Fed Up
Harvey’s Tavern will close its doors for good on Halloween night after 32 years of slinging pie. While Audrey Grant‘s Leary Way institution served up many a schooner to area blue-collar workers over the years (it opened in 1934, sans grub; Grant took over in ’74), Harvey’s claim to fame has always been its pizza, described thusly in these pages: “Piled high with sausages the size of pool balls, droopy cheese, and more black olives than you can count, Harvey’s house special defies categorization in the pizza lexicon. Discovering it is like taking a metal detector to a rocky beach on an overcast day and unearthing buried treasure.”
The building that houses Harvey’s, as well as the Dish Cafe and Vac Shack, has come under the ownership of Ben Hankins, who would like to turn the space into a more traditional restaurant. “They wouldn’t renew my lease,” says Grant. “My liquor license runs out at the end of October, and they want me out of here. They want something different in here.
“Between the smoking ban and then this, I’m just too old,” she adds. “Thirty-two years in one place, and then not even to be able to sell the business—it’s finished me. I’m taking the ovens, and maybe my son will decide one day to open up a pizza place.”
Next door at the Vac Shack—which has carved out an admirable niche in the high-end vacuum cleaner market—owner-operator Mike Cain says he’s got enough loot socked away to move elsewhere in Ballard if he must.
“They haven’t given me a new lease,” says Cain. “But we’re solid. And if we need to relocate, we’re not going to go far. I probably feel least threatened. If we have to move, we have to move.” MIKE SEELY
Burnt Out
Mayor Greg Nickels wrote residents of West Queen Anne to inform them that he won’t budge on a proposal to tear down three homes to erect a new Fire Station 20 on 13th Avenue West, despite community and City Council votes to the contrary. And, in part, because “a small number” of neighbors ruined it for everyone by opposing the city’s “solid plan,” the neighborhood will effectively be punished: Station 20, the smallest in the city, will be left “without any improvements,” the mayor says, while “fire stations in other neighborhoods will move up in priority and will be rebuilt sooner.”
“If the greater Queen Anne community wishes to reconsider this decision, and the City Council indicates a willingness to act,” writes Nickels, in a letter to nearby residents, “a new Fire Station 20 will proceed.”
Valerie Paganelli, leader of a citizens group that opposed the mayor’s plan, says Nickels’ letter “contains several incorrect facts and misrepresentations.” The mayor claims that City Hall, after the usual exhaustive search, “found the current location to be the only available site that preserved response time, met all other essential requirements and fit within the Fire Levy funding limitations.” But at least several other sites that didn’t require the destruction of homes were considered to be equal or better. As for “funding limitations,” under the mayor’s guidance, the fire levy is currently projected to run $100 million over budget. RICK ANDERSON
