Monthly Archives: November 2016

Long live the Capitol Hill IHOP

Posted on by

Front of the Capitol Hill IHOP

Capitol Hill can be rough on chain and franchise restaurants but one legend of breakfast for dinner cheap eats persists.

E Madison’s IHOP is not dead.

Sandeep Singh, owner of the two IHOP franchise locations in Seattle, tells CHS his restaurant is temporarily closed for a remodel. He says he acquired the businesses about three years ago and recently completed a similar overhaul to the Aurora IHOP.

Land in the area of the E Madison restaurant is at a premium as the last available chunks are being snapped up by developers. CHS reported on the recent acquisition of the lot next to Optimism Brewing for a planned seven-story apartment building.

As for what is in store for the syrup powered E Madison location just off Broadway across from the hungry and cheap students of Seattle U, Singh said you are going to love it.

“It will be beautiful.”

IHOP #602 is planned to reopen in about 10 days at 950 E Madison.

City wants solution for closed Lowell Elementary ‘S Path’ by end of month

Posted on by
Raise your hand if you’re ready to move on from this issue (Images: CHS)

City of Seattle officials said Thursday night they intend to have a plan pounded out with Seattle Public Schools by the end of November for what happens next to the “S Path,” the curving public sidewalk between Federal and 11th Ave E that has been fenced off since the start of adjacent Lowell Elementary’s school year.

“We don’t take the situation we have at the path lightly,” Genesee Adkins, chief of staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation, said Thursday at the second of two community meetings to discuss solutions for the path that was closed following complaints about discarded drug needles, and garbage and human waste along the leafy path next to the school. Continue reading →

CHS Pics | In Cal Anderson, ‘the owls are not what they seem’

Posted on by

https://www.instagram.com/p/BMYKF7Mg_lk/

Neighborhood shutterbug Roy Powell captured a beautiful visitor to Cal Anderson Park Thursday night. This snowy barred owl seems to have sat on this park bench before. Powell said he spotted the bird around 10:30 PM.

In November of 2012, a female yearling snowy owl showed up on 11th Ave making a meal of an ill-fated gull. That young owl required rescue and, after rehabilitation, was released back to the wild in a well-attended celebration at Volunteer Park.

While barred owls make areas around the Hill their permanent homes, the snowy owl is a seasonal visitor to an area as far south as Seattle. Young snowy owls — like many others — regularly return to Washington and points south to winter during the harshest months of life in the Arctic. They are daytime hunters so keep your eyes open and head swiveling. At night, they apparently like to hang out and watch the world go by from a park bench.

UPDATE: Never trust a journalist to ID birds. What about barred owls, you ask? The barred birds are of a mammal-like bulk (21″ tall) “and relatively unfazed by human presence–they will stretch, emit wisdom, yawn, gambol, sleep, be serene, faire la toilette, hunt, etc. within 10-15 feet of a person.”

City adding crosswalk at Capitol Hill intersection where fatal collision occurred

Posted on by
(Image: @donghochang via Twitter)
(Image: @donghochang via Twitter)

The headline above is not entirely accurate. The intersection where Max Richards was struck and killed by a driver at Belmont and Bellevue in September was already a “crosswalk,” a crossing where it is legal and should be safe to cross the street on this sloping hillside below Broadway. The Seattle Department of Transportation is now adding a painted crosswalk and curb buffer to make the area safer.

We have asked SDOT for more information about the markings and why this configuration of elements was chosen. UPDATE: SDOT says the marked “ladder style” crosswalk and the curb area markings will be the extent of this update to the streetscape where the collision occurred. Signage including the iconic “walking person” will be added to help drivers be aware.

SDOT’s Matt Beaulieu tells CHS an assessment of the area’s need for a crosswalk was already underway before Richards’s death. A second analysis began in the wake of the tragedy to look at other possible changes for the street. Beaulieu said that the count of pedestrians who cross at the intersection met the threshold for crosswalk installation and the volume and speed of drivers in the area was sampled “to determine what else would be appropriate.” At this point, Beaulieu said the new markings and signs will be the extent of the additions. Expect the work to be completed later this month provided enough dry days for the paint job.  Continue reading →

Five years of Capitol Hill high expectations at Altura

Posted on by

img_7004img_7009
Ask chef Nathan Lockwood of Capitol Hill’s Altura how he’s managed to consistently hit the lofty targets of the fine dining world for five years running, week in and week out, and you get a gently bemused look that says: Dude.

“It’s what I do,” he replies. “Twenty-four years I’ve been doing this. It’s just a habit at this point. It’s what I do every day.”

And every day it gets more demanding. “Guest expectations are higher. My expectations for ourselves are higher. The cooks’ expectations of me are higher.”

Nathan and his wife Rebecca, Altura’s business manager, launched their restaurant on north Broadway in October 2011, offering Italian-inspired dishes based on seasonal Northwest ingredients. A current sample menu includes the likes of Salt Spring Island mussels smoked with madrona bark, shaved matsutake mushroom with a spicy Dungeness crab brodo, and a ragu of wild boar.

Altura started out busy on opening night. Then it grew even busier. Continue reading →

Budget update: 8 City Council tweaks to budget include reversing mayor’s drug arrest diversion cuts

Posted on by

budget-process-updateA proposed cutback on the city’s Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program that expanded to SPD’s East Precinct on Capitol Hill in 2016 will be restored in proposed changes to the Seattle budget put forward by the City Council this week.

District 3 representative Kshama Sawant sponsored the proposed $150,000 budget line item’s “green sheet” addition to the 2017 spending plan.

