The Saffron Cow restaurant-nightclub, 9261 45th Avenue SW, closed suddenly on October 6. For more than two years the former brick warehouse had brought fusion cuisine and live acoustic, jazz, and world-music bands to West Seattle's patrician Fauntleroy neighborhood. An adjacent storefront section offered gourmet foodstuffs and imported furniture. The Cow's publicist, Ben Schroeter, said, "They made a hard run at it, and as happens in this fickle economy, sometimes things don't add up in the right column. We would like to extend our thanks to all of you that helped support us."
The Lillian Apartments at 1258 John Street (north of REI) were finally demolished on Saturday, October 12, more than a year after Paul Allen's Vulcan Northwest development company started buying out its tenants' leases. Activists (including the Seattle Displacement Coalition and Cascade Neighborhood Council) waged a campaign this summer and fall to preserve the 96-year-old, 33-unit Lillian for affordable housing. Allen's representatives publicly insisted the place was no longer fit for habitation; the activists claimed any safety problems existing there were created when Vulcan crews had begun to gut the interior, removing fixtures and wiring in the process. With the legal wrangling still unfinished, Vulcan sent out a wrecking crew late Friday afternoon, insuring the Displacement Coalition couldn't file for a restraining order before city offices closed for the weekend. Vulcan hasn't announced any plans for the site.
Linn Emrich, 71, ran the Issaquah Skyport from 1961 to 1988. He originally opened the private airstrip (on the site of a surplus WWII Navy training site) for skydivers (a sport he participated in well into his 60s). It also serviced gliders, hot-air balloons, and other forms of recreational flying, until he finally lost a years-long battle to developers (a Costco now stands at the site). Emrich died October 1 from cancer.
The Kenworth truck plant on East Marginal Way, the longtime ground-transportation counterpart to the big Boeing plants nearby, is now being dismantled, after having been "temporarily" idled for most of 2002. The plant on the shore of the Duwamish River was formerly owned by General Motors (which used it to build auto bodies) and by Boeing (which used it at the peak of WWII aircraft production). Kenworth took it over in 1946. Kenworth's parent company, PACCAR, has stopped, restarted, and shifted production at the Marginal Way facility several times over the past six years. The company hasn't announced any plans for the real estate.
Clarification: Last week we described Giorgina's European Kitchen as a "lesbian-owned" restaurant. Those owners had actually sold it some time before it closed this September.
