In his weekly update, Lakewood City Manager Andrew Neiditz wrote the following about a new neighborhood association in the area of Western State Hospital:

• North Lakewood Neighborhood Association Forming: Bylaws were voted into place and officers were selected on February 7th for the new North Lakewood Neighborhood Association. This is LPD’s 6th District, the neighborhoods on the north side of Steilacoom Blvd. from Western State Hospital to Mountain View, including Oakbrook. The Steering Committee meets the first Saturday of each month for a working breakfast at the Fan Club on 83rd. They plan two Neighborhood Association meetings per year at Oakbrook School. The next meeting will be May 13th at 6:00 pm

I'm trying to find out what some of the goals will be for this new neighborhood association, as well as how it work with Western State. Neiditz told me today that this group is sort of a larger, more formalized incarnation of the Oakbrook neighborhood association. It's also being coordinated through the Lakewood Police Department.

We have steam to blow off, righteous anger.

But the whole mob with pitchforks image is getting trite.

Better to grab shovels, hammers and clippers and show up at one of two Saturday work parties that offer the chance to whack away at bad stuff.

The First Creek restoration team will kick off Earth Month with a chance to kill all the ivy you want. We are talking cutting, pulling, even rolling up the invasive vine that's attacking and smothering native trees in the watershed.

For the more automotive minded, there will be plenty of opportunities to amass a fine collection of used tires, and possibly shopping carts.

The big fun starts at 9 a.m. and lasts until noon. Muster at 1801 E. 34th St. There's parking in the church lot at East 34th and R streets. Bring sturdy gloves. Organizers will provide tools and directions.

The Puyallup Tribe will celebrate all the good work with a barbecue lunch for volunteers from noon to 1:30 p.m. at Portland Avenue Community Center.

To sign up, call Dan Fear at (425)260-4991, or e-mail firstcreekwatershed@gmail.com.

In South Tacoma, the Manitou Crew got MetroParks' permission to build a garden at the community center, and they've been operating on hyperdrive ever since. Frank Blair and Andy Mordhorst have been trolling for materials, from lumber to fencing.

They'll be meeting at 9 a.m. Saturday morning at the community center, 4802 S. 66th St., to haul sand, removed timbers and dig up old playground rubber. They'll also discuss the layout for the garden.

Interested? Bring shovels, gloves and the realization that living well is the best revenge.

Editor's Note: Qannik died later Saturday before the zoo could transfer the beluga whale.

Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium beluga Qannik plays with his hoop Thursday, March 26, 2009. Cole Cosgrove/The News Tribune

Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium officials were preparing Saturday to move Qannik, the ailing 8-year-old beluga whale, into a new pool as concern grows about his weight loss.

The temporary pool will be filled with warmer water, an environment that officials hope will allow the whale to expend less energy staying warm, said John Houck, the zoo's deputy director.

Qannik, one of two belugas as Point Defiance, has been in a pool with 46 degree water. The water temperature of the new pool will be about 60 degrees, Houck said.

"We're very concerned about his weight loss and our ability to get enough calories" into him, he said.

Veterinarians still are not sure what is wrong with Qannik, other than he has some kind of infection. He began losing interest in food March 15. Zoo officials have been giving him additional fluids and high-calorie nutrients.

Officials reported some improvement in Qannik's behavior earlier this week, saying he was interacting more with Beethoven, the zoo's other beluga, and playing with toys in the pool. But they said they remained "very guarded" about his condition.

Qannik (pronounced kah-NIK) came to Tacoma in 2007 from Chicago's John G. Shedd Aquarium. He is the offspring of Mayauk, a former Point Defiance resident who was later moved to the Shedd Aquarium.

Mayauk lost two newborn calves during her stay in Tacoma, and a third died in Chicago. She gave birth to Qannik in 2000.

