Site Report 1

Block twenty has a diverse set of buildings and tenants. With an alley dividing the block in half, there is an even division into East and West. Along the west side, facing Roosevelt there are three buildings. The first is a hotel, University Inn, with a multipurpose bottom floor which houses The Portage Bay Cafe. This building takes up the largest area of the block, with a parking lot in the back. When I walked into the café on a weekend, it was filled entirely with young people, most in their early 20s. This suggests that it is a popular brunch destination for UW students. To the south of that building is The Portage Bay Grange; this shop offers supplies for urban farming and livestock. They specialize in making sustainable farming possible in the limited back yard space of city houses. Their livestock houses are designed to be small and functional, allowing maximum use in minimum space. This seems like a strange place to have an urban farming store, because it is surrounded by apartment buildings. But it is likely that farther out, in Ballard potentially, there are people who have backyards. On the corner 41^st is a building which is cohabitated by a dry cleaner and teriyaki restaurant.

While walking along Roosevelt I was struck by the dramatic change in scents - from the sweet and toasty smell of the cafe to the rural farm scents of the grange. The Eastern side of the block, bordering 11^th avenue also has three buildings. Unlike the West half, all these building appear residential. There are two apartments and one house. The block's topography on the side is heavily altered, as there is a parking lot under one of the buildings, which is about one floor below the sidewalk. These apartment buildings are a ten-minute walk from UW’s Red Square, so it is likely that this is predominantly student housing. This is further reinforced by the naming of the hotel on the block and the patrons at the cafe. It is likely that visiting family members or friends might stay at the Inn if they know someone attending the UW. However, this also pointed out the lack of older people in the area; I wonder why older adults would not want to live in the area. As I continued my walk, the house made me stop and look at it because I couldn’t initially figure out what was wrong with it. Further inspection revealed that there were no right-angles on the building, one corner was extremely small, while another created an obtuse angle. Additionally, it appears that the second floor was added separately from the construction of the ground floor; the walls are not flush and the material is completely different. The difference in lot size is very dramatic, so I wonder how many of the original lots have been combined to make the current buildings. 

While the block is split evenly between residential and commercial buildings, not everything on the block is as even. The bock, while mostly square, is actually surrounded by five streets. There is an extra street, Eastlake Ave NE, which cuts through the SE corner of the block and connects to 11^th Ave. The merging of these two roads in not seamless, and there is a portion of 41^st St which is not accessible by car, it has been filled in with a median and parking. The other uneven part of the block that was the sidewalk on 42^nd St; I discovered this unevenness when I almost fell walking. The sidewalk has been split into two sections, which meet in the middle and peak, much like two tectonic plates sliding together to make a mountain range. The sidewalks on Roosevelt and 11^th Ave NE are great and new, but along 41^st and 42^nd they are very messy or nonexistent. With so little parking on the block, I find it strange that the sidewalk is missing, as it would be the primary means of accessing the block.

Other questions included:

• What is the house there for and does anyone live in it? 
• What historical events made Eastlake Ave cut through the block to create a tiny island strip?
• What effect the four shops have had on the community? Have they encouraged certain people to occupy the neighborhood and others to leave?