Sketched April 26, 4:12 p.m.

Aurora Avenue may be the least scenic drive in Seattle, but enter Shoreline and things start to look a little different.

Beyond North 145th Street, I found a nice stretch of the highway that I'd missed two years ago, when I sketched a car lot amid tacky signs and utility poles in North Seattle for my first Seattle Sketcher column.

Shoreline has been fixing up Aurora with new sidewalks, medians and pedestrian bridges that even light up at night. Now, they want to make the stretch between 175th and 185th the heart of the city.

"We don't have a downtown. We want to create a town center," said Kristen Overleese, a city project manager who greeted me as I sketched the decorative base of a new traffic-light pole ready to be installed. Overleese said improvements up to 185th are expected to be finished by August, completing two of three miles of the Shoreline Aurora Corridor project.

Links:
Shoreline Town Center page on Facebook.
Aurora Corridor Project.

Coming up: One week every month, I take my sketchbook to a different community following suggestions from readers. Where should I go next? Send me your ideas via e-mail, Facebook or Twitter. Have a great weekend!