Author Archives: CHS

Can they ever really fix the 8?

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By Matt Dowell

Jamie Guerriero loves and hates the 8.

“I live down in Lower Queen Anne, half a block away from the last stop,” he said about the often maligned bus route that links Seattle Center with Capitol Hill. “It’s so essential to get back up to the Hill.”

He takes the 8 up Denny two to three times per week to visit Capitol Hill friends and the farmer’s market and says the bus is either 5 minutes early or 15 minutes late all the time. And to take it during rush hour is hellish.

“For a 4:30 happy hour, I have to leave by 3:30,” he said.

Guerriero is car-less and is a big fan of the transit system in general. But the 8 has underperformed for the 13 years he’s lived in Seattle.

“It’s such a major route, but I get the feeling the Metro just doesn’t care about it.”

In fact, throughout Guerriero’s 13 years in town, King County Metro and SDOT have been working to improve the 8’s reliability. But it’s still falling short. Can it ever really be fixed?

This year, the Transit Riders Union and Central Seattle Greenways have renewed their “Fix the L8” campaign to get SDOT and Metro to address the issue.

“We’re on track for the least reliable summer we’ve ever had,” said Nick Sattele, a campaign organizer. Continue reading →

Ten years of Chophouse Row, ‘a nice little critical mass of stuff for people who live on Capitol Hill’

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(Image: Chophouse Row)

Dunn (Image: Downtown Seattle Association)

By Matt Dowell

It’s ten years for Capitol Hill’s Chophouse Row on 11th Ave, but Liz Dunn of Dunn & Hobbes is quick to say that she and her team have been on the block longer than that.

“We’ve actually been here for 25 years,” she reminded us. “So it’s the ten year anniversary of just this last building that we added — but this whole complex I’ve owned for 25 years.”

Dunn purchased a cluster of buildings inside the 11th/Pike/12th horseshoe in 1999, then the beautiful brick building on the northwest corner of the block in 2014. They were redeveloped one by one over the years before the current form’s culmination debuted in 2015.

That’s when the Chophouse building on 11th Ave was added on top of an existing auto row-era structure. Office space was built inside that is now dedicated to coworking, the alleyway and courtyard inside the horseshoe opened, and multiple food and drink and retail spaces joined in. Chophouse Row was born. It followed Melrose Market’s footsteps — another successful Dunn & Hobbes redevelopment project that brought many small businesses into a single, shared, and life-filled space.

Dunn says that the cliche is true. In these developments, “the total is greater than the sum of the parts.” Continue reading →

See yourself in art in the new Frye Parlor

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Installation view of Frye Parlor x Jayme Yen, Frye Art Museum (Image: Jueqian Fang/Frye)

Jayme Yen (Image: Colin Beam)

By Caroline Carr

The Frye Art Museum has long been one of the grandest spaces Seattleites could dare consider a third place. Short of a first Thursday, it is one of the only museums in Seattle to offer free admission, a personal value of its founder Charles Frye. In collaboration with a local artist Jayme Yen, the museum recently launched Frye Parlor, a new exhibit that engages in ambitious alchemy, fusing an art installation with a gathering space.

This new concept takes elements from a traditional art exhibit and places them in a lounge, inviting guests to stay a while, socialize, and see themselves as participants in the art. Located outside the museum’s cafe, the installation is Yen’s abstract take on Frye Salon, the ornate, floor-to-ceiling display of the museum’s founding collection. Continue reading →

‘In crisis’ — County makes case for Crisis Care Center on Broadway amid biz owner pushback

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Around 50 people attended last week’s meeting (Image: CHS)

By Matt Dowell

King County officials reaffirmed the value of a planned mental health Crisis Care Center on Broadway at a community meeting last week but members of the public pushed back — “Why here?”

Officials tell CHS the meeting was the next step in a process they say is both just beginning — and well under way. There is an offer for the property on the table. More community meetings are being planned.

Meanwhile, a letter sent to District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth protesting the consideration of the Broadway at Union property for the new center has made waves in the neighborhood business community.

Meeting attendees inside Seattle U’s Wyckoff Auditorium and organized by the county and the GSBA chamber of commerce Thursday pushed for keeping the crisis center out of Capitol Hill and shifting the focus to a new location. Ice cream entrepreneur Molly Moon Neitzel took the mic.

