Yesterday, the Stranger’s Slog posted about the number of “gorgeous old buildings” that are disappearing in the name of progress. Most of what was talked about was a building on Broadway, disappearing to make way for the light rail system, but one address caught my eye…
On Eighth Avenue and Seneca Street, the wrecking ball is halfway done leveling this old brick building….
8th and Seneca. I used to live at 8th and Seneca, in an old brick apartment building. I don’t suppose…
Yup, that’s it. The Alfaretta Apartments, formerly the Park Seneca Apartments, is going down. And to that, I say good riddance! I tried to post the following comment, but it kept running afoul of the Slog’s spam filter. Here, then, for posterity, is my reaction to the sad news of this gorgeous old building being torn down:
Oh, wow. Lots of old buildings might be worth mourning, but the Alfaretta, that building at 8th and Seneca? Just a poorly-managed shithole. During the years I lived there, I had to deal with two water shutoff notices from the city because the management hadn’t paid the water bill, an elevator that seemed to be broken more often than not, a renovation that seemed to drag on forever, with constantly shifting reports on when various services would be turned on or off, months without on-site laundry services, a few weeks surrounding the replacement of the water heater when there was little to no hot water at all in the building, and an often broken front door that had us occasionally having to have a drunk or drugged transient ‘escorted out’ after they went wandering the halls, or — once — started squatting in one of the vacant apartments.
Factor in the constant hassles from the Jensonia next door, whose residents seemed to embody all the worst stereotypes of Section Eight housing, which only stopped when the third fire in as many months finally did enough damage to condemn the building, and it’s a wonder I put up with the Alfaretta as long as I did.
That’s one old brick building I’m not at all sorry to see disappear.
2 Responses
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oh thank god, i lived at the alfaretta for two years and had to endure a never ending series of problems and management disputes. the building manager, a surly woman named fran, made my life a living hell, and a deposit-reimbursement dispute eventually ruined my credit, and subsequently, i am not able to obtain a loan to buy a house or go back to school. i never knew an apartment building could ruin my life. i hope the management company went bankrupt.
I would love to talk to someone who lived in the Alfaretta. I am writing a short piece on it for a nonfiction class and it seems to be going in the direction of bad management… So if anyone would like to rant a bit I would love to hear it. My email address is Daleyh1@seattleu.edu. Thanks