EDITOR'S NOTE: The date of this public event is actually Saturday, March 14. We apologize for any confusion.

Remember the old Hill Ward property in Lakewood? The creepy, graffiti-scrawled, crumbling ruins at Fort Steilacoom Park was demolished once and for all a year ago.

On Saturday, Lakewood will celebrate the transformation of the Hill Ward from one-time Western State Hospital prison farm dormitory, to long-time public nuisance, to a landscaped community setting overlooking Waughop Lake.

The city, county and the state contributed more than $693,000 to restore the property.

The event happens at 4 p.m. at the park, 8200 87th Ave. SW. Organizers say it will be held rain or shine.

I don't expect an invitation was extended to the Juggalos. They were the group of face-painted thugs -- followers of the rap group Insane Clown Posse -- who hung out at the Hill Ward In the summer of 2006 and preyed on 23 parkgoers. Lakewood police arrested eight individuals on suspicion of assaults and robberies.

I was never a member of the Juggalos, but I did visit the Hill Ward back in the '80s when I was a college student at Pacific Lutheran University. A friend and I brought our dates there to spook them. It worked.

Now, as a husband and father of two girls, I will feel much more comfortable visiting the site in its current incarnation.

That's the best community workshop name I've heard in years.

But wait, there's more: Free Subway Sandwiches.

The Pierce County Asset Building Coalition will host Connect With Your Money from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Saturday - Feb. 28 _ at Evergreen State College - Tacoma, 1210 Sixth Ave., Tacoma.

It's billed as offering "financial answers for families struggling in today's economy."

Barb Gorzinski, one of the organizers says she's excited by the line-up of speakers and services.

You can sit in on a talk on:

* Creating a spending plan and a saving strategy.

* Figuring out your credit scores, and improving it.

* Paying paying down your debt.

* Solving mortgage problems, and avoiding foreclosure.

* Talking calmly about family money matters.

* Teaching the kids good financial habits.

* Healthy ways to deal with stress if you have financial problems.

* Understanding tax credits.

For sheer fun, they'll have a big shredder on site to eat your out-dated documents.

You do have to RSVP to 253-798-8787. That's so they'll know how many subs to order.

Sumner High School is presenting its third annual talent benefit show both Friday and Saturday evenings with proceeds going to help out long-time Sumner High driver education instructor Lew Linington.
Linington, who has worked for the district for 29 years, is a cancer survivor and is now a subtitute teacher with the district.
John Norlin, the Associated Student Body advisor and leadership instructor for Sumner High School, said the money raised will help Linington pay for bills associated with his cancer surgeries and treatment.
In the past two years the talent show has raised more than $20,000 for two other district employees battling cancer. Nominations for worthy recipients are accepted each year.
Norlin said the talent show will be held each night at 7 p.m. at the high school.
This year there will be 32 acts in the show. Talent comes from Sumner and Bonney Lake high schools as well as elementary and middle schools. Community members also participate.
Tickets to either show are $8 each.

Intercommunity Mercy Housing broke ground on the Hilltop Tuesday for its first senior housing project in Tacoma.

New Tacoma Senior Housing, with 73 units for very low income seniors will rise on a half acre at 1709 South G St.

The new apartments will feature wide corridors, grab bars, wheel-in showers and 24-hour security, all the safety and accessibility features residents will need to age comfortably in place. Beyond that, residents will have on-site activities, including classes, clinics, tax help, even pet therapy.

They’ll get chances to volunteer and go on field trips. They’ll be welcome to join their neighbors getting sun and exercise growing fresh vegetables in the La Grande community garden next door.

Neighbors will see quite the change from the two shabby blue apartments that stood on the lot when Intercommunity Mercy Housing dedicated the Catalina Apartments just up the hill in July, 2007. IMH had refurbished that aging complex from the studs out, and put 43 units of quality affordable housing to work in the neighborhood.

In addition to the Catalina, IMH owns the Eliza McCabe town homes at 2315 S. Yakima, Hillside Gardens at 1708 South G Street, and Tahoma View at 11208 First Avenue Court East. All together, they amount to 160 homes. The new project will be the only one exclusively for seniors.

The old red-tagged buildings were gone and the lot was prepped for construction when city and non-profit representatives gathered in the rain for the soggy ceremonial ground-breaking Tuesday.

Overall, the four-story building will cost about $21 million, $17 million for construction. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development awarded $8.2 million for the job through the HUD Section 202 Capital Advance Program. That national initiative is putting $525.9 million toward projects that will build safe, affordable housing for very low income seniors.

IMH intends to apply for the rest of the funding from the state’s Housing Trust Fund, Pierce County and the city of Tacoma. It already has lined up support from Franciscan Health System and Tacoma’s Office of Economic and Community Development.

Though the building will be an asset, construction will be a benefit in itself.

