For sale: New Capitol Hill developer sought for mixed-use City Market redevelopment

Speaking of neighborhood groceries, it has been 111 days since the “MUP-ready development site” also known as Capitol Hill’s much-loved City Market hit the Seattle real estate market.

November’s unpriced listing — if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it — was the surest sign that much-hyped San Francisco-based property developer Juno is now out of the picture after shepherding the property through several rounds of Seattle process on the way to plans for a mass timber mixed-use building topped with 98-residential units, including 58 studios, 21 “deep” one-bedrooms, 13 one-bedrooms and 5 two-bedrooms, above a future home for the popular Bellevue Ave grocery and new underground parking.

To make way, the existing City Market building and the laundromat next door as well as a small surface parking lot were planned to be demolished. Continue reading

Madison Valley’s new corner store? Kitchen & Market ’boutique grocery’

(Image: Kitchen & Market)

The corner grocery store isn’t dead yet in Seattle but you might have to pay a little more for your chips. A small neighborhood grocery in Madison Valley is set to reopen as part of the Kitchen & Market “boutique grocery chain” that says it is “chef- driven” and “primarily focused on bringing fresh products and meal kits to market.”

“I am so excited that we are opening a store in Madison Valley,” Stephanie King, Kitchen & Market’s founder and CEO, said in the announcement of the store’s opening. “Madison Valley has long been a neighborhood of fabulous customers of Kitchen & Market via our delivery service and now they can visit us in person.”

The change for the market across the street from neighborhood anchor Cafe Flora is another burst of life for the neighborhood’s struggling business community as it has asked for more support to make it through this final year of construction to create the new RapidRide G rapid bus line to connect the waterfront to Madison Valley via First Hill and Capitol Hill along E Madison. Continue reading

Flurry of Seattle public safety meetings includes Councilmember Hollingsworth’s session this week on Capitol Hill

Harrell at last week’s mayoral public safety forum (Image: City of Seattle)

With reporting by Hannah Saunders

A flurry of community meetings are adding to efforts to address a spate of gun violence that left a student injured and a woman killed in separate Central District shootings last week.

Tuesday night, District 3 representative on the Seattle City Council Joy Hollingsworth will hold her first community safety meeting with constituents since the shootings in a session at Capitol Hill’s Seattle Central College.

Hollingsworth stepped forward to take the microphone at a public safety forum held by Mayor Bruce Harrell that had been organized before the shootings but ended up being dominated by the issues related to gun violence in the city.

“When we can’t keep our kids safe, it’s a failure on us as adults and I really take that very seriously being in this role,” Hollingsworth said at Harrell’s forum last week. “Any time a child is hurt—especially at school—I take that very personally.” Continue reading

A century ago, Capitol Hill’s cobblestone streets eased transportation woes — Now, their purpose is preservation

Sometimes green and a little Pacific Northwest mossy, sometimes just bumpy, there are still stretches of cobblestone streets around Capitol Hill in 2024.

Seattle is home to about 100 blocks of cobblestone streets, including east of 23rd Ave and on Mercer, Roy, Valley and Ward streets. Similarly to other cities across the country in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the cobblestones replaced dirt or plank roads — the original roads of Seattle — but as the city turned to asphalt and became more concretely paved, some historically stoned streets have survived.

“Many people who live near or travel on these streets appreciate their aesthetic quality and historic significance, and the city has generally attempted to preserve these cobblestone streets to the extent possible,” a Seattle Department of Transportation representative told CHS.

Formerly known as the Seattle Engineering Department, SDOT and the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods signed an agreement that set out guidelines for the preservation and maintenance of cobblestone streets in 1996. Continue reading

This week in CHS history | Jonathan Caradonna murder, 2020 COVID ‘stay home’ restrictions, the Canterbury’s end


Here are the top stories from this week in CHS history:

2023

 

‘DO NOT BLOCK BIKE LANE’ — Latest Seattle guerilla street safety project finds signs alone no match for drivers looking for a place to park on Capitol Hill


Continue reading

HoneyHole, now part of Rumba’s food and drink family, ready to reopen on Capitol Hill

(Image: HoneyHole)

HoneyHole will reopen soon under new ownership and a much more stable future befitting the popular sandwich joint’s decades serving the neighborhood.

CHS reported here in December on efforts to revive HoneyHole by restaurateur Travis Rosenthal who has grown a family of popular Capitol Hill and Seattle food and drink venues including E Pike rum bar Rumba and its post-Tiki sibling Inside Passage.

