My Ballard

While we await the demolition of Sunset Bowl, we’ve noticed the back side of the building along 56th St. is covered in graffiti and littered with trash.

We’ve seen on several occasions that this is becoming a popular hangout for Ballard’s transient population, but we’ve also noticed Seattle Police officers hanging out in the Sunset Bowl parking lot at night keeping an eye on things. By the way, the next design review meeting for the new development was scheduled for Monday night, but it has been canceled and will be rescheduled.

Earlier: Preview of the proposed building replacing Sunset Bowl, and the design review board’s concerns that it consumes too much of the lot.

This Monday night is the first design review meeting, but Avalon has already released its preliminary proposed designs for the apartment and retail building replacing Sunset Bowl on Market St.

This is its preferred design of the three proposals. It’s a six-story building with a center courtyard and 234 units. The building covers the entire block. The front (bottom) faces Market St. You can see Burger King to the left.

Here’s a look at the ground floor with 13,900 square feet of retail and 294 parking spots. Again, these are preliminary proposals without many details — there’s no mention of specific retailers (or a bowling alley), for example — but you get an idea of the building’s size. You can see the full deck here (.pdf). The first public design review meeting will be held Monday at 8 p.m. in the Ballard High School Library. (Thanks Marie for the link!)

As we know, Sunset Bowl’s days are numbered. An application has been submitted to demolish the bowling alley and replace it with a 6-story mixed use building. The new building will include 15,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor with 230 apartments above and parking for 280 cars. Later this month, the applicants will present their plans to the Design Review Board. If you’d like to attend the meeting and offer your feedback on the project, it will be held on July 28th at 8 p.m. in the Ballard High School Library.

When word came down that Sunset Bowl had been bought, Jim Bristow created SaveSunsetBowl.com and gathered thousands of signatures. Then he worked to convince the new owners, AvalonBay, to incorporate a bowling alley in the new development. But now with Sunset Bowl facing the wrecking ball and AvalonBay expressing lukewarm interest in the bowling alley idea, Bristow is trying to drum up support to build a new bowling alley elsewhere in Ballard, reports the Ballard News Tribune. But it wouldn’t be cheap: a finished bowling alley, with the land, would cost as much as $10 million.

It’s been nearly a month since the Sunset Bowl auction. They’re “still dismantling the lanes,” says Bruce, who took a few photos inside Sunset Bowl yesterday evening. “Most of the people who bought them at the auction have taken their stuff, but there are a few stragglers.”

Bruce says Sunset Bowl’s maintenance guy told him that everything will be cleared out by Friday. For more photos, take a look at Bruce’s Flickr page here.

A new pizza place under construction at 12th and Madison on Capitol Hill will incorporate furniture from Sunset Bowl. Pizza Fusion will reuse dining chairs, tables and barstools purchased at the Sunset Bowl auction. It’s is an “environmentally friendly restaurant chain” that focuses on local, reusable materials, and it’s aiming to become the state’s first LEED certified restaurant. Pizza Fusion will also use flooring from Garfield High School and pews from First Church Seattle. “We were seeking a business that would provide an opportunity to do our part in the preservation of the Puget Sound region for future generations to enjoy in the years ahead,” said co-founder Kevin York.

My Ballard reader Harry alerts us to this land use filing from Avalon Bay Communities for Sunset Bowl: “Demolish 25,000 sq. ft. bowling alley and construct a 6-story mixed use building including about 230 apartments, 15,000 to 25,000 sq. ft. of retail and parking for 280 cars.”

It’s unknown at this point whether the “mixed use” would include a bowling alley, as many Sunset Bowl fans have requested (and Avalon has said it would consider.) The permit status is still “open,” which means the demolition has not yet been scheduled. And in our experience, crews like to demolish buildings — especially controversial ones — without warning.

We noticed today that the “Sunset” sign has been pried off the building.

Only scars remain. We didn’t see the sign in the Sunset Bowl auction lineup last week, so we wonder who’s keeping it?

Remember that Snickers bar from Sunset Bowl that the Seattle Channel put up for auction on eBay? It sold for $52.03, with the proceeds going to the J.P. Patches statue going up in Fremont.

We predicted yesterday that bowling pins from Sunset Bowl would soon appear on Craigslist (because the lots were so large.) Lo and behold, this morning you can “own a piece of Seattle history!” Bowling pins are $25 on one posting and “used wooden bowling pins” on another post are only $5.

We stopped by around lunchtime to see how the auction was progressing, and we arrived in time to see one guy buy all the lanes for $1,000 each. Well, it was just the synthetic top of all the lanes — not the gutters, sensors and the original maple wood underneath, which were all auctioned off separately.

Also, they sold the entire scoring system — computer, floor displays, monitors — for all the lanes for a total of $3,200. (In this case, that’s the total of all the individual bids, as some folks just bought a couple of the floor displays.)

But we left before the most popular items — the bowling pins — were auctioned off. Since the lot sizes are so large (it looks like you have to buy a few dozen pins at a time), we’re betting some of this will soon appear on Craigslist.

Update: We just returned from the auction preview at Sunset Bowl, and the parking lot is already packed. The auction (details) is expected to last well into the afternoon, with some of the more interesting items (bowling pins, for example) scheduled to come up around noon or later.

Notice that the bowling pins come in large lots. Same for the bowling balls.

The computer displays, monitors and blue chairs are for sale, too.

Even the lanes and gutters are up for auction.

The best pick that I could see: this cool Sunset Bowl welcome rug, which will almost certainly draw a high bid.