Changes are coming to Fremont - changes better referred to as improvements.
The Seattle Public Library will reopen our dearly missed Fremont Library on April 16, after an extensive remodel.
Next door, we'll finish the park now that our local Starbucks has adopted it. Their patronage of Ernst Park includes a $10,000 grant from the 2005 Starbucks Neighborhood Parks Program.
Artists (members of the Fremont Arts Council) will design a fence to complete the original Seattle parks plan.
Area folks also hope to submit two others - Peak Park and the Ship Canal Park - for improvement money under this generous program.
Meanwhile, long-awaited and much-needed work on the approaches to the Fremont Bridge will begin after this year's Fremont Fair and Solstice Parade. The approaches - the road from 34th Street to the Westlake/Nickerson/Dexter intersection on the other side, not including the actual bridge - must be replaced.
Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and community volunteers spent endless months finding ways to minimize construction impacts. In anticipation, SDOT worked with a citizens advisory group on circulation, signalization and channelization (city-speak for fixing street signs.)
This year, we'll see new street lights in downtown Fremont, as well as on Bridge Way at the George Washington Memorial Bridge (the "Aurora Bridge" to the rest of us). We also get improved turn lanes, stop signs, one-way streets and directional signals - and, most important to me, sidewalks!
I'm thrilled to report the seismic retrofit of the George Washington Memorial (G.W.M.) Bridge (the Washington State Department of Transportation won't let me call it "Aurora") nears completion.
For well more than a year, they've had to close the sidewalk at 34th and Aurora, next to History House, to install isolation bearings into the bridge posts.
While those of us cowering underneath the huge structure picture it perched on ball bearings, I'm told they're more like "a ball in socket" and intended to help the bridge "avoid catastrophic failure," according to Douglas Brown, at WSDOT.
One more month of work remains on the expansion joints, but they've finished blocking my sidewalk. Thank you.
Chris Chapman, from Jim Dandy Sewer Service, also promises they'll get out of the way of pedestrians and cars very soon. They poked big holes in Fremont Avenue, between 35th and 36th streets, to replace a side sewer.
Lisa Perry, of Ophelia's Books, watched the work from her store and praised Jim Dandy for the company's efforts to mitigate the noise and mess. But it still scares her shop cats - one of whom refuses to come out until the work is done!
Over the past winter, the Fremont Chamber of Commerce found some replacement, but temporary, administrative help in the form of Sarah Nelsen.
Sarah recently moved the chamber's office to a new shared space in the City of Seattle Neighborhood Service Center at 900 North 34th Street, under the G.W.M. Bridge ("Aurora"), where she'll keep company Antoinette Meier, our service-center coordinator.
Also, the tireless chamber volunteers (most notably John Nordstrand) and Sarah have finished the 2005 edition of the incredibly popular Fremont Walking Guide.
Hiring administrative help appeals to most organizations, but such a step involves risk as well. Rumors that the Fremont Arts Council finally decided to take the plunge with an executive director (or some creative variation of same) remain entirely false, so far.
However, it has hired the parade director for 2005. Monica Miller agreed to play ringleader for the always amazing Solstice Parade.
She hopes you'll consider participating in, or at least attending, one of its interesting and informative workshops. To learn more, you can contact Monica, at 547-7400.
Volunteers from the Fremont Neighborhood Council and community wide finished their work on the Residential Parking Zone design committee. They agreed to a set of restrictions for the potential parking zone in residential areas of Fremont.
Now the process moves to the city for approval before those who live in the af[[In-content Ad]]