Beluga whale Qannik, top, is motionless and lethargic while Beethoven, bottom, is swimming constantly around Qannik at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. The zoo have the veterinarian from Sea World in San Diego to come for an second opinion as of Qannik's condition. (Lui Kit Wong/The News Tribune) (3/25/09)

Last month, I wrote a story about a group of longboarders, led by UWT student Ben Warner, who planned to ride across the country to benefit the Boys & Girls Clubs of South Puget Sound.

Richard Crook, grandfather of rider Jerry Craker, just sent me this picture that was taken the day the team set off on its long, grueling journey. It was snapped by Samni Bell (Ben's mom) on March 21.

(Pictured: Back row - Mike Jones, Jerry Craker, Ryan Donahue, Ben Warner. Front — Stacy Donahue)

The team left San Diego at 10 a.m., and skated 50 miles the first day, Crook writes. They made it to Gila Bend, Ariz., today and expect to be at the Tuscon Boys & Girls Club on Saturday.

"They have made friends with the Border Patrol and are getting honks and waves when they pass them," according to Crook.

Shameless plug of the day: Check out the publication in Stacy's hands. That's right. It's a copy of the Feb. 27 edition of the News Tribune that featured their story on A1.

For more information on the team's historic trip, click here.

Okay. It's Friday.

Here are some just-for-fun recent YouTube videos from Tacoma.

Qannik showed more small signs of improvement today, officials with the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium said. He's less dehydrated, his white blood cell count is approaching normal and his kidney function is better.

"But he's not out of the woods yet," said curator Karen Goodrowe Beck. The 8-year-old beluga whale, who has been suffering from an unknown kind of infection, was less playful today than he was yesterday.

See Qannik when he was feeling his oats:

The Lakewood Historical Society needs help … fast.

The city’s first history museum — which opened October 2006 in the original Colonial Center on Mt. Tacoma Drive Southwest — says it needs about $25,000 to secure a lease for another year.

Becky Huber, president of the society’s board of directors, told me today that the nonprofit’s 250 members can’t pay for another lease alone. The monthly payment at its current location is $2,200.

The society’s lease runs through May 31st, and it wants to sign a yearlong lease before then. If it can’t, the 3-year-old center may have to close its doors.

News of the museum’s possible closure comes as it works with Clover Park Technical College to develop a permanent museum at a 1929 airplane hangar at the former Mueller-Harkins Airport. (That's the college)

The $2.5 million restoration of the hangar will require a fund-raising drive and won’t happen until at least five years, Huber said. That means the historical society will have to find a way to survive in the meantime.

“The best alternative we have right now is to stay where we’re at,” she said.

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Call it a diamond in the rough.

Call it a hidden gem.

Call it a starter multi-use center.

The old Rogers Elementary School on McKinley Hill is all that. And now it's a bargain.

The stately school with the territorial view of the mountain and the port, has been on the market over a year. Now it's had its asking price reduced to $1,995,000, a bargain for a building with a new roof, not to mention a playground, auditorium, parking lot and commercial kitchen. And did we mention the dog park across the street?

It has one other big plus: Neighbors to want to see it transformed into a successful, even profitable, asset to the community

Those same neighbors objected to a church proposal to turn it into a service center for homeless people. The church bought the building at 1301 E. 34th St. from Tacoma School District for $1.6 million in 2007. Though it's convenient to McKinley Hill business district, it's a hike to bus lines, and the hillside below it would attract encampments.

Members of the church and the community worked their way through the disagreement, to the credit of both sides. Now the church is hoping to recoup its investment.

Members of DomeTop Neighborhood Alliance, which led the resistance to the social services center, have said they'd like to see the building converted to condos, or perhaps to a multi-use center with homes, a restaurant, possibly even a specialty grocery store.

Anyone interested in plunking down the earnest money should have a chat with the neighbors. They can be valuable allies, or formidable opponents.

Pacific Norhwest Stand-Down will welcome homeless veterans to the Peoples Community Center, 1602 Martin Luther King Way, Thursday, March 26, from 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The event aims to connect the vets to the services they need to become safe and stable once again. Those include housing and employment referrals, medical and dental screenings, meals, clothing, haircuts, and someone to process Veterans' Administration claims.

