Thanks to reader Max H. for the pictures
The Seattle Fire Department took care of a rooftop blaze atop a Capitol Hill apartment building after solar panels caught fire Friday afternoon.
SFD was called to the Holiday Apartments at 10th and John next to Capitol Hill Station just after 2 PM to the reported blaze involving solar panels atop the four-story building. Continue reading
(Image: CHS)
Six months after going dark and quietly ending its 11-year run of Capitol Hill nightlife, the former Rhino Room space at 11th and Pine is suddenly filled with furniture as custom retailer Couch has moved to Capitol Hill from Ballard.
“Pick one of our thoughtfully designed styles or work with us to come up with a new variation. We are custom builders in the truest sense of the word,” the store’s pitch goes. “Custom elsewhere can mean you get to choose blue instead of gray. At Couch it means you design a sofa in your exact size, style and comfort specifications.” Continue reading
Inside Koko’s
By Domenic Strazzabosco
Last spring, a crop of new bars and restaurants opened across the corners of Capitol Hill. Two new food and drink joints joined Broadway, Chandelier Lounge and Guillotine, the contemporary Vietnamese cuisine of Ramie opened on 14th and a Seattle expansion of the Salvadorian-Mexican joint Koko’s found a home on 10th.
A year later, CHS talked with the new class to check in on how the first year has gone and how they’re planning on navigating going forward.
Koko’s Restaurant and Tequila Bar, located on 10th Ave, opened last spring, and the owners remain appreciative of the reception it’s received from the neighborhood.
“Honestly, it’s been amazing. The support from the community has been great,” said Gibran Moreno, who owns Koko’s with his partner Alexi Torres. “We just can’t believe how people are so happy for us to be on The Hill.” Continue reading
While her counterparts on the Seattle City Council were enjoying the Veterans Day holiday — or preparing proposed amendments to the city’s 2025 budget, District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth was coming to the rescue of a neighborhood pooch.
Monday, Hollingworth lent a hand after Seattle Police helped secure a dog seen being beaten over the weekend inside a Capitol Hill apartment building.
“We appreciate CM Joy Hollingsworth stepping in and taking the dog to a veterinarian since animal control is closed today because of the holiday,” a spokesperson for the King County Regional Homelessness Authority tells CHS.
The spokesperson tells CHS the man seen in the video allegedly hurting the animal had been previously arrested before the dog was rescued from the unit Monday.
How Hollingsworth ended up involved in the situation is apparently a tale of social media, politics, and a love for animals. Continue reading
An Operation Nightwatch volunteer (Image: Operation Nightwatch)
Capitol Hill’s St. Mark’s will add a new women’s emergency shelter facility from Operation Nightwatch as it moves forward with a plan for new affordable housing to be developed on its North Capitol Hill campus.
Plans filed with the city describe construction of a “limited use emergency shelter with 20 beds and limited hours of operation” in the 1950s-era addition to the 10th Ave E property’s landmarks-protected St. Nicholas building.
CHS reported here earlier this year on a planned development and adaptive reuse project envisioned to create more than 100 affordable homes in a transformation of the nearly 100-year-old building.
In the meantime, the new shelter from Operation Nightwatch will call the St. Nicholas addition home. Continue reading
Bertschi’s existing campus (Image: Miller Hull)
The private Bertschi School on northern Capitol Hill is in planning for a campus renovation and addition of a new three-story schoolhouse as it continues to grow along 10th Ave E. Construction is still a few years off.
“We want our spaces to reflect the joyfulness of our kids,” head of school Raymond Yu tells CHS.
As a new school year begins, Seattle families in the public school system are awaiting a delayed roster of planned campus closures the district says are necessary to stem budget woes. In the meantime, there is a new $14.5 million plan focused on intervention, mental health, and “school-based safety specialists” to address concerns about increase gun violence among young perpetrators.
