Eric, Author at Wallyhood

Repaving of 40th, 50th and Green Lake Way at the Wallingford Community Council – Wed, June 6, 7pm

Eric June 5, 2018 60 Comments

40th, 50th, and Green Lake Way north of 50th are all to be repaved next year, which includes a full redesign of the streets that is happening now. Current plans swap out parking lanes for bike lanes, with protected bike lanes added to 40th and a cycle track added to Green Lake Way.

In the Green Lake Way cycle track both directions of bike traffic will be on the lake side of the street. The transition between the cycle track and the bike lanes is up for debate, as is reconfiguration of the 50th and Green Lake Way intersection. I …

Win-Win Solutions To Housing Affordability and Neighborhood Livability?

Eric October 27, 2017 51 Comments

Pro-HALA folks paint San Francisco as our nightmare future if HALA doesn’t pass, where all housing near jobs costs millions of dollars. Anti-HALA folks paint Ballard as our future if HALA passes, where existing residents are driven out by a construction tsunami and we are left with luxury housing that is 95% tech bros (plus 5% reserved for a few token “poor” people that win the MHA lottery)

I sat down with some Wallingford HALA proponents, looking for win-win solutions to housing affordability in Seattle. Here are some ideas we came up with:

Collaborate with homeowners on affordable ADUs and …

Rob Johnson Q&A for April: Limiting Home Demolitions, why HALA Targets Wallingford, and More

Eric April 18, 2017 48 Comments

Rob Johnson represents Wallingford on city council and is ushering HALA through the council as land use chair. This is a follow up to our January interview with him. Topics include Limiting Demolitions, Wallingford Neighborhood Planning, HALA Leaving Car Centric Communities Untouched, Transportation, Developer Impact Fees, The HALA Split on City Council, ADU / DADU Triplexes, and Meeting Rob in Wallingford.

Q1- Limiting Home Demolitions: The main concern with HALA is that upzones will drive redevelopment that happens too quickly, destroying livability while the transformation happens and forcing residents to either sell out to developers or live in a construction …

Rob Johnson Q&A on the HALA “Grand Bargain” Upzone of Wallingford

Eric January 26, 2017 69 Comments

[Editor’s Note: Thanks Eric, for this exclusive interview. For our readers, this post is longer than our usual format, but packed with a lot of good information.]

Rob Johnson represents Wallingford on Seattle City Council and also leads land use issues for them, so nobody is more important in shaping how HALA ends up for Wallingford. The following Q&A is lightly edited for clarity. We very much appreciate Rob taking the time to address these questions with us, and look forward to your thoughts in the comments section.

Q- The Grand Bargain: A key complaint that we hear about HALA …

Swan Song

Eric January 18, 2016 29 Comments

I started writing for Wallyhood this past spring when Jordan took off because I valued a Wallingford community site and wanted to explore writing as a creative outlet. I was also hoping to form constructive relationships with the city in getting good things to happen for Wallingford.

Constructive relationships with the city proved impossible, largely because the city no longer has anyone assigned to support neighborhoods. It’s all downtown meetings based on city functions without visits to neighborhoods when making plans. To be successful with advocacy, you must be like the Seattle Bike Blog or the Seattle Transit Blog and …

Amphibious Assault Vehicles Return To Wallingford, Take 2

Eric January 15, 2016 8 Comments

Ducks are returning to our streets as of today. Ducks were approved for road use during World War 2, so due to inertia they remain street legal today. The fact that their new mission is to amuse tourists and that they’re going to crush Wallingfordians instead of Nazis and their allies is irrelevant.

The specifics of the accident on Aurora are being addressed, just like specifics from several previous fatal accidents have been addressed. These are the latest changes:

The vehicles will take the Fremont Bridge and Ballard Bridge instead of the Aurora bridge There will be two vehicle operators…

An Apology

Eric January 15, 2016 80 Comments

I’d like to apologize for language I used in an article I posted here this morning. It was offensive and hurtful to the community.

The article used a pejorative term for Japanese people when spoofing how people spoke during World War 2. I had never heard the term used outside of World War 2 documentaries and should have done a better job researching it. While I knew the term had a racial component (see internment camps), I believed that the term was primarily used as shorthand for the Japanese empire in World War 2 and that its use was anachronistic …

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