(Image: King County Metro)
Metro is planning to add buses with bigger, stronger barriers to protect drivers and sorting out how to retrofit its entire 1,400-coach fleet to add the enhanced protection, the county says.
89 buses with the stronger partitions have been ordered and King County Executive Shannon Braddock says she is committed to improved barriers across the entire Metro fleet. Continue reading
(Image: City of Seattle)
(Image: Seattle Convention Center)
Do you feel more connected to the waters of Elliott Bay?
Seattle officials cut the ribbon last week on the $17.45 million project to improve Pike and Pine and better connect Seattle’s new waterfront to the expanded Convention Center and Capitol Hill.
It has been more than a year since the major work around the Capitol Hill components of the construction were completed. Work included transitioning portions of Pike and Pine to new one-way configurations.
“This project delivers on the core promise of our Downtown Activation Plan, creating a seamlessly connected downtown that is welcoming, accessible, and built for people—commuters, families with children, workers, visitors, and business owners alike,” Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a statement. Continue reading
Robert Stephens Jr., second from left, joined in the ceremonial groundbreaking last week
With a planned $9.5 million in city, state, and National Parks funding, Seattle officials and community leaders celebrated the groundbreaking of the Garfield Super Block, hoped to reimagine the area around Garfield High School and the community center to create a Legacy and Promise Promenade with a .34-mile loop path and new community spaces including a new play area and parkour park, new sports courts, and a central plaza.
“The community has been fighting for this project for over twenty years,” Robert Stephens, Jr. of the Garfield Super Block Coalition said. “The timeline of Seattle’s Central Area was brilliantly memorialized on the walls of Garfield High School. We wanted to bring that story to life in the art of Garfield Super Block. From the annual MLK march to historic organizing by the Black Panthers, Garfield has and always will be a central convening area for celebration and organizing with the young people of our city.”
The coalition has kept the push for the neighborhood investments alive. They first took shape twenty years ago. As part of the public process to approve building the new Quincy Jones Performing Arts Center, Seattle Public Schools had to be approved for a variance in order to build fewer than the required number of off-street parking stalls. As part of that process, the district was required to provide public benefits as a mitigation. Continue reading
The Seattle City Council is set to ban landlords from using “algorithmic rent fixing” in the city.
Tuesday afternoon, the full council will vote on legislation shaped by the Housing and Human Services Committee banning “coordination of information via services that combine certain public and non-public data related to the rental housing market with algorithmic analysis which may allow noncompetitive price-setting practices for residential rental units.” Continue reading
Starting next winter, the Seattle Police Department will fully encrypt its most sensitive radio communications, officially ending an era of public monitoring that officials say has become increasingly dangerous.
SPD announced Tuesday that it will make the upgrades and “enhance encryption to radios used for tactical communications” in early 2026:
In Quarter 2 of 2026, the Seattle Police Department (SPD) will enhance encryption to radios used for tactical communications among our personnel. Encrypting radio communications means radio transmissions can only be heard internally by the intended audience. The primary reason SPD has chosen to encrypt radios is to enhance the safety of community members and first responders, and to protect the public’s sensitive information from being shared to a wide audience.
The department’s leadership says it will continue to leave its main “dispatch” channels for each precinct “open for the public to hear via radio scanners.”
CHS regularly monitors the broadcasts for our neighborhood reporting. The Tuesday announcement makes official practice that has already been in place since changes made during the 2020 protests as SPD began selectively digitally encrypting its tactical channels during a variety of incidents and scenarios. Continue reading
A person in the street was struck and sent to the hospital in critical condition after reportedly being hit by a driver Tuesday morning on Boylston just south of E Pine.
UPDATE 2:07 PM: SPD reports the woman has died of her injuries.
According to police, the 49-year-old woman was apparently sleeping, “laying in the roadway” when the driver exited her parking garage onto Boylston:
She did not see the sleeping pedestrian laying in the roadway and drove over her. The driver stayed on scene and cooperated with police. A Drug Recognition Expert evaluated her and found no signs of impairment.