The deal is now done and Rosenthal’s Pike Street Restaurant Group is taking over the 700-block E Pike bar and sandwich counter. Continue reading

Harrell, Chief Diaz respond with more police, calls for change in state gun restrictions after student shot and woman killed in 23rd Ave gun violence

A bullet hole and shattered safety glass in the Metro bus stop in front of GHS (Images: CHS)

There are again more police and private security in place around Garfield High, the largest public high school serving Seattle’s Central District and Capitol Hill, after area gun violence injured a student at a 23rd Ave bus stop and left a woman dead on the sidewalk earlier this week.

Parents and the community are looking for a larger response as city officials and Seattle Police Department leadership say they are doing everything they can to make the area safer and solve the crimes.

SPD Chief Adrian Diaz told the audience at a Thursday night public safety forum held at the city’s central library that he expects “resolution soon” in the Wednesday afternoon shootout between two vehicles that sent a 17-year-old Garfield student caught in the crossfire to the hospital with a serious injury to her leg and left bullet holes and shattered glass amid crowds of students leaving campus for the day.

Investigative prospects are more dim for bringing justice in the shooting that followed hours later and only blocks away that left a woman in her 30s dead on the sidewalk at 23rd and Main.

Police have said they do not believe the shootings are related but have limited evidence from the slaying that took place on the backside of the busy AutoZone parking lot. Diaz said Thursday night the S Main killing happened just around the corner from a stepped up police presence at 23rd and Jackson following the Garfield shooting and only a block from the “Mobile Precinct” truck and camera system the department has parked in the lot since last fall’s driveby shooting that damaged a childcare center full of children and brought community calls for more to be done to address public safety issues in the area.

The killing happened despite the increased number of officers in the area. The deadly gunshots could be clearly heard during an officer’s radio call with East Precinct dispatch as police were making a delayed response to a reported altercation in the area. Continue reading

Massive art donation comes with a $25M gift for 12th Ave — plans for a new Seattle University Museum of Art

(Image: Seattle University)

Dick Hedreen (Image: Yosef Kalinko/Seattle University)

A 12th Ave Seattle University parking lot could become a new art museum and the center of the school’s art holdings as property developer Dick Hedreen has announced he is gifting his family’s 200-piece, $300 million collection of paintings, pottery, photography, etchings, and sculptures to the Jesuit university on the southern edge of Capitol Hill.

The rare handover comes with a $25 million donation to begin the development of the Seattle University Museum of Art, “a teaching museum that will showcase centuries of art history and be a true learning extension of the classroom,” Seattle U says. Continue reading

Affordable housing champion Chopp stepping aside in the 43rd — Shaun Scott announces run

Chopp at the recent 43rd District Town Hall

(Image: Statewide Poverty Action Network)

A progressive Democrat and champion of affordable housing who held off repeated challenges from the left, Frank Chopp announced this week he will not seek reelection to the state House of Representatives and is bringing three decades representing the 43rd District in Olympia to an end.

“I’ve always been driven by the belief that everyone deserves a foundation of home, health, and hope,” Chopp said in his announcement. “These are the basic needs for economic success, for better education outcomes, for restoring lives and reaching potential. I am proud to have played a role in helping people throughout Washington gain access to services and support that help them gain independence and realize their dreams.”

Shaun Scott of the Statewide Poverty Action Network who lost his 2019 race against Alex Pedersen to represent the University District on the Seattle City Council has announced a run for the now open 43rd District seat.

Chopp’s final political race in 2022 turned out to be an anticlimax. CHS reported here on the Democratic leaders in Capitol Hill’s state legislative district running unopposed. In recent reelection races, Chopp’s biggest political battles have been fending off younger, hugely more progressive challengers in the primary including community organizer and sex worker Sherae Lascelles in 2020. Chopp was also able to make a stand against upstart Socialist Alternative candidates including his 2012 defeat of Kshama Sawant which put her on her path to a decade at Seattle City Hall.

Along the way, Chopp has faced only tepid competition from Republican challengers. Continue reading

On day of gun violence in the Central District, woman shot and killed near 23rd and Jackson

A woman was shot and killed Wednesday night on S Main just blocks from a shooting earlier in the day outside Garfield High School and around the corner from where an October 2023 driveby damaged a child care center and brought citywide attention to ongoing gun violence around 23rd and Jackson.

The Seattle Police Department says the woman was found down on the sidewalk along S Main near 24th Ave after gunfire was heard by police in the area just after 8 PM. The gunshots could be heard clearly during an officer’s radio call with dispatch.

Police were called to 23rd and Jackson earlier in the night to a reported assault related to the shooting.

Arriving officers attempted life-saving measures until Seattle Fire Department arrived. “Despite all life-saving efforts, the woman died at the scene,” SPD reports. Continue reading