Tag Archives: capitol hill station

Now hiring: Cal Anderson Park Alliance seeks ‘activation manager’ to shepherd gatherings and events in park and plaza

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Capitol Hill Garage Sale Day 2023

As a coalition calls on city officials to do more to address safety and drug crimes around the core of Broadway, Pike/Pine, and Cal Anderson, the nonprofit formed to help maintain and improve the beloved but challenged city park is looking for someone to fill a new role to keep the public space active and fun for every type of visitor.

The Cal Anderson Park Alliance has announced it is hiring a manager for a pilot activation program that it hopes will bring events and activities to the Cal Anderson Shelterhouse and the nearby Cathy Hillenbrand Community Room located in the Station House affordable housing building above Capitol Hill Station just north of the park. The program will also help keep the AIDS Memorial Plaza above the station busy with activities beyond its role hosting the weekly farmers markets.

CAPA says the Activation Manager will “coordinate community use and programming of these spaces, as well as Cal Anderson Park and the Capitol Hill Station Plaza” working with community members, the CAPA Board, Seattle Parks and Recreation, Seattle Parks Foundation, and nearby property management to coordinate activities and the use of the park and community spaces.” Continue reading →

Victim in deadly stabbing identified, details emerge in fatal Capitol Hill Station altercation — UPDATE: Fundraiser

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A memorial has grown outside Harry’s Fine Foods (Image: CHS)

(Image: CHS)

The Capitol Hill chef stabbed and killed in an altercation on the Capitol Hill Station light rail platform Saturday has been identified as Corey Bellett.

The 37-year-old died of injuries suffered in the stabbing on the subway platform 200 feet below Broadway.

Seattle Fire responded to provide emergency aid to the victim and transport him to Harborview but Bellett succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.

Seattle Police were unable to immediately locate the suspect seen on Sound Transit security video fleeing with knife still in hand following the just before 6 PM assault. The department announced an arrest in the case Monday night after a U.S. Marshals task force tracked down the suspect and took him into custody in Eatonville earlier in the day. A hearing to determine probable cause and to continue to hold the 26-year-old in jail was scheduled for a Tuesday hearing.

Bellett — A fundraiser has been set up to help the victim’s family

Prosecutors say Shawn Patrick Moore will remain jailed on $3 million bail and a charging decision in the case is expected Thursday. The county prosecutor says Moore has not been charged by its office previously.

In the documents filed for the bail hearing, police say video evidence shows the victim brush by the suspect and another man as he moved down the station escalator Saturday evening. Police say the suspect and the man accompanying him then confronted Bellett on the platform and a fight ensued in which it appeared that Moore pulled a knife from his pocket and began stabbing Bellett. Police say Bellett fell onto the northbound track where Moore allegedly continued the assault before fleeing the station.

Police say the second man later contacted police to provide information about the suspect. Continue reading →

Good news at Capitol Hill Station: Seasmith arrives on E Barbara Bailey Way

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Thanks to reader Sandy for the tip and picture!

E Barbara Bailey Way finally has a coffee shop. Some five years after planning for the project first began, the Seasmith cafe and casual hangout from the Burien Press family of businesses has opened above Capitol Hill Station.

The opening is a pull of happy news in a sad week around the busy transit facility.

The opening of Seasmith has been quite the endeavor. CHS reported here in November as light could finally be seen at the end of a subway tunnel of pandemic, government, and property management bureaucracy red tape.

Even then, it has taken another six months for the cafe to finally go into motion. Continue reading →

Man dead in Capitol Hill Station stabbing — UPDATE

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(Image: SPD)

A man was stabbed and killed at Capitol Hill Station Saturday.

Police were called to the light rail station’s lower platform just before 6 PM where “a large crime scene” was reported.

Seattle Fire responded to treat the victim and transport him to the hospital.

Police say the 37-year-old died despite the life-saving efforts.

Continue reading →

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 →