Here are the top stories from this week in CHS history:
2021
Welcome to ‘Phase Everybody’ Seattle, where half of you already have at least your first shot
Monthly Archives: April 2022
Neko, Capitol Hill’s first cat cafe, is now Capitol Hill’s first *kitten* cafe
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(Image: Neko)
By Peiqing Ren, UW News Lab/Special to CHS
Capitol Hill’s first and only cat cafe has survived the pandemic and has changed up its adoption model. Neko — at the corner of Belmont and Pine — is now a kitten cafe.
“With the kittens, they’ve been very really easy to adopt out,” Neko general manager Caitlin Hanson told CHS earlier this year. “In the last month, we probably adopted out 30 kittens.”
As it reopened from the pandemic late last year, the original Capitol Hill Neko adopted a new mode of accepting healthy cats. A partnership with a regional shelter began sending adult cats to the sister Neko location in Bellingham while kittens were sent separately to the Seattle one.
“We act as a foster home for them,” said Katie Hurlbut, an employee at Neko.
The original Neko opened on Capitol Hill in 2017. The basement cafe at the corner of Pine and Belmont draws a crowd of passersby getting a peek at the kittens at play — and often sleeping — inside. Continue reading
With only one org stepping forward, Seattle selects administrator for $30M participatory budgeting process born out of 2020 protests
Seattle found only one candidate to run the city’s new $30 million participatory budgeting process. They got the job.
The Office of Civil Rights announced that a bid from the national Participatory Budgeting Project advocacy group has been selected to serve as the third-party administrator on the newly formed effort to shape a $30 million package hoped to address inequity by creating a system of more direct control of community spending in Seattle.
“Although we had hoped for more applicants, we were pleased to see a proposal from PBP, who were engaged in the application process and showed a deep understanding and experience with a community led PB process,” the announcement reads.
CHS reported here last summer on the Seattle City Council’s decision to pursue growing the city’s Participatory Budgeting resources under the Office of Civil Rights, breaking a logjam over what department might lead the effort forward.
The initiative was born along with the Black Brilliance Research Project out of 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle. The $30 million falls under a $100 million package earmarked to address equity in the city by then-Mayor Jenny Durkan during 2020’s unrest in the city. Continue reading
With plans for ‘early summer’ reopening of Capitol Hill drive-in, Dick’s brings its burger and shake food truck to Broadway
(Image: Dick’s Drive-ins)
Yes, your wait for Dick’s is going to be a little bit… longer. The iconic Seattle burger chain says its revised timeline for the reopening of its Broadway drive-in is now early summer. To help tide you over, the Dick’s Food Truck will be making visits to Capitol Hill.
Friday, the truck and its menu of burgers and shakes will be back on Broadway for a 11 AM to 2 PM visit near the currently under construction drive-in. It made a no fooling April 1st visit last week to kick-off its Broadway stops. You can keep track of the Dick’s truck schedule here. Continue reading
Man reportedly struck by Metro bus in E Madison construction zone — UPDATE
A man suffered a “severe impact” and was taken to the hospital after he was struck and briefly trapped under a Metro route 11 bus Thursday morning near 17th and Madison, a busy intersection in the middle of the E Madison bus rapid transit construction project.
According to Seattle Fire, the 65-year-old was treated at the scene and taken to Harborview in stable condition. He suffered abrasions and was suffering lower back pain and a possible chest injury, according to Seattle Fire radio updates on the just before 11:15 AM incident. Continue reading
Homeless, gay, vulnerable: March murders echo with Capitol Hill’s cold cases past
Broadway Hill Park (Image: CHS)
Before Jonathan Caradonna was stabbed and killed on a Saturday morning last month on Capitol Hill’s 13th Ave E, he had mostly called the neighborhood’s Broadway Hill Park his home.
Some living nearby remember Caradonna as a peaceful resident in the neighborhood even through uprooting events like city clearances of the small Capitol Hill park.
Wood
Caradonna
11 years earlier, a woman walking her dog around sunrise spotted Zachary Lewis sprawled out in a vacant lot on the corner that is now Broadway Hills. He had been beaten to death. More than a decade later, the investigation into Lewis’s killing remains open.
If last month’s two killings of gay men living homeless on Capitol Hill fade into Seattle Police’s cold case files, they will join a sad list of unsolved murders of victims living on the edges on the neighborhood’s streets.
