By MARK HIGGINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Joan Paulson, a property manager, knows the neighborhood ambience -- the good and the bad. She says she packs a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson for protection. Paulson says she's pulled it out a couple of times.

Though its streets are considered safe by day, the Regrade like any urban neighborhood has drug dealers, panhandlers, and right now suffers from a rash of auto break-ins. (See background stories.)

Yet many who live there say it is mellowing and improving with age. As a volunteer on the Regrade's neighborhood planning committee, Paulson and others are drafting a list of neighborhood needs, as well as their likes and dislikes.

More green space is high on everybody's list. But residents and businesses are leery of adding parks. The drug dealing, prostitution and drinking at Regrade Park at Third and Bell remains a problem.

"The park is never going to get better," says one police sergeant. A nearby bus stop, grocery store, portable toilet and the park itself provide too much "urban camouflage."

The neighborhood sent a petition signed by more than 600 people to City Hall earlier this year. Jan Davies-Cloonan, who lives in a condo, said drug dealing continues to plague the neighborhood. While not all her neighbors think it's out of hand, Davies-Cloonan said, "It's just amazing to me that it is so open."

The police have tried to clamp down. And for a while the drug dealing does move away. But it soon returns.

Instead of adding more parks, businesswoman Carolyn Geise advocates "green streets" to offset the volume of traffic sweeping north and south through the neighborhood.

Geise is an architect whose family recently renovated the 81 Vine Building into live/work lofts. The ground floor is home to the Western Vine Cafe.

She suggests east-west street improvements such as landscaping, curb bulbs and other pedestrian-friendly, traffic-calming features. Some of that work already has begun. The city spent about $2 million last year dressing up part of Second Avenue with trees, wider sidewalks and outdoor art.