While the upcoming G8 Conference in Heiligendamm, Germany, isn’t slated until June, PeaceGuard Northwest is already gearing up, with plans to send a group of U.S. street medics to the summer summit.

Affiliated with the Replacements Needed campaign — those people who slap posters onto poles that chronicle the Iraq War, complete with graphic photos and a running tally of deaths for U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians alike — PeaceGuard is planning two March 26 training sessions in Olympia, to educate potential travelers: one at Traditions Café, from 4 – 6 p.m., the second at Olympia Free School, from 7 – 9 p.m. Seattle training dates, as yet unscheduled, will take place sometime later this year.

To learn more visit http://replacementsneeded.tripod.com/id50.html.

—Rosette Royale

No Commitment

Developer Darrell Vange says he will continue to meet with community members in and around Seattle’s Little Saigon district, but hopes for getting him to sign a “community benefits agreement” are quickly fading.

Vange is the developer of a 10-acre site at S. Dearborn St. and Rainier Ave. Ss currently owned and occupied by Seattle Goodwill. The charity plans to deed the site over to Vange for a four-block shopping center that’s slated to include a new Goodwill building, along with a Target, a Lowe’s and some 500 units of housing.

Worried the development will hurt nearby Vietnamese business owners, a group called the Dearborn Street Coalition for a Livable Neighborhood has been meeting with the developer to negotiate for public amenities and small retail spaces that they say would make business owners and shoppers from Little Saigon and the International District feel welcome.

At a Feb. 27 meeting of Seattle’s Design Review Board, Vange showed design changes he has agreed to in the project, such as creating an entry plaza and walking path that would lead into the development from the corner of South Weller Street and Rainier.

Coalition members, however, say it’s unlikely he’ll sign a binding agreement to guarantee the design and any amenities. That means the fight is ultimately headed to the project’s final arbiter, the city council.

Yesler One, Two

What does replacing low-income apartments one for one mean to you?

It sounds like a simple question, but the answers that members of the Yesler Terrace Citizens Review Committee arrived at on Feb. 28 revealed it’s not as simple as it seems. The committee, which is chaired by former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice, is looking at how the city’s oldest public-housing community – Yesler Terrace – can be turned into mixed-income housing similar to what the Seattle Housing Authority has done at its NewHolly, High Point, and Rainier Vista.

After breaking into discussion groups, committee members generally agreed that it was more important to maintain the same number of bedrooms in the new development than the same number of units, as that would reflect the actual needs of residents.

Whether it’s bedrooms or units, however, one Yesler Terrace resident at the meeting was determined to get housing authority officials in the room to commit to something. “I want a commitment from SHA from the people sitting here,” Ayan Musse called out at meeting’s end, to “honor what we’re saying.”

—Cydney Gillis