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SOUND OFF | Rep. Larry Springer, Sen. Andy Hill sound off on looming government shutdown [4]
Wanted | Kirkland police still searching for FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 2013 suspects; can you ID them? [2]
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Business | HP’s Smokehouse BBQ truck serves up “best barbecue” [3]
Kirkland beats out Bellevue for new Go Daddy location BY RAECHEL DAWSON rdawson@kirklandreporter.com
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o Daddy is expanding again with a permanent office in Kirkland, officials announced June 12. The company signed a lease June 12 for a new 10,000-square-foot office at Carillon Point. Ten employees are already operating out of a temporary office at Carillon Point and they are set to move into the new space in October. The company also expects to expand the Kirkland operation to 20-30 people over the next several months, officials said. Go Daddy CEO Blake Irving and other company officials visited Kirkland in April to negotiate with Kirkland Council members about potentially expanding here. The company also considered Bellevue as a central location. “It was a tough call,” said
Irving, a former Kirkland resident. “Both Bellevue and Kirkland are beautiful … both are hotbeds for top-tier tech talent. It really came down to a combination of factors that helped give Kirkland the edge.” Irving said the facility itself is a good fit because the price was a bit better and being at Carillon Point allows “employees [to] boat right to work if they want.” When Mayor Joan McBride and Councilwoman Amy Walen met with Go Daddy executives, McBride said they expressed interest in wanting to be involved in the “civic life of the community.” “They’ve been privy to some of our plans to the [Cross Kirkland Corridor] with connecting the corridor to our business districts,” said Walen, who was former neighbors with Go Daddy International Senior Vice [ more DADDY page 5 ]
Lake Washington High School students clap during the commencement ceremony at the Key Arena on June 17. Four Kirkland high schools graduated more than 640 students recently. For the listing of graduates’ names, see page 7. CONTRIBUTED BY STEVE MCCARTY
Graduate applause
Kirkland Garden Tour to No issue with brakes on feature 5 gardens June 29
bus that killed couple, inspection finds BY CARRIE RODRIGUEZ AND RAECHEL DAWSON Kirkland Reporter
A recent mechanical inspection of a Sound Transit bus that crashed into a vehicle and killed a couple in Kirkland last month found that the brakes work fine, said Washington State Patrol authorities. The news contradicts what the driver of the bus, Everett resident Aleksandr Rukhlin, 54, told investigators following the crash. “When we inspected the bus on May 31 the brakes were in operating condi-
tion,” said state patrol Sgt. Jerry Cooper, noting that the driver said the brakes had failed. “The bus was towed right after the incident.” Rukhlin was driving the bus on May 6 when it exited northbound Interstate 405 in the carpool lane and slammed into a sport utility vehicle on the Northeast 128th Street overpass. The bus finally came to a stop on the carpool on-ramp to northbound 405. The crash killed Bellevue couple Robert H. Rotta, 76, and Elizabeth E. Rotta, 75. A third passenger [ more BRAKES page 5 ]
BY RAECHEL DAWSON rdawson@kirklandreporter.com
A creek winds its way from a nearby pond as two handcrafted bridges connect pathways to a lawn. Flowers, small plants and shrubbery border the creek on one side and align the finegravel trail on the other. The path, surrounded by foliage leads to a bamboo cove with a tree swing that hangs in the middle. This is just the front yard. “The little kids, oh they love it,” said garden owner Susan Gillman, referring to her grandchildren. “They have what they call the bamboo trail and they make camps and stuff out there.”
The backyard is not short of gazebos, trellis archways and a green house. The fenced-off vegetable garden includes artichokes among other vegetables planted in a garden patch. And after all of that, there’s still enough backyard space for a lawn and an outdoor table for a summer’s supper. The Gillman’s garden is one of five gardens that will be open to the Kirkland community June 29 for the Kirkland Garden Tour. This will be Gillman’s first time opening her garden to the public. She speculates her garden club, the Totem Lake Garden Club, recommended her for the tour.
A handcrafted bridge connects a pathway to Susan Gillman’s lawn in the backyard of her Kirkland home. Her garden, which features gazebos, trellis archways and a green house, will be one of five gardens featured during the Kirkland Garden Tour June 29. RAECHEL DAWSON , Kirkland Reporter Gillman and her husband have worked on their garden since 1994, slowly planting, digging and designing a space that was once nothing. Four months after purchasing their home in the North Rose Hill neighborhood, the structure burned down. “They bulldozed the
house down and we just had a big mess,” she said, noting the fire was from wiring issues. “We’ve been fixing it ever since.” But instead of throwing the random house scraps away, the couple used bricks from the fireplace to construct the garden pathways and used an old [ more GARDEN page 10 ]