This Green Sheet would add $150,000 GSF in 2017 and $150,000 GSF in 2018 to the Human Services Department (HSD) for the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) program. LEAD expanded to East Precinct in 2016; this funding would keep LEAD’s City-funded portion of its budget at the same level ($960,000).

LEAD is a pre-booking program that places qualifying drug use suspects into counseling instead of jail.

CHS wrote about Mayor Ed Murray’s 2017-2018 budget plan from a Capitol Hill perspective here. Council members have bristled at the mayor’s plan to slice back LEAD spending as well as his homeless spending plan.

Below are eight tweaks to the mayor’s plan being carried forward by the council members. You can take a look at all 104 proposed budget updates here.

  1. Fund the LEAD program: Add $150,000 GSF in 2017 and 2018 to HSD for the LEAD program Continue reading →

Remove I-5

Posted on by

Tuesday night, the Lid I-5 volunteer group (lidi5.org) achieved an important milestone with an invitation to present in front of the Washington State Convention Center board of directors to “share their work on community engagement, their motivations and goals, and how the Convention Center can contribute to making the vision a reality.” CHS reported in September on the group’s progress as it pursues the inclusion of funding for a lid study in the public benefits the planned expansion of the convention center must deliver.

But when it comes to addressing the rift created by having a major freeway bisecting the city and keeping Capitol Hill neighbors from more freely mixing with their downtown brothers and sisters, maybe simply lidding I-5 isn’t enough. Maybe the massive freeway canyon should be filled and the city repaired:

For several hours a days, the freeway and extensive network of interchanges are gridlocked into a major obstacle rather than an asset. And to make the loss all the worse, the land adjacent to Downtown, South Lake Union, and Eastlake is extremely valuable. If you haven’t noticed, land in those neighborhood is worth a crazy amount of money. The Seattle Times got $62.5 million for two full blocks it sold to Onni Group in 2013. Removing I-5 between I-90 and SR-520 would free up more than 50 blocks by my rough calculation, which could mean more than a billion dollars worth of land. Stricken with budget shortages, Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) might be forced to sell off Downtown Seattle land to finance its tireless efforts in suburbia.

What could Capitol Hill and our Central Seattle neighborhoods gain in the cauterization?

Eastlake and South Lake Union flow smoothy into Capitol Hill without I-5 in the way. First Hill suddenly becomes integrated with Downtown and Pioneer Square, providing much easier and more pleasant pedestrian access. The hole blasted in the International District disappears. Intersections that used to cause big problems for bus reliability like Denny Way and I-5 would move more steadily rather than getting backed up from on-ramp traffic. And in I-5’s absence, Sound Transit’s growing light rail network can pick up the slack to carry commuters Downtown.

Check out the whole thing here: What’s Better Than A Lid? Remove I-5 Entirely From Central Seattle.

Jackson’s Catfish Corner returns to the Central District

Posted on by
Terrell Jackson (Images: Alex Garland for CHS)

Terrell Jackson (Images: Alex Garland for CHS)

Terrell Jackson was busy so we’ll leave it to a mother’s pride to describe what it feels like for her family’s business to come home.

“He brought it back with our name on it,” Evelyn Jackson told CHS Wednesday night inside the new home of Jackson’s Catfish Corner at 123 21st Ave S.

“He’s the man.” Continue reading →

Classic Capitol Hill apartment building slated for seismic upgrades at 17th/John

Posted on by

The Whitworth Apartments (Image: Cadence Real Estate)

The Whitworth Apartments (Image: Cadence Real Estate)

(Image: Whitworth Apartments)

Pre-WWII brick apartment buildings are part and parcel of Capitol Hill’s charm. Many also need expensive upgrades to ensure they don’t collapse in an inevitable future earthquake.

As the City of Seattle continues to slowly push forward requirements for seismic retrofitting, the new owner of the 56-unit Whitworth Apartments building says he decided to get the work done before the big one hits (not to mention the likely cost-savings of doing the upgrade before a retrofitting law is passed, which will send building owners clamoring for contractors).

Peter Goldman, a longtime Seattle resident, purchased the 17th and E John “unreinforced masonry” building this summer for $18.2 million, property records show. He told CHS his family had recently sold several properties out-of-state and decided to reinvest the money in two Seattle apartment buildings. The U.S. tax code encourages such reinvestments by delaying the capital gains tax.

“The only responsible thing to do is to prepare it for an earthquake,” Goldman said. “I don’t want to wait to be told what to do. I want to do the right thing.” Continue reading →

Seattle Times: ‘Seattle needs a renters’ commission to include more voices in policymaking’

Posted on by

Of the many ideas that emerged during September’s Capitol Hill Renter Summit, the call for a louder, more permanent voice for the city’s tenants came through most clearly. Recently, Capitol Hill Housing’s Joe Sisolak and the Capitol Hill Community Council’s Zachary DeWolf spilled some ink in the Seattle Times in an essay calling for the creation of a Seattle renters’ commission. We’ve shared the piece, below. To get involved, check out facebook.com/CapitolHillEcoDistrict/ for upcoming meetings and events.

Seattle needs a renters’ commission to include more voices in policymaking
By Zachary DeWolf and Joel Sisolak

WHEN Seattle Mayor Ed Murray cut formal ties with the neighborhood district-council system in July, he pointed to the fact that they did not reflect the full diversity of their neighborhoods. District council officers and attendees, the mayor said, tended to be 40 years or older, white, with the vast majority owning their homes, as opposed to renting.

If the mayor wants more diverse voices at the table, there is one idea that is generating support: Form a citywide “renters’ commission.” Continue reading →