Concrete removal in Magnolia

Seattle's Office of Emergency Management counts Perkins Lane in Magnolia, with Alki Avenue in West Seattle, as the two places in the city with the most recorded landslides, more than 100 documented occurrences each. Its list of significant events includes multiple slides in Magnolia in 1948, large slides on Magnolia Bluff in 1969, and a slump along Perkins Lane that destroyed five homes in January 1996. The same report places deep-seated landslides, the larger and more destructive kind, in Southwest Magnolia.

The same report found human alteration of the slope to be at least a partial cause in 84% of Seattle's landslides. Removing a slab changes how water moves across a lot, so on a bluff-edge property it pays to plan where the runoff will go before the old surface comes up.

SDCI's grading permit page sets a much lower bar inside a mapped steep slope or landslide-prone area. Citywide, the usual triggers are things like disturbing 5,000 square feet or more, or adding or replacing 750 square feet or more of hard surface. On a mapped slope, a permit is needed once the combined excavation, fill and other land disturbance passes 25 cubic yards.

SDCI counts removing a hard surface such as pavement or a walkway as land disturbance. The same page adds that whether you need a permit or not, the code restrictions on disturbance in critical areas and their buffers still apply.

An SDOT study of the Magnolia Bridge describes W Dravus St and W Emerson St as the two other points of access to the neighborhood, and plans for inspecting all three bridge connections after an emergency. When the bridge was closed after a 1997 landslide damaged its west end, and again after the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, traffic was rerouted to Dravus and Emerson, and people who lived through the closures reported very long backups.

For a removal job that means the haul route is not a detail. A truck making several round trips to a recycler crosses one of those three links each time, so ask whoever quotes the job how many loads they expect and which way they plan to go.

In the City's Magnolia community reporting area, 78.8% of housing units are single detached homes and 78% of households own their home, per the American Community Survey 2020-2024 figures the City publishes. So the person deciding on a driveway or patio job here is usually the owner who lives there, and the sidewalk in front is usually theirs to fix too: SDOT says the municipal code requires adjacent property owners to keep sidewalks in good repair.