Author Archives: jseattle

About jseattle

Justin is publisher of CHS. You can reach him at chs@capitolhillseattle.com or call/txt (206) 399-5959. Follow @jseattle on Twitter or be best pals on Facebook.

OK, now The Redwood really is dead and gone forever from Capitol Hill

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(Image: CHS)

You can finally give up on those rebirth of The Redwood hopes. Nearly two years after the never say die dive bar was finally demolished and erased from Capitol Hill, a permit just issued from the City of Seattle all but guarantees a new boozy offshoot will not rise from  the corner of Howell and Belmont

Developer Blueprint Capital has been approved for a change of plans to eliminate the mixed element of its seven-story mixed-use development rising at the corner. The new permit allows Blueprint to transition its plans for a ground floor food and drink space in the project to become two “live/work” units. Continue reading →

Thursday’s Dining Out for Life 2020 will help Lifelong — but this year, the restaurants need help, too

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Capitol Hill’s Plenty of Clouds has helped Dining Out for Life. This year, Dining Out for Life can help Plenty of Clouds (Image: Lifelong)

A restaurant tradition returns to Seattle and cities across the country this week as the annual Lifelong fundraiser Dining Out For Life takes place Thursday. But in a year like this one, the restaurants and bars that normally support the nonprofit also could use a hand.

Lifelong is asking for those who want to help to make a donation directly to the nonprofit and still order delivery or takeout from the neighborhood restaurants that have supported it with DOFL donations over the years: Continue reading →

Override or compromise? Seattle City Council holds special meeting to respond to mayor’s #defundSPD veto

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The Seattle City Council will take a swing Tuesday in the ongoing fight to redirect spending on policing to community programs and social services in the city by either overriding Mayor Jenny Durkan’s veto of its defunding legislation passed in August — or forging a compromise bill that will preserve only a few key #defundSPD planks. Either way, the step will make any road to changing the Seattle Police Department a longer journey.

The council has scheduled a special meeting for Tuesday afternoon starting at 3 PM to vote on the possible override of the mayoral veto of the council’s rebalanced 2020 budget package. To get there under the rules of budgetary legislation, that will mean seven of the nine council members will need to vote to override.

Council president Lorena González will lead the charge saying Monday she intends to vote to override the mayor’s vetoes but also acknowledging the compromise package waiting in the wings.

“We may not always agree or win every battle, but I believe many of us share the same vision of collective liberation that is (and will be) on the right side of history,” González said. “The work to divest from a broken model of policing will be a long road, and it will be full of challenges.”

Monday, community groups called for the council to side together to override Durkan and support the original cuts. Continue reading →

In the anarchist jurisdiction of Seattle’s Central District, a neighborhood celebrates its new post office

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(Image: CHS)

(Image: CHS)

Marking “a blow against the right wing attacks on social services,” community members and United States Postal Service officials gathered inside the new E Union post office Monday morning to celebrate the opening of the new Central District facility.

The new post office is “dedicated to the service of the people of the United States of America” and “represents a move in the right direction for not just post office employees, but more importantly, for this community,” Myrna Umali, president at Local 28 of the American Postal Workers Union, said before cutting the ribbon on the new retail location for the USPS. “This branch is part of the tree that represents the life of the community,” she said.

“Hopefully this will be our final destination for years to come,” USPS manager Eddie Lee Smith said. Continue reading →

One shot in reported 23rd Ave driveby

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One person was hospitalized after a reported driveby shooting Sunday night near 23rd and Dearborn.

Police were called to reports of gunfire near a store in the area around 10:30 PM and found a male victim on the ground suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Seattle Fire arrived to treat the victim and rush him to the hospital.

Police say it was not believed his injuries were life-threatening. Continue reading →

Acknowledging botched first effort, City of Seattle announces plan with artists to quickly remove and recreate longer-lasting Capitol Hill Black Lives Matter mural

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An image from SDOT showing the deterioration of the mural (Image: SDOT)

Before sweeps and violence continued in Cal Anderson, and before  Seattle City Hall reversed course on the start of defunding the Seattle Police Department, artists and activists pointed at a simpler failure to live up to the demands of the CHOP protest zone after what they said was a botched attempt to preserve and protect the massive E Pine BLACK LIVES MATTER mural.