“I’m Molly Moon, I’ve lived on Capitol Hill for 22 years. I have gone from a partying kid on one side of the Hill to a mom on the other side of the Hill. I’ve [operated] a thriving business in the Pike/Pine corridor for 16 years. I located that business there in a thriving time for the Hill. Our neighborhood is in crisis.”

“I think probably everyone in this room supports the mission of the Crisis Care Centers and believes that they need to exist,” Neitzel said. “The need for first responders to have the ability to take these folks in need to a Crisis Care Center — we can all give a standing ovation to that mission.”

“Do they need to come to a neighborhood in absolute dire crisis for the last five, six, seven years? No they do not.”

“I would encourage you to look at a site that is in a neighborhood that doesn’t have so much crisis going on right now.”

CHS broke the news last week on the county’s plans to open a facility in the former Polyclinic building at Broadway and Union as part of the $1.25 billion Crisis Care Centers measure approved by voters in April 2023. The nine-year levy calls for a network of five facilities that provide walk-in behavioral health care. The first opened in Kirkland in March. Continue reading →

The fallen willow at Streissguth Gardens

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The fallen willow (Image: CHS)

The maple bench (Image: CHS)

By Domenic Strazzabosco

Streissguth Gardens, on the sloping hillside between 10th Ave and Broadway, lost an iconic willow tree after a wet snowfall this winter. The willow, seemingly weighed down by the snow, fell westward and perpendicular across two of the park’s paths of thin, winding trails.

“It’s kind of bizarre. I never really thought about losing it until it came down,” said Ben Streissguth, who describes himself, unofficially, as the director of the gardens. Streissguth’s parents’ personal gardens were the beginning stages of what constitutes the one-acre space today, and though it’s unknown how old the tree was, he can remember it as far back as his teenage years. Based on Streissguth’s memory, photos and size of the tree, it is estimated that it was around 80 years old.

Streissguth, his wife and a few others, including some community members, have been working to do as much cleanup of the willow and surrounding area as possible. He estimates they’ve spent about 120 hours cleaning up and restoring the space as best they can. Further work will have to be done by Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Just three weeks after the willow fell, a maple toward the southwest side of the park toppled, too. Streissguth has taken what he can of the trees to work on the gardens. So far, there’s a new bench beneath the top of where the willow fell, made out of maple, while the pathway above where the willow stood is being reconstructed using slices of the felled maple. Instead of walking behind it, you can now look down at the willow’s massive root structure. Other projects include creating a wattle fence to create a stronger border between one of the trails and the vegetation running up to it, and edging portions of other trails with willow branches.

Though what will happen to the tree and the space left behind has yet to be decided, the Capitol Hill community around the garden has found ways to mourn the tree, often sharing different connections residents each had with it. Continue reading →

sMALL Box making spaces for PJ’s Classic Creamery, The ShoreHouse, and more amid changes at 23rd and Cherry

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Michelle and Danielle Forbes of PJ’s Classic Creamery

(Image: sMALLbox)

By Matt Dowell

Hundreds of apartments now rise above 23rd and Union — 23rd and Cherry is the next Central District intersection lined up for massive change.

On the northwest corner, the inclusively developed, five and a half-story Acer House mixed-use affordable housing project is now under construction after breaking ground this spring.

On the southeast, bids have gone out for contractors for the $8.4 million Garfield Super Block project set to reshape the public space around the Garfield Community Center and Garfield High School with a new promenade, new public art, a renovated park, and new play areas for this core of the Central District.

Change and a smaller kind of growth is already underway on the northeast corner of 23rd and Cherry where an experiment in mixed-use development is underway.

Ron Rubin, long time Seattle real estate developer, has started transforming the twelve single car garages at his 705 24th Ave property into sMALL BOX, an “affordable micro-business incubator space” that he hopes will bring life and walkability to the block. In the last month, the first two businesses have opened: PJ’s Classic Creamery (ice cream-filled bon bons) and The ShoreHouse (shaved ice and coffee). No surprise, in an area flush with schools and kids sports games, the snack stands are early hits.

