Tag Archives: capitol hill station

Capitol Hill Station opened in 2016 — It will finally have safe bike parking eight years later

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Capitol Hill Station began living up to its promise of changing the way we commute and move through the city when it served its first light rail passengers in March 2016.

Construction of the mixed-use developments above the busy subway station was completed in the summer of 2021.

Bike lockers to help serve the thousands who move through the station each day? April 2024 — probably.

Sound Transit is telling folks who care — like CHS tipster @CheeToS_ — that the long-promised bank of on-demand bike lockers finally installed above the station and giving riders a new, more secure option for leaving their rides behind on Broadway should open for service beginning next week.

“As it turns out, there were a number of challenges with the project,” a Sound Transit spokesperson tells CHS. Continue reading →

Sound Transit adds ‘Deputy CEO for Megaproject Delivery’ as it takes on $54B in expansion

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(Image: Sound Transit)

Challenged by delays and ballooning cost estimates, Sound Transit has added a new “Deputy CEO for Megaproject Delivery” to help make sure its largest investments are delivered on time and on budget.

The agency announced it has hired Terri Mestas as the first deputy CEO to fill the role, “a new position created to lead the development of the agency’s concurrent projects quickly and effectively and bring forth ways to accelerate project timelines and reduce capital expenditures.” Sound Transit says it undertaking “the largest transit expansion program in the country” with capital projects totaling an estimated $54 billion. Continue reading →

International Working Women’s Day March circles Cal Anderson with calls for Palestinian solidarity

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Friday night’s International Working Women’s Day March on Capitol Hill included a focus on the war in Gaza and Palestinian solidarity.

“Women, especially women of color, have been at the forefront of many movements throughout the ears and have led the way to fight for a better world,” said Christina López of the Seattle branch of the Radical Women organization that helped organize Friday’s event. “And we will continue to do so as horrific events call on us to keep on struggling and keep on fighting.” Continue reading →

Downtown tunnel work will bring ‘major disruption’ to light rail in January

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2024 will begin with a drag for light rail riders. Work to replace tracks in the downtown transit tunnel will mean interrupted service between Capitol Hill Station and SODO for a few weeks to start the new year, Sound Transit says.

The work schedule and disruptions will vary depending on what day of the week you are riding:

On weekends, 1 Line trains will run every 10-15 minutes between Northgate–Capitol Hill, and between SODO–Angle Lake. Between Capitol Hill–SODO, there will be no 1 Line service, and a Link shuttle will serve all closed stations every 10-15 minutes. Continue reading →

A Capitol Hill Station cafe years in the making, Seasmith really will arrive in 2024

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Seasmith will have a lot in common with its Beacon Ave sibling Fable (Image: Fable)

Capitol Hill Station’s crowds of light rail passengers are back to pre-pandemic levels — and then some. The mix of apartments and new residents above the stations has created a busy new Broadway neighborhood. Now the hopes of new businesses above the nearly eight-year-old Seattle subway stop are also returning to pre-pandemic levels.

“I don’t think I could have imagined that a project could take us that long but back then,” Mathew Wendland, owner of Seasmith said. “But I also couldn’t have imagined any of the things we were all going to go through within COVID.”

Seasmith is the happily anticipated, long awaited coffee shop and casual hangout from the Burien Press family of businesses. It will have been in the works to join Capitol Hill Station’s new development at the corner of Broadway and E. Barbara Bailey Way for five years when it finally opens in 2024 joining the expanded Glo’s Diner (May 2023), and H Mart’s M2M grocery market (April 2022) as the development’s commercial tenants finally reach critical mass.

Seasmith will be “all day cafe, really looking at how do we create something that is activating every part of the day — coffee, fresh food in morning, full kitchen, lunch, dinner, beer, natural wine,” Wendland said about the project when we first spoke to him about it in 2021.

When it finally opens next year, Seasmith’s story will be one of pandemic challenges, transit oriented development bureaucracy, and creative perseverance. Continue reading →

Worker who tried to organize Glo’s, owner talk about decertification vote, what’s next for Capitol Hill diner — UPDATE

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CHS reported last week on the vote by workers at Glo’s Diner to decertify its union representation and go it alone with management over issues of scheduling, wages, and workplace safety.

“We got union busted plain and simple,” longtime Glo’s employee, cook, and labor organizer Sean Case told CHS in an interview over the weekend following our first report on the vote.

Case said he has given his two-week notice over the decision.

CHS spoke to workers part of the 12 to 11 vote to end the representation who said, for them, their vote against certification was not an argument against the value of unions and worker rights but a specific decision based on their experiences working at Glo’s and frustration with the priorities of Restaurant Workers United.

In a statement, Glo’s owners Julie Reisman and Steve Frias said the change will help the business stabilize after a challenging start.

Workers part of organizing the union as the diner reopened this summer in its new location above Capitol Hill Station were not available to discuss the decertification vote with one telling CHS they were too shocked about the outcome to immediately comment. Representatives for tiny Restaurant Workers United — active in only a few workplaces across the country — also opted not to comment.

