Monthly Archives: January 2022

Also at Midtown Square, 138 affordable units and an All the Best Pet Care

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A promotion picture for the new Midtown Square apartment units. Of the more than 400 units available, 138 are income restricted (Image: Midtown Square)

(Image: All The Best Pet Care)

What goes into developing a for-profit, mixed-use apartment complex in the core of Seattle and a neighborhood with communities striving to address crises around displacement and gentrification? CHS reported details today of Midtown Square’s unique anchor tenant — Arté Noir arts center — at the center of the project.

But the development will also fill simpler needs in the area. The latest new business joining the project will make residents lined up for the pet-friendly apartment units and surrounding neighbors with furry friends happy. Construction permits have been filed for a new All The Best Pet Care to join the 23rd Ave side of the project. The chain has 15 other locations around the city including one on E Madison.

The new shop will join Arté Noir and a mix of neighborhood and BIPOC-owned businesses including a second location of the Jerk Shack Caribbean restaurant on the edge of the development’s internal plaza, So Beautiful Salon from Shavonne Bland, a Central District resident and Garfield High grad, along 23rd Ave, a new home for Raised Doughnuts on 24th Ave, and a new home for neighborhood bar The Neighbor Lady.

Meanwhile, leasing has begun on Midtown Square’s 428 market-rate and affordable apartment units, surrounding a quasi-public central plaza, and above a huge underground parking garage. Continue reading →

‘Capitol Hill Community Center’ — Times reports on Seattle’s short-lived plan to transfer the East Precinct before CHOP formed

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June 13th, 2020 (Image: CHS)

In late June of 2020, the few local media including CHS on the ground at the CHOP occupied protest around Cal Anderson and the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct at 12th and Pine reported on a Friday night meeting in the middle of the demonstrations held at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church and attended by activists, city officials, and then Mayor Jenny Durkan.

Included in the talks as officials discussed addressing demands over equity and police brutality in the wake of the George Floyd murder were ideas around the future of the East Precinct building itself. Five days later, Seattle Police would raid and clear chop under order from Durkan.

New reporting by the Seattle Times shows that the city was already considering options for the East Precinct weeks earlier before the CHOP camps formed that included handing over the building to Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County, an advocacy group that formed during the unrest of 2020 and presented the city with a roster of demands hoped to help quiet the streets after a week of heavy protest in Seattle in early June 2020. Though BLMSKC was not directly involved in organizing the largest protests that week, many activists were also calling for creating a “Capitol Hill Community Center” in the building with mutual aid, health, and care resources. Continue reading →

Arté Noir arts center creating a space to grow ‘Black art, artists, and culture’ at 23rd and Union

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This work from artist Takiyah Ward will grace the development’s central square — “A past, present, future timeline of what was, what is and what can be if people look to humanity and treat their neighbors as they would themselves want to be treated. To tell the colorful history of this block with images and words that have stood the tests of time and aided in the perseverance of all who encounter them. To tell the truth of our past, live in our present and set intentions for the future.” (Image: Midtown Square)

Myron Curry’s portraits — including this image of CD legend DeCharlene Williams of the Central Area Chamber of Commerce and D’Charlene’s — grace the building’s 23rd Ave-facing street front (Image: Midtown Square)

Construction is nearly complete on the Midtown Square apartment complex. Leasing for the mix of market rate and affordable apartments is beginning. And Arté Noir, a new Central District arts center focused on “Black art, artists, and culture,” is getting ready to fill the core ground floor commercial space, a one of a kind “anchor tenant” for the new development.

“Honing in on the vision, creating a business structure that takes us from a lease to ownership at the end of the lease, and raising the needed funds to support the plan we have for creating a permanent home for Black arts and culture in a reparative wealth generating structure, have all been challenging,” founder and editor-in-chief of Arté Noir Vivian Phillips said.

With the launch of an online magazine in May 2021, Arté Noir formed as a way to bring attention to the city’s creators and is now preparing to bring the same spirit to a real world center with room for art, artists, and the community.

Arté Noir seeks to contribute to Black culture in the Central District. “Being from the Central District and having watched the numerous changes, I want the message to be that Black culture remains a significant part of the foundation and fabric of this community,” Phillips said.

CHS reported late last year on the unique set of circumstances that led developer Lake Union Partners to tab Phillips and the arts center and gallery plan for the Midtown project’s key retail space after years of planning for a major drugstore chain. Continue reading →

City holding workshops for funding for community projects big and small

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Estelita’s Library's new sign hangs outside its new location

A 2021 grant winner in the CD (Image: Estelita’s Library)

City Hall is ready again in 2022 to help you build community in your neighborhood or a neighborhood in your Seattle community with projects ranging from a few hundred bucks to $50,000 investments.