The project will employ scores of construction workers, architects, engineers and sub-contractors. A press release on the project referred to National Association of Homebuilders figures that show construction of a typical multi-family unit generated 1.18 jobs and $33,494 in taxes last year.

Tacoma’s Deputy Mayor, Julie Anderson, added that, once it is occupied, New Tacoma Senior Housing will employ managers, maintenance, security, recreational and health care staff.

Residents will pay 30 percent of their incomes as rent. On average, senior households bring in $25,000 a year, compared to the average Tacoma household income of $61,000.

Headquartered in Denver, Mercy Housing is a national non-profit which has developed 34,500 homes for low-income residents in 41 states. Its Seattle office, Intercommunity Mercy Housing, operates 44 properties, with 4,000 residents statewide.

You know you've got a city full of committed blight-fighters when they jam up the e-mail reporting system.

Hilltop Action Coalition's Jeanie Peterson, Archenemy of Abandoned Autos, e-mailed word that the city needs a bit of a break on the way irked neighbors file blight reports.

Empowered by the city's refreshing responsiveness, people have been e-mailing in complaints with extensive photo documentation. They want to be thorough. They want to give city inspectors a rich and detailed look at the problem from front yard to back yard to alley, not to mention curbs and planting strips.

But they're freezing up e-mail systems at Tacoma CARES with their gigantic photo files.

Tacoma CARES staff are encouraging residents to keep the complaints coming, but to file them by phone. Just call the Tacoma CARES blight line at 591-5001.

Sure, you can still go to the city Web site, tacomaservices.org and log in the complaint. But Christina Sims at CARE told Jeanie that the team checks phone reports first.

The W.W. Seymour Botanical Conservatory is offering extended evening hours until 8 p.m. tonight and Thursday to see its Dale Chihuly glass art display.

Tacoma native Chihuly loaned 250-some pieces to the conservatory for the three month exhibit to cap the glass house's centennial celebration. The display, which ends Sunday, intermingles a variety of Chihuly forms with the exotic plant life.

It's a particularly stunning sight at night, when the work is lit up. The conservatory has been offering the night display as part of the Third Thursday Art Walk. Tonight's display is to make up for the December event that was canceled due to snow, said conservatory manager Mary Anderson.

"It's been wonderful," Anderson said. "We've had probably triple our normal visitors and people have really enjoyed it."

Here's our earlier story on the exhibit.

The exhibit will be open regular hours - 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. - Friday through Sunday. A $5 donation is suggested. The conservatory is at 316 S. G St. in Tacoma's Wright Park.

Puyallup officials have a dream.

As part of their plan to connect South Hill and downtown Puyallup, they'd like to start up rapid bus service up and down Meridian.

They'd want the bus line to have a name, much like the MAX light rail line in Portland.

It's still preliminary, but city officials have a name they've been gravitating toward. They want to call the rapid bus line the "EZRA" -- short for "Easy Rider Area," and also honoring Puyallup's first mayor, Ezra Meeker.

The line would stop every 15 minutes or so, making it a reliable transportation option for people looking to stop in downtown Puyallup, then quickly go to the South Hill Mall or Pierce College's Puyallup campus and back, said city spokeswoman Glenda Carino.

"It wouldn't be just a bus," Carino said. "It would be a branded bus that looks like a trolley or something like that. It would help with traffic congestion."

The rapid bus line was a key component of the city's proposal for a state LIFT grant, which they won last year and will reap $1 million a year from for the next 25 years.

The city will be asking the federal government for $1.5 million in 2010 to complete an engineering study for the EZRA. I'm writing about the project for a weekend edition of the paper.

Pierce Transit is partnering with the city on the project.

The former Martin Luther King Housing Development Association is under new management, and that management is about to get some of the input it has said it welcomes.

The Tacoma Avenue Coalition will host a community forum at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 18, that's Wednesday, at the Tacoma Dominican Center, 935 S. Fawcett Avenue.

Jim Anderson, who organized the shelter's transition to Catholic Community Services, will speak about the plans for running the program that has been sometimes troublesone and sometimes troubled.

As its new director, Anderson wants to make Tacoma's largest emergency shelter a better neighbor, and a better host. The building at 1143 Tacoma Avenue South has its main entrance in the back alley.

Guests gathering there for hours with no security have attracted predators and made the alley dangerous and unsightly. Anderson intends to have security, a courtyard, extended hours and a no-loitering policy. That should be better for neighbors and guests.

He's also interested in hearing from the people who, practically speaking, live there. What services do they need? How can they find real housing?

Based on the improvements Anderson implemented when he took over management of CCS's Hospitality Kitchen up the hill, this is a promising development, said Jeanie Peterson.

Peterson, Director of Community Initiatives for Hilltop Action Coalition, is encouraging folks to go to the event.