Now Mayor Jenny Durkan and the Seattle Department of Transportation are announcing a new plan that will bring the original mural artists together to remove the original and replace it with a new and improved replica designed to better withstand the tests of a Capitol Hill street. And they’re in a rush to do it to get ahead of another Seattle challenge — the weather: Continue reading →

As Jimi Hendrix Memorial Peace & Love March for Equity crosses the CD, a call to address Seattle’s ‘co-option’ of the legend — and move his statue off Broadway

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Jimi has been part of Broadway since 1997

The King County Equity Now group that has been pushing through the summer on local officials to meet the demands of Black Lives Matter protests and for more robust spending on community and investment programs for the Black community in the Central District is turning its attention to the remembrance of one of Seattle’s legendary Black artists. It has been 50 years since Seattle son Jimi Hendrix died.

Friday, the Jimi Hendrix 50th Anniversary Memorial Peace & Love March for Equity will start at Hendrix’s own Garfield High School and cross the Central District for a rally into the evening at Jimi Hendrix Park: Continue reading →

Standoff reported in Cal Anderson after medical call becomes crime scene — UPDATE: Murder

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(Image: Matt Mitgang)

Seattle Police filled Cal Anderson Wednesday night surrounding the Seattle Public Utilities pumphouse on the west side of the area where a suspect was reportedly holed up inside the fenced-off facility after a medical response in the park transitioned to a crime scene.

Seattle Fire was called to the park around 8 PM and a female was reported undergoing CPR as police were called to the scene. SPD summoned homicide detectives to the scene.

SFD reports its crews performed life saving efforts for an approximately 30-year-old woman who was in critical condition. SPD says the victim has died and that police are conducting an investigation. The death is considered suspicious but SPD could not yet provide further information. The woman was found near the SPU pumphouse.

UPDATE 10:25 PM: SPD says the situation is a homicide investigation and there is a barricade standoff with the suspect underway in the park.

UPDATE 9/17/2020 6:30 AM: SPD reports that the suspect has been found dead inside the building he was barricaded in:

SWAT officers used a variety of tools and techniques to get the man to surrender peacefully. He refused to come out of the building. At approximately 12:30 AM, SWAT entered the building and located the man unresponsive inside at the bottom of a 10 foot tank, which contained approximately 50 gallons of 12 percent bleach solution. The man was declared deceased at the scene. Seattle Fire responded back to the scene with a HAZMAT crew to assess the scene and assist the Medical Examiner with the body recovery. The recovery was processed and documented by Crime Scene Investigators and Force Investigation Team detectives. The Medical Examiner will determine the cause and manner of death.

Police were surrounding the pumphouse in a barricade situation with a suspect they reported via East Precinct radio updates was armed with with pepper spray and a taser inside. Continue reading →

Seattle’s Black Lives Matter group calls for ethics investigation over City Council’s Black Lives Matter efforts

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(Image: CHS)

Politically bombarded in its attempt to address protest demands with the start of a process to defund the Seattle Police Department, the Seattle City Council is now facing new criticism from the Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County organization.

The situation emerges in the midst of the confusing swirl of priorities from Seattle’s response to the summer’s protests and how public officials mix and match their use of “community” when it comes to policy and politics.

Also on display is the power of Black Lives Matter as a movement and its power for the organizations like the nonprofit that first formed here in 2018 and took the BLM name as it has fought for its versions of the cause.

The nonprofit is calling for a formal ethics investigation of the council’s actions related to the protests this summer including “potential pressure exerted on City employees and members of the public,” whether the council was “informed about safety issues around those protests,” and how the council was “influenced in recent budget and policing proposals.”

Its letter (PDF) to the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission calls for an immediate investigation over a dozen points including “whether members of the City Council did question African American or other people or color employed within the City of Seattle about SPD response and actions towards protesters around the East Precinct” during CHOP. Continue reading →

Aloha means goodbye: Capitol Hill’s Marination Station announces permanent closure as Seattle’s catering business dries up

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(Image: Marination)

Marination Station, the first foothold in what may have been Capitol Hill’s most successful blossoming of a food truck into Seattle brick and mortar street food empire, is shutting down after nearly a decade of business above Pike and Broadway.

“Our team was small and mighty as was that store,” Kamala Saxton tells CHS about the decision to permanently close the longest running fixed-place location in the Marination food and drink family.

Saxton says the Station, while known to neighbors and weekend nightlife visitors as a place for fast Hawaiian-Korean style chow, also was the company’s catering core with the busy kitchen supplying lunches for Seattle’s voracious corporate appetites. As catering opportunity has all but disappeared in the city, Saxton said it didn’t make sense to keep the Station open. Continue reading →