Upcoming workshops can help you sort out options for the two Neighborhood Matching Fund programs — the Community Partnership Fund provides funding up to $50,000 for larger projects including art installations and parks improvements while the Small Sparks Fund grants are distributed on a rolling basis and can be used for everything from neighborhood block parties to clean-ups: Continue reading →

With behind the scenes challenges and financial turmoil for the arts, Intiman Theatre ready for Capitol Hill debut

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Intiman and Seattle Central’s partnership offers an associate of arts degree, allowing for students and union members to work alongside another on mainstage productions (Image: Intiman)

costume designer Pete Rush puts the finishing touches on Jesse Calixto’s dress for the Irma Vep production (Image: Intiman)

By Danielle Marie Holland

In the face of the pandemic, Capitol Hill’s theater community is trying to grow. This February, Intiman Theatre debuts its first production in its new home on Capitol Hill. This will be Intiman’s first stage production since COVID cast theaters across the country into darkness — and first on Harvard Ave.

It comes amid a backdrop of huge challenges for Seattle arts organizations and financial tumult for crucial public services that have its new partner Seattle Central seeking new paths to overcome deepening budgetary shortfalls.

Intiman Theatre is now ready to kick off its first production since the “before times” with The Mystery of Irma Vep – A Penny Dreadful directed by Jasmine Joshua, and staged at The Erickson Theatre Off-Broadway.

“I can pretty much speak for all theatre artists, that the last few years have been pretty devastating,” director Joshua tells CHS. Continue reading →

This week in CHS history | 2019 snow, The Stranger leaves Hill, R Place loses lease, goodbye to Basic Plumbing

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

2021

 

It will be affordable and environmentally innovative but here’s why a neighbor is fighting plans for the cross-laminated timber Heartwood Apartments

Capitol Hill gay club R Place loses lease and begins search for new home


Continue reading →

The dream of a Pike/Pine pinball arcade bar is alive as Time Warp ready to become reality on 10th Ave

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A Capitol Hill dream hatched just as the COVID nightmare was beginning is on its way to becoming a reality some two years later. Can the reality of a Pike/Pine pinball arcade bar live up to our pandemic fantasies?

We’re looking forward to finding out.

A nightclub liquor license for the project now called Time Warp has been applied for on the 10th Ave side of the Jack Apartments at the address of the project CHS first reported on in February of 2020 from a group of friends and game connoisseurs hoping to make their contribution to Capitol Hill’s arcade community. Continue reading →

‘No community college in the system has closed its doors’ — Seattle Central will face more cutbacks and reductions as enrollment plunge continues — UPDATE

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Last year’s graduation was held in a socially distanced celebration on top of the school’s Harvard Ave parking garage

Capitolhillseattle.com/Source: Seattle Colleges

Seattle Central will not be shutting down its campus, closing its doors, and ending its run of 56 years of providing education on Capitol Hill.

But tough numbers will mean hard decisions.

The Broadway school is experiencing ongoing challenges that echo with familiar problems of the pandemic.

Lives have been turned upside down, behaviors have changed, priorities are altered. Falling enrollment and challenging budget forecasts will mean changes with the campus and its siblings in the Seattle Colleges system. The problems are not new and have dragged on since the first COVID restrictions. A “Strategic Budget Reductions and Future Planning Task Force” completed its work long ago.

But the trends have stiffened.

“The declining enrollment trends that necessitated the task force’s work have worsened this year, placing us under greater financial stress,” Terence Hsiao, vice chancellor of finance and operations at Seattle Colleges tells CHS.

The school’s student-run news outlet The Seattle Collegian reported on some of the latest tumult including some play by play of Hsiao’s recent videoconference recapping the system’s financial challenges — and an eye-catching headline: Seattle Central to close its doors in 2023?

The answer, of course, is no… probably. School officials tell CHS there are no plans to close the college. Continue reading →

‘21%’ — Study puts numbers to COVID’s impacts on arts funding

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A Seattle-based advocacy and support group for nonprofit arts organization has attempted to quantify just how devastating the pandemic has been for the city’s cultural organizations and artists.

According to the study from ArtsFund, across 121 reporting organizations, there was a 21% decrease in overall revenue in 2020 as the pandemic and COVID restrictions shuttered venues, closed down productions, and canceled events and showings. Continue reading →

Once notorious for its E Olive Way sign, Capitol Hill’s Amante Pizza has closed

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(Image: Amante Pizza and Pasta)

Capitol Hill’s Amante Pizza and Pasta has closed taking its relatively affordable pies and memories of its notorious flashing E Olive Way sign with it.

CHS reported here on the 2018 closure of the E Olive Way Amante to make way for an overhaul for a new pot shop.

It turned out, the restaurant’s outsized flashing electronic sign was also shut down and removed. Cannabis retailer Reef opened in the building later that year with downstairs neighbor La Rue Creperie and Espresso joining the mix in 2020. Continue reading →