The former Polyclinic facility
There will be no emergency pause in the legislative process around funding the planned $56 million Broadway Crisis Care Center. Officials Wednesday said time is already on the side of answering public safety concerns and putting important new resources in place before the center’s planned opening at Broadway and Union in 2027.
Questions about millions of dollars to be paid to a real estate firm intermediary in the sale agreement also need to be answered.
But there is urgency for people struggling with mental health in the city. “There are very few places in King County they can walk into. Because of this, they are suffering in our streets,” committee member and King County Executive candidate Girmay Zahilay said Wednesday before the votes.
Wednesday, the King County Council’s budget committee approved a raft of ordinances to set up the fund that will pay for the acquisition and operation of the new levy-powered mental health crisis center at Broadway and Union part of a planned $1.25 billion network of five facilities across the county.
The votes keep the process around the planned center on track as key deadlines arrive in the purchase agreement with UnitedHealth Group’s Optum subsidiary. The county’s Department of Community and Human Services said previously a purchase and sale agreement was put in place for the former Polyclinic facility in January with hopes of closing the deal by the end of summer.
CHS reported here on a call for a pause on the legislation from a group of area property owners and businesses.
Wednesday’s votes followed a public comment session dominated by the concerns raised by the group around public safety at the planned center near Seattle University and just a few blocks from the private Seattle Academy middle and high schools.
Questions were also raised about the project’s outreach process and a millions of dollar fee being paid to a real estate firm in the middle of the dealings.
Wednesday, officials made assurances during Wednesdays proceedings around public safety and outreach in the shape of an approved proviso amendment from King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda she says will require the county to live up to the City of Seattle’s conditional requirements for the project including a Seattle Police Department review of public safety conditions around the proposed facility and the formation of a new citizen advisory committee to oversee the center.
CHS reported here in August on the letter of conditional support from Mayor Bruce Harrell for the project. In the letter, Harrell says the county and a yet to be announced operator of the center must partner with the Seattle Police Department to assess the former Polyclinic building and its surroundings for safety, execute a “safe operations plan for the building and the surrounding exterior spaces, including public sidewalks and other publicly accessible spaces,” and enter into a Good Neighbor Agreement with the city that “obligates the provider to meet certain safety and disorder standards to be negotiated with the provider.”
Wednesday, Mosqueda said her approved amendment that creates a proviso on the center’s funding cements the county’s commitments to the issues raised in the mayor’s letter.
“We have a collective responsibility to do this right,” Mosqueda said, adding that the full process around outreach and public safety elements could not have started until the city’s requirements were formally delivered — a step she would like to see handled earlier in the process as the county moves forward on opening the other centers in the network.
CHS Broadway Crisis Care Center Timeline
- 8/12/2022 — ‘Regional network’ would add new centers in Seattle for people suffering mental crisis
- 9/27/2022 — County property tax would fund $1.25B plan to build new mental health care centers
- 2/1/2023 — King County voters to decide on Crisis Care Centers Levy in April
- 4/25/2023 — $1.25B Crisis Care Centers levy Proposition 1 on way to approval with King County voters
- 3/12/2025 — First county Crisis Care Center opening in Kirkland with plans for $1.25B network in place by 2030
- 5/13/2025 — King County planning Crisis Care Center at Broadway and Union
- 5/19/2025 — ‘In crisis’ — County makes case for Crisis Care Center on Broadway amid biz owner pushback
- 5/27/2025 — County working on next steps in Capitol Hill Crisis Care Center plan
- 7/1/2025 — Scott and Rinck holding ‘Crisis Care Center Townhall’ on Capitol Hill
- 7/7/2025 — ‘Placing it in the heart of the city makes sense’ — State, county, and city leaders working to shape Broadway Crisis Care Center plan
- 7/21/2025 — County can’t yet say who will run it but officials answering as many questions as they can about possible Broadway Crisis Care Center
- 8/15/2025 — Mayor’s conditions for $56M Broadway Crisis Care Center plan include Seattle Police safety sign-off, citizen advisory committee
- 9/3/2025 — More letters join mayor’s conditional support for Broadway Crisis Care Center plan
- 9/9/2025 — King County Council mulling pause in Broadway Crisis Care Center process
Approved by county voters in 2023, the levy was planned to raise as much as $1.25 billion through 2032 to fund creation of the five crisis care centers and increase mental health services in the county.
