With heavy rain forecast to continue into Sunday night from a powerful pineapple express storm, city officials say more than 3 inches fell on Seattle in a 24 hour period pushing gutters to overflow, soaking the ground and increasing the chance for landslides to dangerous levels. Our local source of weather data — a weather station in Volunteer Park — reports just over 2.2 inches of rain in the past 24 hours. You can see graphs of the day and the monthly trend below.

You can see that since around 6 AM, we’ve been getting around 1/4 inch of rain per hour according to the Volunteer Park rain gauge.

Seattle Public Utilities reports that the city is now over the “landslide threshold” increasing the risk of hillside slippage. One report has a hillside along Lake Washington Blvd South causing a blockage on the roadway. Dangerous slides around Capitol Hill are relatively rare but this January 1997 incident in which a townhouse slid a few feet on the side of the Hill above I-5 caused thousands of dollars of damage and lead to legal actions against the city.

Here is a map showing landslides in our area of the city by decade.

A more common risk is rain-heavy trees toppling in the wet soil. So far, no reports of that.

According to a City of Seattle report, the areas of the Hill most at risk for landslide slippage are relatively obvious — west above I-5, north above Eastlake and Montlake and the Interlaken area. Of those three, Interlaken has seen by far the most historical activity, mostly involving shallow, relatively minor slips. The report says Interlaken’s subsurface conditions differ from the other two areas in that its layers of underground clay are more pure and don’t include a sandy mix like you would find if you dug deep under I-5 Shores. The biggest threat for slides historically comes in January as rainfall accumulations build during rainy Novembers and Decembers.

Meanwhile, our area has not suffered any widespread power outages though other parts of the city including West Seattle haven’t been as fortunate. You can track current Seattle City Light outages here.

Flooded streets and sidewalks are currently the biggest rain-driven problem on the Hill. Here are two steps you can take to help keep your street from becoming a lake.

When it comes to the history of Capitol Hill, we know more about the James Moore,  Roy Olmstead and Bertha Landes periods than what happened in the 1990s. Fortunately, we have the CHS comments to give us a picture of the recent past every now and then. With Seattle street food provider Marination Mobile selecting the Harvard Market for its new brick-and-mortar home, there’s been some discussion on the site on just how such a peculiar parking-lot focused structure ever came to be. Here’s one person’s account of how the development of the strange but (mostly) busting commercial center that is the Harvard Market came together. Take it away Motab:

I lived next door in the Firestation Apartments when the whole Harvard Market was planned. The original design was for only a few parking spots on the top level for the condos above Bartell’s (with the vehicle entrance through the “alley”). The rest was a roofgarden-like space with outdoor restaurant seating, food carts, play area for children, fountains, etc. The developers insisted that only high-end retailers would come into the development (Larry’s Market, Pasta & Co., La Spiga).

Soon that all changed. They scrapped the upper plaza design for a parking lot and added the second entrance on Harvard. In a move to keep Larry’s off the Hill, QFC offered them more $$ to go into the space, promising that it would be a new type of QFC–“just like Larry’s Market.” Pasta & Co. eventually pulled out as the developers failed to bring in similar tenants to draw the customer base they had been promised (it was replaced with a Subway sandwich shop).

The whole upper lever is poorly designed. If you look up from Pike Street, you see a whole row of windows. Instead of opening that space up to seating with active street views, they placed the rear service hallway there. All the businesses are oriented to a parking lot. If they had stuck with the original plan, that would have been fine. They could open up outdoor seating in a pleasant plaza setting. But as it is, it might as well be a strip mall on Aurora. In fact, one of the spaces (perhaps the one Marination is going into?) has NEVER been rented.

Hopefully Marination can make a go of it on the upper level. I certainly will give them a… read more y. Good luck!

Granted, Motab’s recollection of “the way things were” may not be the entire story. We’ll dig in a little deeper to see what else we can learn. But we’re betting there may be a few more of you with memory of its development or with knowledge to share in the meantime.

The lot pictured above has room for 77 cars while the parking garage below holds another 215.

According to this 1994 Seattle Times article about the Broadway Market being put up for sale, the Harvard Market was developed by a company called Milliken Development Corp.:

The announcement comes a few months after the news that Milliken Development Corp. of Vancouver, B.C., plans to develop a 91,000-square-foot retail project several blocks south at Broadway and Pike. The development, called Harvard Market, will be anchored by a QFC supermarket and is scheduled to open in December 1995.