Partners in the event include Goodwill Industries of Tacoma, MetroParks, Pierce County Veterans' Bureau, the Salvation Army, Employment Security, and the U.S. and Washington State Disabled Veterans Administration.

That's a good lineup of committed players. They ask that homeless or needy veterans, or their family members, step up for the help that's due them. No alcohol, drugs or weapons will be permitted at the Stand-Down.\

For information, call Pierce County Veterans Bureau at (253)798-7449.

It might not be the “Biggest Little City” sign that welcomes visitors to Reno, NV, but Lakewood might get a pair of its own gateways along a busy street.

City staff gave an update on the effort to build a pair of welcome signs along Bridgeport Way Southwest on Monday night.

One gateway would be located at the north end of Bridgeport near Wal-Mart; the other would be the busy intersection at Pacific Highway Southwest.

Lakewood, along with a dedicated group of 10 or so residents named Keep Lakewood Beautiful, has worked to make the enhanced Bridgeport entrances a reality the past several years.

But given the recent downturn in the economy, money for these projects is slim to none. The combined cost for both is around $500,000.

Assistant City Manager David Bugher said the north Bridgeport gateway would be built first because the project has at least some funding. The city collected $95,000 in fees when Wal-Mart on Bridgeport was built five years ago. (Pictured is one rendering courtesy of Edward Chaffee & Associates)

Lakewood has no money for the south Bridgeport gateway, although Bugher is recommending the city use any money leftover from its $6 million realignment of Pacific Highway to pay for it.

I’m working to get more details on what each gateway will look like for the print paper this week, as well as talk to people about what they think of sprucing up two of Lakewood’s entrances.

Tacoma Rail may have clocked the fastest-ever remedy to a neighborhood's complaint.

The rotten economy has slowed the railroad business along with everything else. That means fewer cars are hauling freight, and more are sitting idle. Tacoma Rail makes most of its money by running cars, but its managers are using sidings to store cars. The demurrage fees paid by the car owners help support the city-owned railroad.

Two sets of those cars were working for and against a healthy city.

Since early February, several strings of black tanker cars had sat idle on sidings between 72nd and 60th streets west of McKinley Avenue.

They were making money for Tacoma Rail. But they were irking residents in the neighborhood. Who wants an empty asphalt tanker sitting indefinitely beside the back fence? Who wants the taggers who can't resist that big black space to spray paint gang signs?

Glenn Sukys asked if we could find out what was, or had been, in the cars. He guessed they were empty, guessed asphalt and was right on both counts.

He wanted to know how long they'd remain what he considered an attractive nuisance in a neighborhood that's had some crime and foreclosure problems. As of Thursday, the answer was: Until people are buying asphalt again.

Sukys' questions got managers at Tacoma Rail asking themselves the right questions about the effect on the neighborhood and alternative storage.

Over the weekend they had the cars moved to a siding elsewhere on the tracks.

In the future, they'll be more mindful of the people whose homes abut Tacoma Rail tracks.

How remarkable is this?

It's huge. A major public utility moves dozens of rail cars within a couple of days of hearing complaints about them.

Of course, now that the cars are moved, a good deal of the junk people have dumped along the tracks is more visible. The old sofas and mattresses present the perfect payback opportunity: Tacoma's rife with neighborhood clean-ups in the summer. When the dumpsters come to the 'hood, the folks who live along the tracks can thank the railroad, and help themselves, by hauling that junk out of the right of way and into the trash.

Joe Colgan’s anti-war message was personal Thursday night as he flashed the peace sign with his hand while drivers honked at one of Federal Way’s busiest intersections.

On the sixth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Colgan protested in the memory of his son, Lt. Benjamin Colgan, 30, who was killed by a roadside explosive device in Baghdad in 2003.

“This is the main reason I’m protesting – to witness that violence is alive,” said Colgan, 67, an Army veteran who lives in Kent.

Colgan was among 20 protesters who stood and sat during rush hour Thursday at the corners of South 320tth Street and Pacific Highway South.