In addition to the county buying and owning the properties, the levy will provide companies like Connections that runs the first center in the network in Kirkland access to operations funding plus $2 million annually “in workforce funding to support, strengthen, and recruit their workforce.”
The Crisis Centers must provide 24/7 walk-in care, 23-Hour Observation Units for patients brought in by police “to receive immediate care to stabilize and stay for up to 23 hours,” and “crisis stabilization beds” where individuals can stay for up to 14 days “to receive focused behavioral health treatment.”
As they talked through the need behind the new centers, councilmembers also said they were trying to be responsive to constituents in moving the plan forward, pointing out that more than 70% of Seattle voters and 80% of District 3 voters approved the 2023 levy.
Meanwhile, committee chair Rod Dembowski focused on a $10 million “assignment fee” in the purchase agreement According to the agreement, Guntower Capital is slated to receive about 20% of the sale price from the levy dollars. In addition to reportedly being involved in the financing of the crisis center deal, the Guntower development firm has also been busy in the neighborhood planning a seven-story mixed-use development at E Olive Way and Denny.
“A one year flip for $10 million? The intermediary got a really good deal,” Dembrowski said as he asked county officials to more closely scrutinize the deal.
Assignment fees are typically associated with wholesale real estate transactions involving multiple properties and can represent a major, excise tax-free windfall for intermediaries.
Formed in 2017, Guntower Capital includes Jonathan Slavin of Newmark Realty Capital, and Chris Langer and Joseph Razore of the Broderick Group, according to state filings.
Guntower has not responded to CHS’s inquiry about the purchase agreement.
Dembrowski said Wednesday that, while the fiscal elements were now moving forward in the legislative process, the committee’s decision to vote on the ordinances “without recommendation” reflected that there is more time needed to sort out issues like the assignment fee before the full council votes on the funding.
The ordinances are slated to come before the full council in early October.
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So after the 23 hours or 14 day hold then what? Dumped onto broadway like the rest?
“We provide ongoing support and resources to ensure long-term success. Every individual will leave with a discharge plan and be connected to community resources for ongoing recovery.” https://connectionshs.com/kirkland
My expectation is that the center will keep patients locked up until they can find them a placement. That could be weeks or even months *after* the patients have stabilized. This might be a relief for the neighborhood, but raises some weird civil rights issues.
Riiight…Anything else? No matter what anyone says, you’ll turn it into some hypothetical as a rebuttal. Fact free BS. I can see you listen to too much right wing propaganda because you sound just like them.
What are you basing that very illegal hypothesis on?
Sounds good, but will that actually happen?
That’s it…That’s what happens. No mystery.
We need a “Good Neighbor Agreement” that says patients brought in by the police and discharged after a 23-hour hold will be released in front of an elected official’s house and not onto Broadway.
“Good Neighbor Agreement”??? With neighbors like you? Who needs enemies?
How about send them HOME!?
Whatever Mr. False Equivalence Seattle is NOT CA. It’s defiantly NOT San Francisco.
But okay…whatever
Uhh. What “home” can you “send them” to if they don’t have one…? Just because someone was born somewhere doesn’t mean they have the means to live there. I think it’s shitty that red states ship their homeless folks here too but like….the logic of your argument here doesn’t really track….
Seattle Academy sent a scathing (for them) email to parents about the lack of engagement from the council as well as the council’s claims of engagement being untrue.
someone on the council must be getting kickbacks from this
It would be a seachange in municipal governance to actually administer and operate programs it thought was needed, but then, ya know, that changes the balance on the muni ledger and makes them somewhat more directly accountable than the NPIC they currently delegate and pay to do social services. At least in some theoretical space, I’m not sure that their oversight of the police department validates the premise, but alas alack that’s a State for you.
