired after a particularly heinous abuse incident, involving an underage suspect and a patrol-car partition.
• All three of Washington’s major mountain passes are closed at the same time.
• The Mountaineers Building (nee the Norway Center) on Lower Queen Anne: Yep, it’s been sold. Yep, it’ll be replaced by yet another six stories of mixed-use.

• Congress passes BushCo’s economic stimulus. O, wouldst that we had an economy that didn’t so desperately require incessant stimulation. And yes, some commentators have already used the dirty-joke possibilities inherent within that.
• Are biofuels actually worse, emissions-wise, than petroleum products?
• On the other hand, it is possible to run an entire fringe theater production on human energy, including the lights.
• Some dude from the Natl. Assoc. of Realtors claims Seattle area housing prices may be “too low.”
• Sen. Clinton in Seattle: “…If we get our focus right in America there is no stopping us.”
• Sen. Obama in Seattle: Later today. (He’s just been endorsed by Gov. Gregoire.)
• Sen. McCain in Seattle: That’ll be $2,300 to get in.
• Gov. Gregoire: Our economy’s still fab.
• Gangs are setting up shop in the exurbs, AKA meth-lab country. Included in the linked story: “An all-white chapter of the Black Gangster Disciples is working the Bothell area.”
• Another day, another ferry out of service.
• A load of newly minted Canadian quarters got spilled in a truck accident. These days, that’s real money.