In Capitol Hill food and drink’s season of change, Aamrai Indian Kitchen & Bar now open on Bellevue Ave

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The folks at Aamrai (Image: Aamrai)

A Capitol Hill food and drink venue where a December 2024 closure marked what many feared would be the start of a wave of Capitol Hill shutdowns is back in motion this summer.

Aamrai Indian Kitchen & Bar is now open on Bellevue Ave.

“Aamrai offers a warm and inviting ambiance, with soft lighting, cozy seating, and gentle background music, making it the perfect place to celebrate those special moments with your loved ones,” the opening announcement reads. “Take your guests on a decadent culinary journey as you feast on our authentic menu, thoughtfully created by our team.”

CHS reported here on the late 2024 closure of The Jilted Siren as the barely one-year-old lounge’s ownership blamed “short sighted, negligent decisions” at Seattle City Hall for contributing to its closure. Small business advocates feared The Jilted Siren’s end might be the start of shutdowns of Seattle’s restaurants, bars, and small businesses most impacted by the 2025 expiration of the city’s tip credit. Six months later, the closure wave never really materialized — but there are signs of change in the neighborhood’s food and drink economy. Continue reading →

Seattle Parks holding community meeting on $2M update of Miller Park playground

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(Image: Seattle Parks)

Seattle Parks is getting ready to kick off the design process for a $2 million renovation of the Miller Park playground next to the Miller Community Center, the Meany Middle School campus, and the Miller Annex Preschool Center.

Thursday night, the city is inviting you to meet with planners and designers to help shape the renovation. Construction is planned to begin in the spring of 2026.

The $1,906,093 project will replace play equipment, install play area grass safety surfacing and make accessibility improvements for the play area adjacent to the Miller Community Center. The equipment will include play structures and seating for children of all abilities ages 2 to 12. Seattle Parks and Recreation says it is working with Inclusion Matters to design the project. Continue reading →

A 2025 rarity — East Design Review Board to decide on eight-story Boylston Ave E project

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(Image: PUBLIC47)

There will be at least one project for the East Design Review Board to help shape this year. Wednesday, the board is slated for its first meeting of the year CHS is aware of, reviewing a planned eight-story apartment building along Boylston Ave E and I-5 in Eastlake.

The review session seems to be more wrapping up unfinished business than opening the gateway to more reviews. The board’s schedule after Wednesday remains empty through September.

You can’t thank the city’s recently passed interim “middle housing” legislation for jumpstarting new development. The Eastlake project has been in the works for years. Continue reading →

‘Placing it in the heart of the city makes sense’ — State, county, and city leaders working to shape Broadway Crisis Care Center plan

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The former Polyclinic facility

State Rep. Shaun Scott sees it as an opportunity for three levels of local government to come together to push for the right thing. Folks at the King County Department of Community and Human Services feel like they are running to catch up with the questions and concerns.

“I see it as my role as a representative of the 43rd Legislative District to be part of the solution, not part of the problem,” Scott tells CHS about his effort to organize a town hall Monday night on Capitol Hill to raise support for what the first-year state legislator says is a desperately needed resource that will be ready to serve the entire community.

“Placing it in the heart of the city makes sense,” Scott said.

CHS reported here on the plans for Monday night’s Crisis Care Center Townhall as Scott will be joined by Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck and county officials at Capitol Hill art bar Vermillion in a session hoped to drum up support — and counter business community-led opposition — to a major mental health Crisis Care Center being planned for Broadway and Union.

Monday’s planned event comes after the county met with significant pushback from the area business community over its $50 million proposal to acquire the former Polyclinic building at the corner of Broadway and Union to create an emergency and walk-in clinic part of a voter-approved, $1.25 billion network of five facilities across the county. Continue reading →

Council’s Nelson wants some of Seattle’s potential public safety sales tax bump to go to drug counseling

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Nelson held a news conference to announce the potential $8.75 million initiative

Seattle City Council president Sara Nelson wants to use a newly authorized sales tax bump to pay for drug counseling.

Nelson says her new “progressive public safety initiative” would direct 25% of a new tenth of a cent sales tax authorized by the state legislature for cities to pay for public safety services to “shore up ‘pathways to recovery’ through investment in critical addiction treatment services.”