According to this 2004 Daily Journal of Commerce article, the developer was also responsible for the Marketplace at Queen Anne development. The article describes the residential aspect of the plans for the Harvard Market that Motab described — but it seems to make the case that parking was always an important part of the plan:

On the drawing board at the same time as the Marketplace was the award-winning Harvard Market, located in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Serving a densely populated area, this urban concept is a mixed-use of retail and residential, with a 46,000-square-foot QFC supermarket, a 15,000-square-foot Bartell Drugs store and an additional 25 shops. Again, the parking dilemma was solved by constructing ample underground and surface spaces.

These two projects were zoned for residential and Milliken was approached by several local developers to build housing on top of the retail clusters. “It wasn’t my original intention,” he said, “but we did incorporate condos in the Harvard Market and the concept has evolved and led us to developing more true mixed-use projects.”

Milliken has since helped Vulcan bring Whole Foods to Westlake, among other massive projects.

One interesting aspect at Harvard Market is that some of the businesses own their portion of the structure in a condominium set-up along with two residential units. Here’s the breakdown according to King County:

You’ll note some names from Seattle’s business world on the roster with David Jassny of Service Linen Supply and art gallery proprietor Greg Kucera on the door buzzer list.

It appears from county records the joint venture formed to develop the property sold off portions of the development for around $23.5 million over two years beginning in 1997.

That same year, the City of Seattle allowed the opening of a Burger King on the upper level of the development despite opposition from the community. 19 letters were sent into city planners about a change of use application required to allow the fast food restaurant — all of them in opposition to approval based on concerns around traffic, litter and smell. The city approved the change with conditions and Burger King moved in.

Fast forward more than 13 years to a new step in the lifecycle. We’re assuming there will be no letters of opposition to Marination Mobile.

Legs, originally uploaded by Chat Noir Photographie.

1400 East Pike’s American Artificial Limb Company has long been on the CHS list of things we need to check into. Is it for real or some kind of true speakeasy? A front for a FBI operation to infiltrate the neighborhood? If it’s phony, Chat Noir’s photos recently submitted to the CHS Flickr pool show the perpetrators are putting extra work to make the place look authentic.

AALC also has a Web site that describes the business thusly:

Our goal is to provide you with the highest quality service that meets your individual needs. This service to you is provided in concert with your physician and in cooperative spirit with the rest of the rehabilitation team. We strive to understand your individual needs so that we can provide a service which is educational, caring, and motivating. Treatments are performed in a positive, supportive, and comfortable atmosphere.

Site also says they’ve been in the artificial limb business since 1971. We’re now doubly intrigued. Moving AALC to the top of our ‘check into’ list.

Many hundreds of kids and their families came streaming into Miller Community Center this morning, for the annual holiday party: games, gifts, photos with Santa and a holiday meal. 

Preliminary count from Laury: 1,662 kids!

(Here’s a VIDEO of kids on the bouncy toy in the Miller gym)

Special thanks to:

• Lake Street Catering for volunteering their efforts to cater the event, and to their volunteer helpers
• Rick’s Toys for Kids for all the toys
• all the volunteers who helped wrap presents, organize games, and keep the party running smoothly (and a special thank you to those who helped clean up)
• Miller Community Center staff who all went over and above the call of duty (and came in extra early) to ensure that the party went off so smoothly
• CHS Seattle for helping me recruit volunteers via a couple of featured posts
• Laury McKeen of Country Doctor, who runs the whole show and works harder than anyone else (IMHO)

BTW I ran into an interesting similar event being hosted at Nova School, adjacent to Miller,  at the same time:

Gifts for Kids is a program that began as a thought in Vance Bartley’s mind, a former 3-Striker.  He simply wanted gifts to be in the hands of kids who have a parent or guardian incarcerated who may not be available to provide gifts to their children.  He wanted the kids to have a festive day to spend with their family and others as well.

Here’s a report on their 2009 event.  Their event was the weekend after the Miller event last year: we’ll try and coordinate with them next year!

Here are a few holiday scenes from around the neighborhood on a rainy December Saturday.

The Pike n’ Pine holiday sale  continues Saturday night at many merchants and on Sunday. If you were out and about, tell us what you found.

Give a smart gift! Did you know foreign language ability helps kids with cognitive and basic skills such as math and English literacy? Nurture your child’s natural ability for language learning when they are most able to absorb it at a young age. It’s green, it’s smart and it opens our eyes to the world.

New Polly-Glot Tots Spanish and Mandarin classes start January 13

^th at the Miller Community Center. Visit www.pollyglottots.com for full schedule and registration information. Write to [email protected] to gift a language class.

Nothing says bah humbug! to a commercial strip than an empty retail space. In a program designed to activate empty spaces created by light rail construction on the Hill — including turning the empty Broadway Jack in the Box into a gallery at one point — Sound Transit is hiring artists to create installations in empty Broadway retail spaces. The first is now installed in the southeast corner of the Joule building at Broadway and Republican.