CHS first spoke with Case in April as it was announced that Glo’s management would voluntarily recognize the union amid organization efforts leading up to the diner’s planned reopening after its move to Broadway. “There are ideas about how our workplace can improve. We believed we were the people to decide that,” Case said at the time. Continue reading →

Workers vote to remove union at Capitol Hill’s Glo’s Diner

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A worker at the May opening of Glo’s above Capitol Hill Station

Workers at Capitol Hill’s Glo’s Diner say they have voted to end representation by Restaurant Workers United, opting to go it alone when it comes to working with management over issues of scheduling, wages, and workplace safety.

Workers who were part of organizing the union as the diner reopened this summer in its new location above Capitol Hill Station have not been available to discuss the decertification vote with one telling CHS they were too shocked about the outcome to immediately comment.

Representatives for the tiny Restaurant Workers United which has been active in only a few workplaces across the country also have opted not to comment at this time.

UPDATE 11/6/2023: CHS spoke with Sean Case, a Glo’s employee who worked to organize the union and opposed the decertification, here: Worker who tried to organize Glo’s, owner talk about decertification vote, what’s next for Capitol Hill diner

In a statement, Glo’s owners Julie Reisman and Steve Frias who voluntarily recognized the union this summer as they prepared for opening in the new location, said the change will help the business stabilize after a challenging start.

“Now that the staff is settled on this matter, we can turn our attention more fully toward what we do best, which is preparing and serving our food to our loyal guests and the greater community,” they write in a statement sent in response to a CHS inquiry. “We look forward to stabilizing our operations in our new space so we can re-engage with our local community and establish the best way to commence a new look community service program.”

The full statement from Glo’s ownership — signed Moving forward — is below.

Azriel Vovin, who tells CHS he worked with others among Glo’s two dozen or so employees to file the decertification petition, said the result of this week’s vote is not an argument against the value of unions and worker rights. Continue reading →

Didn’t tap at Capitol Hill Station? Sound Transit Fare Ambassadors to start (friendly) crack down on nonpayment

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(Image: Sound Transit)

Sound Transit Fare Ambassadors aren’t messing around anymore.

Starting November 15th, riders at Capitol Hill Station and the light rail system and other Sound Transit services will need to tap in and tap out — but the agency is taking a lenient approach to the new fare enforcement policy.

Riders who don’t pay will be allowed two warnings in a 12-month period. After that, the gloves come off.

“On the third and fourth interactions without proof of payment, passengers will be issued violations that can be resolved with Sound Transit through non-monetary options such as an online class or engagement activity, or with a $50 fine for the third violation, and a $75 fine for the fourth,” Sound Transit warns.

“Repeat non-payment… will result in a civil infraction, which may be referred to the district court,” Sound Transit says.

The agency depends on fares for a big chunk — around 7% — of its operating budget. Unlike some major metro transit systems around the world, Sound Transit has designed its stations without payment gates or turnstiles.

Continue reading →

Broadway protected-lefts, ‘BUS ONLY’ lane join busy mix of transit, bikes, pedestrians, and cars at Capitol Hill Station

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(Image: CHS)

 

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It took years — plus a few extra months — to make it happen but the “Broadway and John Street Signal” project is transforming the busy intersection’s traffic patterns.

The new “BUS ONLY/ONLY BUS” markings are applied restricting left turns onto Broadway from John to only transit. The rest of the project includes new protected left-turns on Broadway along with all the necessary markings and signal changes required to make it work.

CHS reported here in June on the planned two-month construction project’s long-anticipated start. The Seattle Department of Transportation couldn’t exactly explain why the work dragged on four months — “Project construction was originally anticipated to last approximately 3-4 months,” a spokesperson said, despite what the department said this summer. “The start of work was delayed about one month due to finalizing the signal design and weather,” they added.

The original vision has been boiled down by time and shifting funding sources after originally being raised as a community priority to improve safety in the area around Capitol Hill Station.

The final project has included rebuilding the traffic signals at the intersection of Broadway and E Olive Way/E John, adding new “left turn pockets” and a “separated signal phase” for eastbound traffic on E Olive Way, installing a new transit-only left turn lane for westbound E John, and removing an area of in-street bike parking “to accommodate transit turning movements.” Continue reading →

Police seek suspects in reported hate crime assault and armed robbery at Capitol Hill Station

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Seattle Police has posted security images of the suspects from a reported hate crime assault and robbery at Capitol Hill Station.

CHS reported here on the September 19th incident in which a man said he was hit in the head with a skateboard and robbed of his phone at gunpoint by a group that followed him off the train and out of the station. The man told police the group “used racist and homophobic slurs and he believed he was targeted due to his race and sexual orientation,” according to SPD.

SPD is asking anyone with information about the identity of the suspects to call the SPD Violent Crimes Tip Line at (206) 233-5000.

 

PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.