"This forum should also be informative for those concerned about the homeless population and the issues that people are facing on Tacoma Ave, and even the situation at the jail, library, etc.," she sent out to her vast e-mail list.

For anyone interested in learning effective, responsible and responsive ways to help the most damaged and desperate people in the community, attendance should be mandatory.

I've been blogging and writing a bit about the $306,000 in grant money from the state Recreation and Conservation Office (RCO) that Puyallup is supposed to use to extend its Riverwalk Trail.

The city had a deadline of Feb. 1 to have a purchase agreement in place for the land it needs to build the trail extension, or else the RCO could rescind the grant money.

City Manager Gary McLean told me this past week that he's been assured by RCO officials that the money should be safe, even though the city didn't meet the deadline.

To review: The five acres the city needs for the trail is part of a roughly 365 acre area the city has been trying to annex since 2004.

The 1.35-mile connection will link Puyallup's Riverwalk Trail to the Pierce County Foothills Trail.

Some of the landowners want the city to finalize a pre-annexation zoning plan for the land before they sell the portion that would be used for the trail.

Yet, the city council again delayed finalizing that zoning plan Tuesday night. The plan is controversial because it may designate between 120 and 160 acres of the land as open space that can't be commercially developed.

Even with Tuesday's delay, McLean said the trail project will go forward, and the RCO grant money shouldn't be in jeopardy. The city has asked the office for more time to complete a purchase agreement with the land owners.

"It's an important regional project," McLean said. "People want to see it happen."

But he added that even if the office does rescind the grant, the city has the means to build the trail connection on its own. City officials estimate the project will cost $1.4 million.

Puyallup officials have officially asked that the state Recreation and Conservation Office give them more time to buy property to extend city's Riverwalk Trail.

The office could rescind $306,000 in grant money for the project since the city doesn't have a purchase agreement for the land in place. The city was supposed to have reached an agreement with landowners by Feb. 1 as part of the grant terms.

Without the grant, Puyallup parks director Ralph Dannenberg said the trail project could be delayed a year or more.

Myra Barker, a grant manager with the Recreation and Conservation Office, said that the city now has sent in a formal request for more time.

The office has yet to decide whether it will grant or deny the request, Barker said. She said she couldn't speculate when a decision would be made by the RCO director.

Puyallup officials have been trying to annex the area that includes the five acres needed for the trail for several years.

Some of the landowners involved say they want the annexation to be finalized before they sell the city the land for the trail extension.

City officials said last month they are optimistic the annexation deal will be done sometime in February. The land for the trail could be finalized as part of the annexation agreement, City Manager Gary McLean said.

I'll be keeping on this to see what happens with the grant money for the trail. Stay tuned.

You might have caught the story about the Park Avenue Neighborhood group
lying in wait for speeders last week. They were clocking violators, snapping
photos of their cars and license plates, and making a list to send to the
city. By now, some of the people who blew through the 25-mile-per hour speed
limit probably have letters from Tacoma Police Chief Don Ramsdell suggesting
that they not do that again.

If you read that story, bet you were thinking, "Dang. How do we get one of
those radar guns?"

You work with the Tacoma Neighborhood Speed Watch, that's how. The city has
four speed guns available for neighborhood groups.

The first step is to collect signatures on a petition. The second is a
formal application to use the speed gun in a specific area. To get the
petition and the application, write to Jennifer Kammerzell, Neighborhood
Programs, 747 Market St. Room 520, Tacoma, WA 98402-3769. You can also call
her at (253)591-5511.

"When the neighbors are ready, I'll attend their meeting," Kammerzell said.
"I'll bring the gun and show them how to use it."

Before you can get your hands on the speed gun you must be 21, and agree to
be careful with the delicate piece of equipment. You have to promise to work
with a partner and not to "chase, stop or apprehend drivers," or pretend
that you are a police officer, Also, no throwing stuff, yelling insults or
making rude gestures.

Before you start, you must alert the police department when you and your
partner are going out, and where you're going. And you have to keep a log of
the leadfoots, their vehicles, speed, plate numbers, time and location.

It's tougher than it sounds, definitely a two-person job. But the more you
practice, the more people get letters.

Catholic Community Services will improve the Tacoma Avenue Shelter, and welcomes your help. You can:

Muster a deep-clean team for the dorms and shower rooms.

Design a color palette for the dorms.

Organize a painting crew to tackle the rooms.

Organize a crew to repaint some of the 100 bunk beds.

Fix plumbing.

Repair and build tile walls.

Cook and serve an evening meal.

Donate gently used towels.

Donate books and board games.

Donate toiletries, especially feminine hygiene products.

For information, contact Catholic Community Services, 1323 S. Yakima Ave., Tacoma, at 253-383-3697.