This parking lot is a goner (Image: King County)
While neighbors around 21st and Union are looking at so-called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design efforts in addition to the mayor’s plan for curbing gun violence in the Central District, an environmental problem spot at the base of Capitol Hill is on its way to a CPTED solution of a different sort.
Key permits have finally been issued for a project to create an eight-story, 70-unit apartment, and office building on the land currently home to the parking lot near Pine and Melrose that is popular with nightlife crowds but has attracted more than its share of assaults and gun play over the years.
In April, a male victim was lucky to suffer only a grazing wound after being shot in the head in a shootout that erupted in the parking lot just before last call on a busy Saturday morning. The parking lot where the shell casings and evidence was found has been the scene of nightlife gun violence in the past. In the summer of 2015, Ramon Mitchell, 23, was gunned down in a shooting in the same location.
The Pivot, the future at Pine and Melrose
The parking lot’s days, now, are numbered. The new project set to rise on the land will mean the end of the parking lot and one of the last big billboards in this area of the Hill. In its place will stand the Pivot, a mixed-use project from developer Vibrant Cities. Originally planned as a terrace garden-covered building with a rooftop restaurant, the project was re-envisioned with a simpler design and more “autorow character.”
The 1208 Pine surface parking lot isn’t the only of its kind facing the end of its long, boringly empty days, and busy nights. In April, the project set to surround and overhaul the Knights of Columbus building at Union and Harvard — and replace a set of surface parking lots on each side of the historic structure — began the design review process.
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