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A 12-acre parcel owned by University Place is creating a stir among residents.

The city took ownership of the wooded area off Crystal Springs Road West as part of a 2007 land swap with the local school district. In return, UP schools received Colegate Park.

Last year, the city hired a consultant to examine how the property could be used if UP sold it for residential development.

The results ranged from developing the land — which Pierce County assessed at $2.9 million this year — into four large lots to building up to 40 “cottage-style” homes, said Eric Faison, the city’s project manager.

But neighbors who live around the forested area shouldn’t be touched.

Word has gotten around in the Crystal Springs Road-82nd Avenue Court West area. On March 5, Mark and Karen Viafore (who say they’re cousins with David Viafore of Fircrest fame) circulated a letter to neighbors talking about the ill effects of development, including loss of open space, increased traffic and reduced property values.

They argue that selling the land is a crutch to help pay for UP’s struggling Town Center project.

In the weeks since they circulated the letter, about 50 other neighbors have joined the fight. The group’s message: leave the open space alone.

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I've never seen a year in which gardeners were so ready to address the economy, the environment and the nature of the community. Give a good part of the credit to Alicia Lawver and The Growing Conversation's blogging and organizational work. All through the winter, that communication has acted like a cold frame for good ideas. This week, those notions are ready to sprout all over Tacoma.

Thursday evening it's still about the talk. Saturday will get boots in the mud.

Thursday, if you manage your time, you could hit two out of three presentations:

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If you’re into that new-building smell and Gig Harbor-area culture, St. Anthony might be your hospital heaven.

The area’s first large-scale hospital opened its doors today, giving residents from the Gig Harbor, Key Peninsula and Kitsap County areas a closer option for emergency and other medical treatment.

Of course, many of the people who live west of the Tacoma Narrows have been waiting for St. Anthony’s opening since 2003, when the state gave Franciscan Health System its blessing to build the 80-bed hospital.

But there’s been a buzz over St. Anthony’s first day the last week or so. I wrote about its opening over the weekend, but I couldn’t resist checking it out for myself today.

Making my way up Canterwood Boulevard Northwest, I was struck at how the 260,000-square-foot building was barely visible from Highway 16.

Once you’re in sight, St. Anthony’s grandeur can hit you like an errant ball from the nearby Canterwood Golf & Country Club.

The visitor parking was packed, although it’s unclear whether those were actually visitors or staff.

Construction workers were still putting the finishing touches on the place, as evidence by a couple of men trying to figure out why the main lobby’s automatic door wasn’t opening.

The oohs and aahs continue once you’re inside the main lobby. The whole place looks out on a courtyard with a rock-and-water feature, as well as the area’s vast acres of trees.

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An application to build a cell phone tower near the corner of South 48th Street and Yakima Avenue is on hold following the discovery of another tower nearby.

The application, which is opposed by the South End Neighborhood Council, was placed on hold March 2, said Charla Heutinck, land use administration planner for the city.

The applicant, T-Mobile, must provide the city with a technical reason why the new tower cannot be co-located with the existing tower at 4818 South J Street, Heutinck said.

If the city has not heard from T-Mobile after 120 days, officials may close out the application, Heutinck said. So far, the city has not heard from T-Mobile, she said Thursday.

The South End Neighborhood Council objects to the location of the proposed tower in an empty lot next to the old Superior TV building, 4638 S. Yakima Ave., arguing that it poses a potential health risk because at 59-feet 11-inches it would not be tall enough to clear some of the surrounding homes.

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We hear about babies starting out their lives with nothing, and our reflex is to help. Then the details get in the way. We're not sure what the infants need, or where to take it.

Tacoma Soroptimist Club and the Pierce County Division of Child & Family Services are offering us a way around that. They're sponsoring their fourth annual Community Baby Shower from noon to 2 p.m. Saturday, March 28, at Joeseppi's Restaurant, 2204 Pearl St.

