Fears are probably a little overblown that Georgetown will ever be an upscale neighborhood; it is in a valley bounded by a polluted river, an airport and I-5, but residents are concerned.
Marketers and developers - the same place as nearly any other young city. I like the concept that even the oldest and hoity-toitiest Seattle neighborhood names come from developers:
But even Seattle’s crunchiest neighborhood got its name from land developers, who named it after their hometown in Fremont, Neb.
Capitol Hill owes its name to turn-of-the-century superdeveloper James Moore, who bought property and persuaded a state legislator to introduce a bill to move the state capital there.
“It was really just a real estate promotion,” said Seattle historian Paul Dorpat. “There was no chance in hell they would do that … but he knew he could get publicity.”
Another name that stuck first appeared in a Seattle Weekly article in the late 1980s about how the industrial area south of downtown was changing with new businesses and artists moving in. Editor Rose Pike suggested the name Sodo for SOuth of the soon-to-be-blown-up KingDOme.
The name really caught on after developer Frank Stagen erected red neon signs on top of the area’s huge Sears building — until Starbucks replaced them with its mermaid.
I personally like descriptive, genuinely bottom up names like “Pill Hill” (aka “first hill”), “Frelard” (Between Ballard and Fremont), and the Denny Regrade (the area where they dragged tons of dirt from the top of Denny St. its base, thus regrading it).
A quick check using our text search shows no one (not a soul!) advertising a “West Edge,” “Park District,” or “Midtown” property. Maybe the Park District developer should learn from history and get his state legislator to promote a resolution to move Olympic National Park to North of downtown.
Georgetown, home of my favorite bar in Seattle, is a mix of grit and artsy hip. It’s also home to many people who can tune out the sound of Boeing Field’s myriad of incoming and outgoing flights a day and, apparently, one very political blogger and a not-so-frequent Seattle PI blogger.
Georgetown is so cool that a Beacon Hill blogger adopted it (she sez: “My blog was supposed to be about Beacon Hill, but nothing ever happens here. So it’s turned into more of a Georgetown blog.”). The Estately Beacon Hill outline is a little screwy, but Ms. Beacon Hill really betrays her need for local content when she says “It’s one of the largest neighborhoods in Seattle, and we don’t even have a Starbucks (not that we want one).” In Seattle? Just a mile or two from Starbucks’ world headquarters? How can that be? Does she mean no 2 Starbucks within 5 blocks of each other? Starbucks blog, please tell us!
Isn’t there a word for something that’s both more and better? Mobetta? If so, we are today launching mobetta neighborhood and city information pages to give potential home buyers a real feel for the neighborhood and to give sellers marketing points they didn’t know existed. I’ll just jump to what’s both more and better:
Best and worst schools for every neighborhood and city in Washington. Check out the schools in West Seattle for instance. Also included in this release are detail pages for every school in Washington.
Once you find the school you absolutely must live near (lets say Ballard High School) you’re only one click away from seeing the properties for sale within walking distance.
For instance:
We’ve boiled schools down to three simple things: where they are, what school district they are in, and the math and school scores for the student body. We hope to encourage conversation about the specifics of each school and district (like posts about which loony toons were elected to the board) sometime soon.
Just remember, school scores aren’t everything - they should be used as a starting point (Bellevue students are better at reading and they have the International Baccalaureate, for the record). We can recommend local Realtors who really know the local schools if you want to know more about your local schools.
We also added information about parks and places (restaurants, statues, anything of interest) for every neighborhood and city. Thanks to the Robots at Forty Three Places, you can see that Paseo is the best reason to live in Fremont. My recommendation: live two miles away so you can walk through Ross Playground and work off half of the meal.
We’re ironing out a couple of bugs as I type. Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions in the comments.
