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The Seattle Hearing Examiner has dismissed an appeal from a Capitol Hill new age church, upholding a city land use decision last year giving the go ahead to the planned redevelopment of the neighborhood’s Safeway to create a new 50,000-square-foot grocery store, new apartments, and a massive underground parking lot at 15th and John.
The decision eliminates one of the last major public process barriers to moving forward on the major new development project set to reshape the key intersection connecting the Capitol Hill core to the neighborhood’s eastern edges along 15th, 19th, and 23rd Avenues. Construction is still a long ways off with process around demolition permits and more still to come.
It the ruling, deputy hearing examiner Susan Drummond upheld the city’s 2023 decision to issue the crucial “master use permit” to the project as it completed multiple rounds of design review, dismissing the Aquarian Foundation’s arguments that the development would not be compatible with the neighboring converted two-story, 5,500-square-foot house on the $2.5 million 15th Ave E parcel that has been home to the New age religious organization for decades.
The group is one of the oldest corporations on Capitol Hill, formed as a church in the 1950s by a group including founder Keith Milton Rhinehart. Aquarian’s Rev. Cathryn Reid, who state records show also serves as the church’s treasurer, argued the organization’s case in front of the examiner, according to records from the procedures. Continue reading