Welcome gifts include disposable diapers, diaper bags, onesies and tees, socks, booties, clothes for babies from three to six months old, baby powder, soap, shampoo, wipes and diaper cream, pacifiers, baby bottles and baby toys. If you're tempted to wrap them, please spend the money on another binkie instead.

The gifts will go with babies bound for foster homes because their own families can' keep them safe and secure.

Anyone can just waltz in with a baby present, enjoy the ambiance, and go home feeling happier to have helped.

If you can't make it, Soroptimist International of Tacoma is accepting monetary gifts at PO Box 112151, Tacoma, WA, 98411. That gift is tax-deductible.

You can't talk about the Hill Ward at Fort Steilacoom Park in Lakewood without mentioning the, um, stuff that went on there after hours and on the weekends.

I spoke with park visitors who braved today’s brisk sunshine to record their memories of the former Western State Hospital building.

Many of them mentioned the weekend partying they and their friends did when the site was still a crumbling set of ruins.

“I used to go there every weekend and party and drink. That was, of course, in my younger days,” said Laura Drittenpreis, 38, a lifetime Lakewood resident.

“We threw parties here and keggers. The police would kick us out. It was cool,” said Charles Candle, 24, another lifetime Lakewood resident.

Joanne Pickles, 73, said she remembers hearing stories about the hospital performing shock treatments and other types of archaic procedures on patients.

“Kids used to go in and out of it all the time,” the Lakewood resident said. “Even my kids used to sneak up there.”

Deidren Norris, 38, admitted she hung out at the Hill Ward, even though she was somewhat spooked by its history. There were rumors of people seeing spirits and other ghostly beings at night.

“We used to hear voices,” she said. “I totally felt it was haunted.”

Pictured to the left is the plaque that will welcome visitors to the new Hill Ward.

I plan to include their comments in my print story on the Hill Ward later this week.

On Saturday, Lakewood will celebrate the reinvention of the Hill Ward site at Fort Steilacoom Park.

Once the dilapidated ruins of a 1932 Western State Hospital building, the site is now a less prominent memorial to its former inhabitants. The city demolished the building’s remains a year ago.

I got a guided tour of the 2009 Hill Ward from Lakewood parks staff this week. Gone are the crumbling and graffiti-filled walls that made this place such a popular hangout for curious youth, party types and the occasional bad elements. (See Juggalos)

In its place is the building’s footprint with curbing that’s a couple feet off the ground for people to sit. The footprint itself resembles an eagle in flight, an idea that residents came up with during meetings about what to do with the site, said Mary Dodsworth, the city’s parks and recreation director.

In the middle of the memorial is a walkway with a chronological timeline of the Hill Ward etched in a few of the stones.
The walkway leads to a “labyrinth” that includes a chunk of the old building. Don’t plan on walking through a maze, though, as there are no walls.

The Hill Ward’s original stairs lead up to the memorial, which was built atop grounded pieces of the old building. The city kept two of the building’s original pieces that, after years of sitting abandoned, are covered with graffiti. Dodsworth said the city didn’t clean them because it wanted to maintain the integrity of the structure and, quite honestly, it would probably get tagged again if clean.

Other differences long-timers might notice include a trail that loops around the Hill Ward and rocks that serve as steps for hikers trying to reach the site. There’s even a piece of the original building's chimney that’s now a marker along the trail around Waughop Lake. There will also be signs, a plaque and other improvements to the memorial.

Dodsworth said the city didn’t want the new Hill Ward to be too prominent. It is, after all, a tribute to the hospital’s patients who once tended to the nearby farm.

“We wanted it to reflect the history of the place,” she said.

The city is inviting the community to celebrate the memorial Saturday. The event starts 4 p.m. at Fort Steilacoom Park, 8200 87th Ave. SW, Lakewood. For more information, visit the city’s Web site.

I’ll have a story in the print paper about it later this week.

Writing about inter-agency cooperation is a great way to cure readers' insomnia.

But a story from the lower East Side demonstrates the real benefit to real people.

