Seattle City Council Member Peter Steinbrueck--who will head the land-use committee this year--wants to ditch the city's 12-year moratorium on opening new strip clubs. The de facto ban ["Skimpy Evidence," Erica C. Barnett and Josh Feit, Aug 21, 2003] is up for renewal again in June--and Steinbrueck is concerned that an endless moratorium "is not legally defensible."

The council could simply lift the ban and allow strip clubs to proliferate, Steinbrueck points out, but he's more interested in creating rules governing where strip clubs can locate--either limiting them to one area, or keeping them far from schools, for example. AMY JENNIGES

Neighborhood Tour

The Cross-Town Coalition (CTC), the crew of neighborhood activists that sprang up last year to check Mayor Nickels' development agenda, started off this year by focusing on the new city council members. On January 7, the group met newcomer Tom Rasmussen. "[The CTC] wanted to share with me some broad goals of the neighborhoods," Rasmussen says. Ten CTC members--including Lisa Merki, John Fox, and Jeannie Hale, who hosted the meeting at her Laurelhurst home--schooled Rasmussen on the finer points of council-neighborhoods relations. "The neighborhoods need to be heard when issues or proposals come before the council," Rasmussen, ever the good pupil, noted. "[The neighborhood folks] are not opposed to jobs and development. They just don't want it to be at the expense of the existing community."

CTC members were impressed. "He is not going to be the mayor's lap dog," Fox says. "He seems more interested in being a neighborhood kind of guy." The efficient CTC plans to meet with council newbie David Della on January 21, and is still coordinating calendars with the third freshman, Jean Godden. AMY JENNIGES

Checkout Time

The first of the year marked the end of an era for another single-room occupancy (SRO) building in Seattle. Since 1977, the Alps Hotel at Sixth Avenue and South King Street in the International District has offered affordable, long-term housing units--about 100 simple rooms, each with just a sink, plus shared kitchens and baths--for poor people.

As of January 1, ownership of the Alps building was officially transferred to James C. Koh, who plans to renovate the building to create studio and one-bedroom apartments.

According to the building's former manager, the new units will likely rent for considerably more--current rent is just $75 per week. That's bad news for the Alp's 80-plus tenants.

There are currently about 30 city-subsidized SROs in Seattle. BRIAN WALTON