But, despite the worries around the budget challenges faced by the district, Seattle Public Schools is also investing in the area. With long-term projections show continued demand for education in Central Seattle, SPS is overhauling and expanding its Montlake Elementary campus as a centerpiece in the system.
At Bertschi, the school, which opened as a single pre-kindergarten class in 1975 has grown to an enrollment of 244 students from pre-K through grade 5. School officials say the renovation is not driven by a plan to expand enrollment, though admit it will grow the student body by 22 students.
The renovations grew out of the school’s overall strategic plan with an eye toward new high-quality classrooms, said Yu. Continue reading
(Image: Koko’s)
By Juan Jocom
The folks at Koko’s know what they are doing. They built the original restaurant into a widely respected dining destination despite its far-flung location in the planned Olympic Peninsula community of Seabrook.
Gibran Moreno and Alexi Torres also know their way around Capitol Hill, hoping to grow their new Koko’s Restaurant and Tequila Bar into the LGBTQ-owned food, drink, and good times community of the neighborhood.
But the long waits and slow processes of doing business in a booming again Seattle have been a challenge even for the experience Koko’s team.
“We’ve been working on this project for over a year and two months… But we are getting close. We are just waiting for our final inspection from the health department and then we should be ready to go,” Moreno said.
But even the final push comes with challenges. Continue reading
(Image: Gage Academy of Art)
It is nearly garage sale season. Capitol Hill artists will want to mark their calendars for a good start to the season early next month.
The Gage Academy of Art is holding a yard sale featuring “art supplies, books, easels, costumes, home decor, kitchen items, electronics, and more” April 6th as it prepares to leave its longtime Capitol Hill home:
Later this year, Gage will move into a South Lake Amazon office building where the 35-year-old school will become the ground-floor presence below floors of tech workers above. CHS reported here on the planned move for the school after decades on the St. Mark’s campus as the church prepares for planned housing development on its 10th Ave E property.
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The future: a mixed-use Neumos, of course (Image: CHS)
Neumos asked for AI visions of its next 20 years so up top is CHS’s take on the corner during Capitol Hill Block Party 2044.
There is no telling what the next 20 or 30 years will bring at the southwest corner of 10th and Pike. CHS can tell you what the past 30 brought: music, drinks and good times.
The first decade of those good times? That was Moe’s Mo’Roc’N Café and an assortment of clubs that lived hard and died young. But those last 20? Those are all thanks to Neumos, the outgrowth of Moe’s that has gone on to be a center of the neighborhood’s entertainment community with a place among Capitol Hill legends like Neighbours, Century Ballroom, The Cuff, Wildrose, and Linda’s.
The live music club celebrates its 2004 birth Wednesday with a free night of music and performance. The free tickets were still available when we started writing this. They might be snapped up before you are done reading.
Asheville’s Wednesday band on the Neumos stage (Image: Neumos)
“We saw all these people walking down the hill for shows … we thought ‘why not have something here,’” Moe’s founder Jerry Everard told CHS about the original inspiration to transform an old Salvation Army on the corner into a new hangout 30 years ago. Continue reading
Donald Glover
Horizon was giving away its remaining stock for free last weekend on 10th Ave (Image: CHS Facebook Group)
Let’s close this current chapter of neighborhood classics saying goodbye. Another of the longest running businesses on Capitol Hill closed quietly last weekend. It wasn’t a restaurant, cafe, or bar.
Horizon Books was proudly established on Capitol Hill 53 years ago making it contemporaneous with fellow class of 1971 business licensees Country Doctor Community Health Clinic, architect Roger Newell, and Vogue Coiffure Beauty Salon on our list of the oldest businesses in the area a few years back.
The bookseller that made its name on Capitol Hill long before Elliott Bay Book Company was transplanted to 10th ve quietly turned the page and liquidated its stock last weekend, handing out free books to anybody who stopped by its underground 10th Ave space home to “the largest and finest used books collections in Seattle.” Continue reading