Tacoma Police officer Bert Hayes was out with a Department of Corrections officer, checking in on released felons. That, alone, is a healthy collaboration. We want folks who have returned from prison to the community to know that community corrections officers and the police know who and where they are.

Two men on the officers' list were renting a room at 1316 E. 30th St., just west of Portland Avenue at the foot of the McKinley Hill bluff. From the outside, the place is trashed. People have been dumping junk and construction debris in the overgrown yard. It's a blight on a b lock where other residents have cleaned up quite a bit.

Hayes recoiled when the elderly home-owner opened the door.

"I could smell electrical at the back of the house," he said of the wiring.

The only heat in the place is a wood stove with faulty ventilation. Soot from the stove coated the walls.

And then there was the mess: piles of belongings, and litter boxes for three cats. It was beyond anything the 84-year-old owner could sort through.
It was unfit housing, even for the pets.

"It was absolutely appalling," Hayes said. "It's the worst place I've ever seen."

That's saying a lot. Hayes has gone on mission trips. And he's worked rough neighborhoods.

He called in city building inspectors and Tacoma Power inspectors, who cut the electricity. Working with animal control officers, the growing team contacted the Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce County. The kitties will stay there until the owner is safely settled in a new place.

Pierce County Human Service case manager Paul Calta worked with Associated Ministries to come up with the money to allowthe owner to stay a week at the HomeTel in Fife.

"It buys me time to work with the family, place the client in a safe environment, salvage the belongings and get him placed safely," Calta said. "I'm going to try to place those cats as well. I'm a little worried about the cats. Bert brought him over there, and we brought several bags of food from a food bank. He also brought some frozen dinners from home."

Meanwhile, social workers are trying to set him up with long term care. They also are working with him to retrieve any salvageable belongings from the blighted house.

DOC, meanwhile, is helping the two renters to find a place.

The property needs to be cleaned up, for the sake of the neighborhood. Count on Hayes to get it on the abatement list.

"Everybody worked together," Hayes said. "This is what we do."

Thanks to inter-agency cooperation, the homeowner will be sleeping safely from now on.

This is the kind of help that's available, now that agencies are working so well together. If you know of a senior or disabled person who needs this kind of assistance, call the Pierce County Aging and Disability Resource Center at (253)798-4600.

Tacoma Public Utilities will be disposing of nine lots it no longer needs for substations.

According to state law and the city charter, they have to be sold if they're no longer playing the electricity game. The question is, should they be sold to private parties, or to a government agency that will preserve them as public lands.

Morgan Alexander has been harnessing the power of the gardening community to preserve some of the suitable lots as pocket parks or community gardens.

Who knows? Some of them might work as solar demonstration projects, combining solar panels with rows of beets and peas. If the panels feed into the grid, that might make it possible to preserve them as TPU property, and uncomplicate the process?

Alexander is making progress. Already, he is on the agenda for the Metro Parks Board meeting Monday, March 9 at 6pm, Metro headquarters: 4702 S 19th St.

Here's the list of surplus properties:

Adams, 1920 Adams St. N.

Centennial, 543 N. Stadium Way.

Downing, 1801 N. Orchard St.

Fairmont, 4924 N. 31st St.

Junett, 3008 N. 16th St.

Ruston, 5001 N. Visscher St.

Parkland, 101 127th St. E.

Warner, 3404 S. 45th St.

Lincoln Park, 1009 South 35th Street.

At the urging of avid BMX racers, Pierce County Parks and Recreation is working to reopen the Riverside Park in Sumner, which has been closed since January's flooding.

Pierce County parks officials originally said they may not reopen the park due to the routine flooding it has endured in recent years.

"It's difficult for us to go back in and dump money into something that keeps getting flooded every 18 months," parks superintendent Kent Baskett said.

But Baskett said Monday that the department has working on an inexpensive plan to reopen the park.

Department officials are holding a meeting to update park users about the plan tonight at 6 p.m.

The meeting will be held at the Pierce County Parks and Recreation Headquarters, located at the Lakewood Community Center at 9112 Lakewood Drive Southwest.

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