Caradonna, 32, died Saturday, March 19th after suffering multiple stab wounds in an assault near 13th Ave E.
Brent Wood, 31, was found beaten to death on the pavement behind the Broadway Rite Aid early on the morning of Thursday, March 3rd.
SPD detectives continue to investigate the March murders and the other cases including Lewis’s stretching over the past decade remain open, a department spokesperson tells CHS. Continue reading
Concrete strike continues but deliveries restart for West Seattle bridge repairs — other projects like new Volunteer Park amphitheater on hold
(Image: Volunteer Park Trust)
The labor dispute between union concrete workers and Seattle area contractors continues but negotiations have helped at least one of the city’s largest projects move forward as the strike issues are worked out. Meanwhile, many public and private project across the city and Capitol Hill remain on hold while the sides work out.
Teamsters Local 174 is demanding wage hikes to buffer inflation and healthcare benefits for retired workers.
An agreement this week allowed concrete deliveries to resume as repairs on the West Seattle Bridge originally set to be completed in mid-2022 continue. Continue reading
Capitol Hill ‘mini park’ to be cleared amid Seattle’s continued, smaller homeless encampment sweeps
Thanks to a CHS reader for the picture from the mini park
The pace of Seattle homeless encampment sweeps has picked up under Mayor Bruce Harrell’s administration including clearances of small camps sometimes nearly as quickly as they take shape. The new pace will bring a clearance this week of one Capitol Hill encampment apparently formed by an individual camper at the Thomas Street Mini Park.
The latest clearance has been announced for the area around the 300 block Bellevue Ave E park on Thursday morning where city workers and outreach contractors are planned to be on scene to provide assistance and clear away any remaining belongings and debris.
“The City is addressing this encampment as it impedes access to the park and open space for neighboring communities,” a Seattle Parks spokesperson tells CHS about the planned clearance.
It isn’t the first time in the current pandemic wave of Seattle’s homelessness crisis that the park has been swept — CHS reported here on a clearance last September — but the small camp targeted for clearance this time is indicative of the increased and more rapidly deployed resources for removing encampments from public spaces under the Harrell administration as COVID-19 restrictions fade. Continue reading
Three new 8-story buildings and a 7-story throwback on 11th Ave E — Burst of development activity coming to a head after pandemic delays
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🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍
The future of 311 11th Ave E
And the future of 310 11th Ave E across the street
A crop of new eight-story apartment buildings — and a seven-story throwback — is set to rise along two blocks of 11th Ave E in a burst of development activity that will create more than 200 new homes just north of Capitol Hill Station and only a little off Broadway.
True to form for the transit-friendly, densely populated area, none of the four projects include plans for expensive underground motor vehicle parking garages.
Each will also replace either old, single-family style homes and duplexes, or small apartment buildings.
Seeds for the projects have been planted over the last two years with some permitting starting as far back as 2020 as the pandemic first took hold. They involve independent developers, each working on their own timelines, but in a Seattle process heavily shaped by the pandemic delays and, now, a new rush to finish planning and begin construction:
228 11TH AVE E: 7 stories, 71 units, no parking — With a project that started to take shape just as the pandemic began, C&A Development spent $3.3 million on the 1963-built, nine-unit apartment building that will be demolished to make way for the new project. Designed by b9 Architects, the project is wrapping up construction permits for “a highly sustainable building” that prioritizes “the building envelope to reduce the building’s ecological footprint.” Continue reading
Seattle City Council to begin debate on legislation to protect app-based gig workers
(Image: DoorDash)
New legislation that would create labor standards and protections for app-based workers in Seattle has been formally introduced at the City Council and will be part of an event Thursday to build support for the initiative.
CHS reported earlier this year on the “Pay Up” proposal that advocates say would be the first of its kind in the nation and eliminate “sub-minimum wages” for gig workers by guaranteeing a minimum payment amount for “engaged time” and “engaged miles” as the city’s 40,000 or so drivers and couriers make deliveries for the likes of DoorDash, Instacart, and Uber Eats.
Lisa Herbold (District 1 – West Seattle/South Park) and Andrew Lewis (District 7 – Pioneer Square to Magnolia) are scheduled to take part in an event Thursday with advocate groups Working Washington and Seattle Restaurants United to unveil the proposal at City Hall. Continue reading