Police are asking anyone with information to contact investigators at (206) 684-8923.
The death is the third vehicle and pedestrian related fatality in the area in June. CHS reported here on the death of two residents backed over and killed in a smoking shelter behind a First Hill senior community earlier this month.
Original report: Seattle Police and Seattle Fire were called to the scene by a 911 caller just after 6:30 AM. The driver was initially reported to have left the scene. A later East Precinct radio update reported that the collision was not a hit and run.
Seattle Fire says it treated a woman in her 40s along the west curb of Boylston and rushed her to Harborview in critical condition.
Boylston between Pike and Pine was closed to traffic during the response.
There were no reported arrests.
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(Image: Revival)
While we sort out the real estate dealings and corporate grocery priorities behind the planned closure this week of the Broadway Whole Foods, there are a few smaller Capitol Hill retail losses to contend with.
The Revival vintage and fashion shop is closing on Broadway — but not because a long awaited affordable housing development is ready to dig in on the block.
Owner Ashley Busacca her decade of doing business on Broadway is ending as she is expecting a second child and ready to kiss the uncertainty of small retail in the neighborhood goodbye. “It’s been a wild ride,” Busacca said. Continue reading
A Seattle City Council committee voted to move forward on the proposed $1.3 billion school levy renewal last week that includes $235 million earmarked for school safety investments including a pilot to return Seattle Police officers to system campuses including Garfield High School.
Thursday, the committee approved the legislative package to place the levy on the fall ballot. The full council is expected to vote on the package in Tuesday’s session.
“This vote today was a win for Seattle’s kids. The FEPP levy will fund critical investments in childcare and preschool, K-12 academic supports, and the Seattle Promise – including expanded pathways to the skilled trades,” Committee chair Maritza Rivera said in a statement. Continue reading
With reporting by Alex Garland
Crowds were measured by the mile Saturday as demonstrators marched from Capitol Hill’s Cal Anderson Park in Seattle’s contribution to a weekend of “No Kings” protests across the nation.
Officials estimated more than 70,000 here stretched across one and a half miles of city streets Saturday afternoon as the demonstration flooded out of Cal Anderson onto E Pine and into the city headed for the Seattle Center.
it was one of the largest gatherings in the state since a sea of people stretched miles from Cal Anderson for the Women’s March in 2018.
Seattle officials were ecstatic to announce there had been no arrests.
The protest comes five years after the Black Lives Matter protests and the formation of the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone that filled the area around Cal Anderson in June 2020.
Meanwhile, twelve miles away in Tukwila, police and “an ICE Special Response Team” fired painful pepper spray balls at demonstrators seeking to disrupt an “Intensive Supervision Appearance Program” check-in. Continue reading
That’s the 2018 price, by the way
Company officials say “performance and growth potential” are behind the planned closure of the Broadway Whole Foods grocery store.
“Like any business, we regularly evaluate the performance and growth potential of each of our stores and make decisions to position the company for long-term success,” a Whole Foods spokesperson told CHS Saturday morning.
The company says “all team members will transfer to roles” at other area Whole Foods Market locations. The final day of business is planned for June 20th. Clearance sales begin now.
“Our stores remain an important part of our growth strategy, and we currently have more than 100 new stores in the pipeline and continuously explore new sites,” the spokesperson for the Amazon-owned grocery giant said.
UPDATE: Amazon’s exit coincides with the sale of The Danforth development. Bellevue-based property management firm Kennedy Wilson announced the $173 million acquisition of the apartment tower headed into the weekend. The property had been acquired by seller Vanbarton Group for $209 million in 2019. Amazon apparently decided to seize the opportunity to exit its lease.
CHS reported here on the October 2018 debut of the much anticipated two-level, 40,000-square-foot addition to the Capitol Hill-area grocery scene. Continue reading
