As the connective point between Hilltop and Broadway and Pike/Pine and Seattle U., the development of 12th Ave is a critical component of the changing culture and character of Capitol Hill. It’s exciting, then, to hear about some of the changes coming for 12th Ave especially when they include plans to turn a police department parking lot into a place for people to create art, work, live and still give the police officers a place to park their cruisers.
Capitol Hill Housing is pushing forward a plan to convert the East Precinct’s parking lot on 12th near Pine into a mixed-use, low-income housing development with retail components that emphasize the arts, culture and community. I’ve attached a PDF describing their efforts on 12th.
Here’s the current state of the location:
We wrote about the revived planning about this project back in October. Now, that the effort is starting to be ramped up, you can attend a meeting of the 12th Ave Stewardship Council on Feb. 25th to get involved and learn how to support the effort. In addition to gathering support at the local level, Capitol Hill Housing has started an effort to secure federal funding to help drive the project.
Those of you with really long memories might recall that Mayor Schell had a housing conference soon after being elected: the CHHIP/SPD plan was proudly announced then!
As an initial proposal i think this is stupid, nuff said. I am sorry but I have connections with a police officer. I think this idea is crazy. Police officers dont want to share a private parking lot with the public. Especially people who “may” be living in the low income housing. The Police officers dont want people to know what they drive to and from work, want their cars to get vandalized, or fight for parking. Take out the liquor store across the street. It causes more problems then the lot.
i have heard that the parking for the police will be separate and secure, only for the spd. right now they have parking there and it is behind an ugly chain link fence. i would take parking big police SUVs underground over a surface parking lot any day!
The meeting sounds interesting, but I’ll be at the Seattle Transit Blog meetup!
http://seattletransitblog.com/2009/02/13/meet-up-details/
just to be clear, we won’t be talking about specifics about this project at the stewardship meeting on the 25th. we will be presenting the overall goals of our 12th avenue work, of which the East Precinct Project is a part. we can certainly answer general questions, but as justin pointed out, CHH is still negotiating to acquire the property and nothing is final yet!
There is too much ‘low income housing’ in the convergence zone of zip codes 98102, 98112, and 98122. The East Precinct parking lot would be better served with some underground parking and a lid/open space park. The added density of housing is mere artificial projection of forced ridership on Sound Transit boondoggles at the expense of reduced Metro bus service.