Some 40 years after it was built, the Vashon Pool is in need of architectural, electrical and mechanical upgrades, according to a recent evaluation conducted by a team of aquatic center experts who evaluated the facility.
The building that most recently housed Vashon Island Realty was torn down on Monday, five years after being deemed unsafe.
For the past three years, in a sunny office on the second floor of the Open Space for Arts & Community, co-founders Janet McAlpin and David Godsey have been putting their considerable creative talents toward a brand new act. Calling it a makeover from the inside out, the two performing artists are launching a $1.5 million renovation of the building with a kick-off gala event — The Big O — the first Sunday in June.
Several King County officials will host a public meeting Wednesday evening and provide information about a wide range of issues.
Vashon Park District’s annual Kite Day is set for Saturday, May 21, at Point Robinson. There will be music, food, tours of the lighthouse by Captain Joe and kites for sale in the Ship’s Store and at Essentials 4. Festivities will run from 10 a.m. to at least 3 p.m. There will be parking on both levels, and the swing gate will be open for parking on the grass. The event itself is free, with the items for purchase available — and donations welcome.
Vashon’s school district announced last week that it will contract with an educational service organization to craft a plan to address racial awareness and equity within the district.
Island, county, state and federal agencies will come together with National Guard soldiers during the second week of June to participate in Cascadia Rising, a major, region-wide disaster exercise based on the potential full-margin rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone that would create an earthquake and tsunami.
More than two months after it was announced the Vashon Tea Shop would be put up for sale, the owners of Vashon’s Anu Rana’s Healthy Kitchen have moved in and started work on the building.
A gray whale seen swimming injured through Puget Sound for about two weeks likely died from a collapsed lung or infection that trapped air in its body and prevented it from diving, experts from the Cascadia Research Collective (CRC) say.
Seventy-four years ago this week more than 120 Japanese-American islanders were forced to leave Vashon, bound for Seattle and then on to Tule Lake Concentration Camp in California later that summer.
With the closure of the Franciscan medical clinic coming this August, members of state and county governments have said they will support the island in whatever ways they can, while agencies in Vashon’s broader health care community are making plans for a medical services landscape that soon could be dramatically changed.
Islander Bob Moses feels the weight of a broken industry on his shoulders. A long-time audio engineer, pioneer of the digital music era and current executive director of the 14,000 member Audio Engineering Society (AES), Moses has seen, and been directly involved in, incredible innovation on the technical side of the music industry. But that innovation has also led to an unforeseen disaster for the artistic side, as people stopped buying record albums and started downloading — legally and otherwise — their music one song at a time and sharing it with their friends. Record stores went out of business, and, according to Moses, 90 percent of the income dropped out of the industry. The previously existing infrastructure, essentially, collapsed.
The Vashon Maury Community Food Bank is asking islanders to load up donation bags with non-perishable foods and place them by the mailbox on Saturday morning.