Police: Man nearly shot, woman pistol-whipped in dispute over Capitol Hill parking spot — UPDATE: Thursday night reported gunfire

Police say a man was nearly accidentally shot in a gunfire incident earlier this week stemming from a dispute over a parking spot near Pike and Minor.

CHS reported earlier on the Tuesday night shooting incident but Seattle Police has released new information about the shooting and the altercation.

According to SPD, police were sent to the area around 7:40 PM to a report of a woman screaming and crying for help. A single gunshot was reported as police arrived. Continue reading

To meet demand — and be ready for coming growth — city adding paid-parking to Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave E

15th Ave E changes a little more slowly than the rest of Capitol Hill but the neighborhood is in the middle of a transformation including redevelopment and, yes, a full overhaul of street parking to address what the city says is near overwhelming demand around its commercial core.

The Seattle Department of Transportation announced that crews will begin installing new parking kiosks, signs, and paint starting next week, Tuesday, October 10th to mark “two-hour paid parking” on 15th Ave E from E Denny Way to E Mercer.

The west side of 16th Ave E from E Denny Way to E Thomas will also get the treatment. The Residential Zone 4 Parking will remain in effect in the surrounding area.

The changes will mean new habits for those who drive to the area or residents and workers who have been jockeying with each other for street parking in the area around a mix of businesses including longtimers like Rainbow RemediesVictrola, Coastal Kitchen, Hopvine, Jamjuree, and Liberty to relative newcomers like Ada’s Technical Bookstore, and Uncle Ike’s, to the latest additions like Windthrow, Creature Consignment, and Meliora.

“The project aims to address the growing demand for parking by visitors and customers, provide more reliable access at the curb, and enhance the overall parking experience for customers, visitors, and commercial delivery drivers,” SDOT says. Continue reading

Thanks to new ‘urban economic activity,’ Seattle jacks up afternoon and evening parking rates ever so slightly

The City of Seattle has released its latest regular update of on-street paid parking prices, a process officials say is on schedule to happen about three times a year.

The spring adjustments based on demand and availability vary across the city but mostly have manifested in upping afternoon and evening rates by a buck an hour “while morning periods are holding steady or decreasing and rates tend to be low, mostly at $0.50 or $1.00 per hour,” the city says. Continue reading

Proposal would ease path to Seattle Central demolishing its massive Capitol Hill parking garage to make way for student housing development — and, don’t worry, more parking

A design rendering of planned new SCC housing at Harvard and Pine

A Seattle City Council committee Wednesday will take up legislation to tweak city land use code to allow schools like Capitol Hill’s Seattle Central College to build much-needed new housing affordable to students close to urban campuses.

The council’s Land Use Committee chaired by Dan Strauss (D6 — NW Seattle) will consider the proposal form-fitted for SCC that would change code to allow its plans for hundreds of units of new student housing in a development replacing the school’s massive, multi-story parking garage that rises at Harvard and Pine.

The legislative tweak to city code would allow a new amendment process for Major institution Master Plan changes to allow “a one-time addition of student or employee housing.” The change would allow “a single development with residential uses at community colleges in Urban Centers to be approvable as a minor amendment to an existing MIMP when certain criteria are met.” Continue reading

Seattle must refund or void 200,000 tickets after parking enforcement officer screw-up

Sometimes you get lucky

An error at the top of its police department could cost Seattle around $5 million — and get you out of your recent Capitol Hill parking tickets.

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s office announced the monumental mix-up this week, saying some 200,000 parking tickets must be refunded or voided because Seattle Police and Chief Adrian Diaz failed to properly commission parking enforcement officers after they were transferred out of the department in a Seattle City Council maneuver to downsize policing in the city:

On August 16, 2021, Council Bill 120148 was passed unanimously by the City Council and signed on August 18, 2021, officially moving PEOs from SPD to SDOT. Council intended special commissions to be issued for City employees who were not within SPD to enforce certain aspects of the traffic code. Special commissions are issued by the Chief of Police to personnel who perform law enforcement responsibilities outside of SPD. This technical step was not taken immediately upon PEOs’ relocation to SDOT in 2021.

The Harrell administration says it discovered the error and had Diaz commission the officers under their new wing in the Seattle Department of Transportation.