Rubin came up with the idea for sMALL (like “small mall”) after traveling to places like Bangkok and Amsterdam, where retail centers with hundreds of stores create something that Seattle is missing: neighborhood streets that are “buzzing with pedestrian-friendly walk-up micro-storefronts”. But as he and the new businesses move forward with what he’s calling “phase 2” of the project, the idea will be tested. Rubin will need to find more tenants willing to work in the small spaces which are only 180 square feet a piece. Once established, will the businesses attract the foot traffic that Rubin envisions? Continue reading →

Ready for the punchline? Emerald City Comedy Club reopens after overhaul and upgrades above Broadway

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(Image: CHS)

By Calvin Jay Emerson

“The first-ever show here. Holy shit,” said comedian Duncan Trussell once he stepped into the limelight of Emerald City Comedy Club. “We should bless this place. This feels like holy ground right now.”

After a spring renovation and restart of the business, the former Comedy/Bar above Broadway has grown from a tiny space into a club its backers hope will fit with the neighborhood’s respected performance venues like Neumos and Chop Suey and even Julia’s down the street.

With double the seats as before, Emerald City Comedy Club is now big enought that it technically has nosebleeds, seats far enough away from the stage that they’re supplemented with two, flat-screen TVs which provide a better view.

In the hours before Trussell took the stage for the first show in the overhauled venue last week, the club’s employees were rushing around to complete the finishing touches. Owner Dane Hesseldahl had rushed back home to pick up a package full of those little, electronic candles. Continue reading →

With 25% of Seattle lacking infrastructure needed for multifamily housing, legislation would change the way developers pay for water lines and utilities

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As the city slowly but surely works toward a new 20-year growth plan that is hoped to spread development across the city more equitably, the Seattle City Council began debate this week on legislation to change the way infrastructure improvement costs are shared with developers.

The city says more than 25% of blocks outside of the downtown core lack a water, sewer, and/or stormwater mainline.

Officials say under the current structure, costs in areas that lack infrastructure land on the first developers hoping to pursue multifamily housing in the neighborhood: Continue reading →

How Indian restaurant and bar Mint & Martini expanded to Capitol Hill… from St. Louis

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By Matt Dowell

Mint & Martini, a new restaurant replacing Barrio on 12th Ave, aims to open by the middle of May. They’re bringing modern Indian and Indochinese cuisine to the big space.

Beyond the food, they want to make a fun place for people to hang out that fits the Capitol Hill scene.

“We’ll have a bar. It won’t be just your typical Indian restaurant,” the ownership tells CHS. ”We want people to come and sit at the bar, have drinks, chat, and do happy hours.”

The bar will feature a variety of cocktails and mocktails, including seasonal drinks “resonating with the Indian summer.”

Its hoped for arrival this spring will also represent one of the less heralded paths to joining the Capitol Hill food and drink scene. Mint & Martini’s ownership is not only coming to a new neighborhood. It is leaping to a new region of the country and a new city with hopes based on price per square foot and demographic opportunity.

As CHS reported in January, this isn’t the group’s first Mint & Martini. They opened a location last year outside of St. Louis, where they also own Red Chili Indian Cuisine & Bar. The St. Louis spot offers Indian-Italian fusion, like the Tikka Vikka pizza, “which substitutes the classic pizza red sauce for a spiced tomato- and cream-based sauce that adds a sweet and earthy touch”, according to one reviewer.

But Capitol Hill’s Mint & Martini won’t borrow much from St. Louis beyond the name. Continue reading →

‘$15 Now’ — Seattle marks ten year anniversary of a new path for the city’s minimum wage

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Marches and “fast food strikes” like this one in 2015 outside the First Hill McDonald’s were part of the push for the new minimum wage

By Domenic Strazzabosco

April marks the tenth anniversary of Seattle taking a new path on its minimum wage. On April 1, 2015, the city became the first in the United States to enact a $15 minimum wage and a process to lever the wage higher to account for rising costs and inflation. As of January 1st, Seattle’s minimum wage sits at $20.76 an hour.

It has been a long climb to get here. A look around Capitol Hill shows some of the impact.

CHS checked out local postings to see what employers were offering new workers come the decade anniversary of the legislation. Continue reading →