If implemented, the public safety sales tax increase would generate over $35 million annually, Nelson’s office says, with a quarter of that going to support counseling and treatment services. Continue reading →

Queer the Vote candidates forum this week on Capitol Hill

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With August’s primary election quickly approaching, Capitol HIll nightclub Massive will present an opportunity Tuesday night for you to hear from some of the 27 people who want to run Seattle.

The Queer Power Alliance is bringing a Queer the Vote candidates forum to the E Pine club: Continue reading →

Amid Seattle’s 4th of July fireworks, officials ‘prepare for the harm done by the authoritarianism of the federal government’

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As thousands celebrated the 4th and fireworks over Lake Union, nobody dumped tea — or coffee — in Elliott Bay but dozens of political leaders signed on this Independence Day weekend to a declaration opposing the Trump administration’s tax and spending cut bill.

“Washington leaders are now calling for measures to meet this moment. State lawmakers must urgently act to prepare for the harm done by the authoritarianism of the federal government. Local government leaders must enact progressive revenue, like the Seattle Shield Initiative, which can reduce harm to essential programs in major metropolitan areas from budget cuts,” the letter reads.

“The undersigned elected officials represent all levels of government including state, local, and special district governments. We commit to working together in the immediate term to develop meaningful solutions to protect residents. The time is urgently prudent for local leaders across Washington state to live up to the progressive values which have long made us a target of the Trump regime and their corporate cronies.”

The letter, sent out from the office of Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, follows the passage of the Trump-championed bill described by the Associated Press as a “sprawling collection of tax breaks, spending cuts and other Republican priorities, including new money for national defense and deportations.” Continue reading →

This week in CHS history | Inside Passage is born, the last laundromat on Capitol Hill closes, Summer Taylor remembered

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Here are the top stories from this week in CHS history:

2024

 

Broadway at Pike makes city’s top 10 Crime and Overdose Concentration list — twice


Continue reading →

This 2025 Pulitzer winner honed her work in Volunteer Park and covering CHOP

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Hulls inside the Volunteer Park Conservatory, where she used to often work at the bench under the staghorn fern

 

By Matt Dowell

This 2025 Pulitzer finalist wrote her novel in a Capitol Hill coworking space.

This 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner once made Volunteer Park her studio.

Tessa Hulls is always on the move. Recently back in Seattle but with plans to leave soon for the wilderness, she was “mostly just biking all over the city being deeply overwhelmed by summer” when CHS reached out to talk.

In May, Hulls’s graphic memoir Feeding Ghosts won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography. She found out in the middle of a shift at the legislative lounge in the Alaska State Capitol building, where she’s worked seasonally.

The work, published in Spring 2024, traces her maternal family’s arc from Shanghai during the Chinese Communist revolution through her mother’s immigration to the United States to Hulls’s own upbringing in Northern California. The story is told within the context of unprocessed trauma and mental illness, particularly that of her grandmother who suffered a mental breakdown after publishing her own successful memoir.

The memoir has been lauded for its information-packed but approachable artistic style. According to one review: “Despite the extreme weight of the story, the density of the historical context and the way every bit of space is utilized to communicate pictorially or verbally, that information is surprisingly digestible — and even nourishing.”

Hulls honed that skill, in part, within our city limits, going to the Seattle Public Library every week for a year to check out and study graphic novels. She made Capitol Hill home in 2012 after a cross-country bike trip. Though she’s traveled to and lived in places far and wide since then — including a stint as a bartender in Antarctica — she continues to hold ties to the neighborhood. Continue reading →

Seattle defends queer nude beach against legal bid to close Denny Blaine Park — ‘Nudity alone at Denny Blaine is also not a nuisance’

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Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison is a champion of nudity in Denny Blaine Park.

In the city’s response to a June legal thrust from the Denny Blaine for All neighbor group to immediately close the park to the public, Davis has told the King County Superior Court that the popular hangout on the shores of Lake Washington east of Capitol Hill should remain open and free.

“Allowing Denny Blaine Park to continue as a nude queer space has social utility,” Davison writes.

“Nudity is subject to City regulation, and the City has determined that not regulating public nudity at Denny Blaine is in the public interest. Based on this decision, nudity alone at Denny Blaine is also not a nuisance.” Continue reading →