The city says tickets issued between September 1, 2021 and April 5th during the period before the correction are now void. Continue reading

Capitol Hill car owners, start your engines and resume the 72-hour shuffle

(Image: City of Seattle)

Seattle’s 72-hour parking rule is back fully in effect.

The City of Seattle announced last week it has resumed “full parking enforcement for any vehicle that has remained in one place unmoved for longer than 72 hours, returning to the normal standards which were temporarily paused in 2020 due to COVID-19 public health guidelines.”

“While full enforcement is resuming now, parking enforcement officers will continue to provide official warning notifications on vehicles allowing owners and occupants to move them before enforcement occurs,” the announcement from City Hall notes.

CHS reported here in October on the city’s plans to resume enforcing the rule suspended as part of changes made in 2020 to help reduce exposure and maintain essential services during the pandemic. Continue reading

City jacks up Capitol Hill rates — but it is still ridiculously cheap to park on the street in Seattle

Parking zones with changes in the latest SDOT update

(Image: City of Seattle)

It is still a bargain to park on the street in Seattle but the city is jacking up rates again in its busiest neighborhoods as it slowly returns its digital parking meters to pre-pandemic levels.

Starting today, Capitol Hill’s paid parking areas will be ratcheted up at least $0.50 an hour during afternoon and nighttime metering — the hotly contested core of the Hill around southern Broadway and Pike/Pine will see a $1.00 bump at night.

With paid parking weighing in between $0.50 and a maximum of $1.50 an hour around the Hill, we’re still a very long way from the pre-pandemic days of $4.50 an hour street parking.

Overall, the Seattle Department of Transportation says, on-street parking rates in Seattle remain at or below $2 per hour “at 95% of locations and times.” Continue reading

Kaiser Permanente reluctant to act on Capitol Hill surface parking lots

(Image: CHS)

By Ryan Packer

When Kaiser Permanente purchased Group Health in 2018, its flagship Capitol Hill campus came with a Major Institution Master Plan. Used with hospital and university campuses around the city, the plan guides the long-term vision for how a given campus will grow, and sets parameters around how employees to and from the campus will get to work. Any time a major update is planned for a campus, the plan must be updated. Shortly after taking ownership of the property, Kaiser Permanente announced that they were planning a $400 million campus overhaul, and at the same time announced the formation of a Standing Advisory Committee (SAC) to guide the campus through any updates to the master plan.

Now some members of that advisory committee are trying to push Kaiser to move forward on some past commitments that have been made around the Capitol Hill campus, particularly when it comes to the 1.5 acres of surface parking lots that sit on 16th and 17th Ave close to campus. Those lots actually sit outside the boundary of the area guided by the campus plan.

David Dahl is an architect who lives in the neighborhood, and sits on the Standing Advisory Committee. “It definitely doesn’t feel like it’s a priority for them to follow through on the agreements they’ve made,” he said of Kaiser Permanente. “They’ve shown they can reduce their drive alone rate…I would like to see some follow through.” Continue reading

‘The carpenters’ fight is our fight to make Seattle affordable for all’ — Sawant unveils construction worker parking reimbursement bill

As members of the Northwest Carpenters Union have approved a new contract that included employers doing more to help defray the costs of transportation and transit to work sites in the city, City Councilmember Kshama Sawant has unveiled legislation she says will require contractors in Seattle to pay for the cost of parking for construction workers.

“Shamefully, construction industry contractors, who have made billions in profits off the backs of workers, have refused to cover the cost of parking for carpenters and many other construction workers,” Sawant said in a statement on her new legislation and called on her council colleagues to quickly approve the bill. Continue reading

City Council approves move of parking enforcement officers to SDOT, new rules for crowd control weapons for SPD

The Seattle City Council tied bows Monday on the legislative process for changes to Seattle Police that will remove parking enforcement from the department and create a new framework for what crowd control weapons the force can use.

Monday’s full council votes included approval of the plan to move the around 100 parking enforcement employees in the city from SPD command to the Seattle Department of Transportation. The vote finalizes debate of whether the enforcement officers should be part of SDOT or a new Community Safety and Communications Center. In May, the council approved a plan to move around 140 emergency dispatch employees to the new center.

The city’s 2021 budget brought a cut of about a fifth of Seattle’s more than $400 million annual outlay in police spending along with changes to reduce the size and power of the department by moving 911 and traffic enforcement operations outside of the Seattle Police Department and spending more money on social, community, and BIPOC services and programs. Continue reading