LAURELHURST: A small group of neighbors, dubbed "Friends of Laurelhurst Park," sent an embarrassing letter to Mayor Greg Nickels last month. The Parks Department, they complained, wants to use 2000's Pro Parks Levy funds to remodel the park's community center and turn it into a destination park for the city. While the community has been pushing for a remodel for years, they are skittish about making it a destination spot. According to the letter (which seems to have been written circa 1963), neighbors are skittish that "visitors" with "no connection" to Laurelhurst-- "one of Seattle's safest and most tight-knit communities" (not to mention one of the most affluent)--will ruin the "intimate" community, and affect "our crime rate [and] our property values." UNIVERSITY DISTRICT: Neighborhood activists turned out in force for the University of Washington's third forum about a proposed on-campus "biolab." Still irked that the university secretly applied for a federal grant last year to build the $64 million facility, neighbors took over the April 11meeting--slated for faculty and student input--and argued against building it, by raising concerns over public safety. (The lab is slated to study deadly pathogens like SARS.) The university's response? A short PowerPoint presentation reiterating the national threat of bioterrorism, and cheerleading the research jobs a biolab would bring to the city. --AJ