And supporting social workers at a non profit for a year, non profits have a lot of foundational issues that are related to banking on bleeding hearts to do more with less until they burn out of the work entirely, and this isn’t even speaking to oversight and evaluation.
There’s a valid issue with the City delegating this to Connections, but it’s not incidental or unique, it’s the entire bleeding problem with trying to run a muni like a business and subcontracting the functions out so it can’t do much of anything ‘well enough’ and nobody ever believes it will. It erodes faith to dish things out, and suck at the things you hold onto.
“And supporting social workers at a non profit for a year, non profits have a lot of foundational issues that are related to banking on bleeding hearts to do more with less until they burn out of the work entirely, and this isn’t even speaking to oversight and evaluation.”
It’s worse than that…I am here in a non profit human incinerator with 58% turnover a year. It’s the catty C-Suite. They LOVE their jobs and will walk on whomever to stay. God complex sets in and you see it.
yeah, they’re absolutely stomping on bleeding hearts to assert some kind of self importance in the NPIC (non profit industrial complex for those still guessing on what that means), there is no sense that anyone in non profit administration actually gives that much of a shit about the ground level work.
But yeah, the churn and burn in the NPIC is execs and admins loving the station and squeezing the workers as much as possible until they leave and replaced by the next plucky crop of would-be world changers who borderline need their own social services.
The charter and policies are platitudes. They don’t follow any more than about 10%-15% last count. I am being generous too on that. If it’s not a legal liability? They do not care. Scrutiny is to be avoided at all costs. I have been on it for 4 years now. I am almost to the end of it. I will try to hold them accountable and fix it but…Well, you know.
Thank you sincerely!
Thanks for making really valid points about oversight here. One point to add: the organization running the crisis care center may not even be a nonprofit. The Kirkland Crisis Care Center is run by Connections, which is a for-profit business owned by a private equity company. And… in my experience, the quality of care there is what you’d expect from a private equity company.
something tells me u don’t carry this same energy towards other “industrial complexes” like for example, actual ones
This is catastrophic for Capitol Hill. King County pushes all the druggie services/housing into Seattle. Seattle elected officials push them all into Capitol Hill, Lake City and the ID. Not of these NIMBY elected officials have to deal with the consequences of their failed initiatives in their single family neighborhoods where different rules apply. When this predictably fails and turns Broadway into Seattle’s Tenderloin, we should remember Teresa Mosqueda, Alexis Mercedes Rink, Shawn Scott, Bruce Harrell and the rest that dumped this on Capitol Hill like a flaming bag of shit and hold them accountable.
Do you think the histrionics are helping here? lmao.
Agree
The U district is certainly looking a lot better these days. On the other hand qfc is a disaster zone. I wonder how long Kroger will hold out…
You’re the NIMBY. This is supporting the Capitol Hill community. Our neighbors that have been neglected and pushed to the margined need these services.
Do our neighbors who’ve been neglected and marginalized really need to be locked up and drugged to put $ in the pockets of a private equity firm? This initiative has a lot of promise, but we should acknowledge the potential unintended consequences here. Thanks.
Neighbors???? they don’t even pay any taxes at all and are a nuisance to the community. They are dangerous and causes actual harm to law abiding citizens in the area. You are delusional.
lol, the first connections service center is up and running in . . . kirkland. https://connectionshs.com/kirkland
It’s a totally different situation. Not close to businesses or homes. Check your damn facts before you lol so cute
omg dramatic much
This was announced in May with NO community input. There have been no public postings that real people can find (not including hidden on websites.). Residents have had no say.
The city calls Pike-Pine the Capitol Hill Entertainment District. Those of us who live here call it the “Lawless District,” or “Capitol Hill Killing Fields.”
Police refuse to respond to complaints. They ignore problems as they are beginning and show up after it has exploded.
Now we see the County, in addition to the city treats the residents here as expendable.