The works is a collaboration of artists Sam Trout, Celeste Cooning, Paul D McKee, and Matthew Parker. You can learn more about the installation and see several more pictures here. Artist Trout has also posted about the project:

Yes, that is Donner

I was asked by Seattle Sound Transit and the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce to art direct a window installation to help brighten up some of the vacant spaces on Broadway. This week I was blessed to work with my good friend Matthew Parker and top Seattle artists Celeste Cooning and Paul D McKee.

It started with a meeting with DK Pan who told me about the project and asked me to be involved. My lovely lady Emma Lavin reminded me that I had been wanting to do an installation that uses the Ice Queen Dresses that were made for the 2010 Fremont Solstice Parade. That got my mind working on a vision and over the next couple of days I knew who I wanted to work with and exactly how I wanted it to look. I contacted the artists and in about three days we were able to get the pieces together and install this winter wonderland that we are all very proud of.

In the past, CHS has tried to bring you word of calls for artists on these projects but we found out about this holiday project during a Broadway stroll. If you’re interested in being part of the Sound Transit art program, check out http://www.soundtransit.org/Projects-Home/STart-Public-Art-Program.xml

To celebrate the launch of a new fashion display, a Capitol Hill art gallery is offering 15% off “all new and vintage clothing items and accessories” this weekend as part of the Saturday/Sunday Pike n’ Pine neighborhood holiday sale . 15% off sales aren’t necessarily the first way you might think of to promote a new show but it’s true: Capitol Hill development edged out a generation of artists and arts groups as the economy of Pike Pine and nearby streets has shifted to focus on retail, food and drink. If you look closely, however, a new generation is infiltrating this space with a sneaky new mix of art and commerce.

It freaks some of the old school and new school art types out, to be sure, but they gallery space is becoming a shopping space on Capitol Hill. And shopping spaces are becoming gallery spaces. And food and drink spaces are becoming both. Pun(c)tuation gallery’s move — and plenty of others — are a sign of things to come (or for you in-the-knows, things that came). Here’s more on pun(c)tuation’s new pop-up shop up debuting — and more on a few of Capitol Hill’s new shopping/food/drink/art/etc. spaces hosting special events this weekend.

• Tarboo pop-up at pun(c)tuation — 705A E Pike St

Pun(c)tuation, a destination for art lovers and creative makers of all kinds, has remodeled it’s backroom for the launch of its first official in-house clothing line this month, designed in collaboration with Tarboo, Inc. Available now in-store and online at www.tarbooinc.com, the collection of classic men’s shirts are “Built by Hand to Last” and emphasize quality construction and a flattering fit at an affordable price.

The Pun(c)tuation by Tarboo collection currently offers several variations made from locally-sourced wool and cotton fabrics, including the Hunting Shirt in contrasting or solid options, and the Staple Shirt, available in several unique plaid color combinations. The shirts (priced from $88 – $108) are cut to sit comfortably on the shoulders, with a slim fit and body that doesn’t restrict chest movement. Sleeves have a gentle, tailored feel, with a single button and notched cuff.

All clothing is hand-sewn in Seattle, using time-honored standards and industrial grade machines. The use of limited edition, seconds and deadstock fabrics, means each collection is unique, available in limited quantities, and for a limited period of time. Future plans include a wider range of men’s shirts and the addition of women’s wear.

This collection is the result of an organic collaboration between the creative director of pun(c)tuation, Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, and Tarboo, Inc. founder Matt Noren, a local tailor and artisan who learned to sew in New York’s historic Garment District. Noren was drawn to the ethos of sustainable consumption that pun(c)tuation believes in and said, “I think the healthiest and most successful businesses create sustainable ecosystems all the way from sourcing to product delivery. This line combines two of my passions: high-quality shirts made ethically by hand and Tarboo Bay, a unique self-sustaining ecosystem on the Olympic Peninsula that embodies the love and respect I have for the natural environment.”

• Gallery Shop at Ghost Gallery — 504 E. Denny Way
• Twinsistr Vintage Trunkshow at Faire Gallery and Cafe — 1351 East Olive Way
  Vintage trunk show 11a to 2p
• Gray Pants pop-up at Pearl Apartments — 1530 15th Avenue
  “Enjoy our Holiday happy hours this weekend from 5-7. Relax with some PBR, champagne, music and a furniture pop-up store from graypants, inc”
• Indoor Craft Fair at Scenic Drive E. Pike Factory —  611 E. Pike St.
  “Scenic Drive E. Pike Factory is hosting an indoor holiday market the weekend of December 11th-12th”