It’s been a very big year for Ballard. A year of change led by tremendous growth in a red-hot real estate market followed by an economic recession. A year pitting developers against preservationists, and in one case, an 86-year-old woman. And a year in which “Old Ballard” and “New Ballard,” for better or worse, became part of the neighborhood lexicon. We dug through our traffic stats to find the most popular Ballard stories of 2008, and while you may be able to guess many of them, there are a few surprises in there…