Tag Archives: first hill

Woof! Celebrate the neighborhood fur babies at First Hill Fidos

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A tradition that began ten years ago to celebrate the neighborhood fur babies returns this week. First Hill Fidos is Wednesday night:

Join us from 6-8pm at First Hill Park (1201 University) for a doggone good time!

🐾 SWAG BAGS! For participating pooches! (space is limited)

🐾 FUN PRIZES! For Cutest Pup, Best Trick, Best Dressed, and Best in Show!

CHS was there in 2015 as the First Hill Improvement Association gathering brought together good dogs from across the area for a night of fun — and prizes.

The event returns this year and is also a celebration of First Hill Park which reopened in 2021 after a $1 million overhaul.

 

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On a weekend to ponder covering I-5, a call to support Seattle’s original ‘lid,’ Freeway Park

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The roar of I-5 was a little more subdued this weekend with northbound lanes through the city shut for Washington State Department of Transportation maintenance.

The community group advocating for permanently quieting the freeway — and adding a cap covered with parkland, housing, and development — gathered nearby to illustrate the opportunity.

The Lid I-5 group is also asking the public to support needed work in the original I-5 lid between First Hill, Capitol Hill, and downtown — Freeway Park.

Saturday, the group gathered off Boren in Pillars Park above I-5 to mark the weekend’s northbound closure and spread the word about progress being made in plans likely to stretch out for decades to cover the freeway through Seattle. Continue reading →

Mayor’s conditions for $56M Broadway Crisis Care Center plan include Seattle Police safety sign-off, citizen advisory committee

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The building from above from a recent real estate listing (Image: CBRE)

Screenshot

As the King County Council prepares to vote on a $56 million plan to create a new Crisis Care Center at Broadway and Union, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has conditionally endorsed the proposal and says the city is ready to “partner” on the new facility.

“Seattle, along with other cities in the County, is facing an unprecedented behavioral health crisis. Too many residents are struggling with behavioral issues without adequate support,” the mayor’s letter in support the plan for the facility reads. “When the Seattle clinic opens it will provide same-day access to care for a person in crisis, which will help reduce the crisis we see on our streets every day.”

In the letter, Harrell says the county and a yet to be announced operator of the center must partner with the Seattle Police Department to assess the former Polyclinic building and its surroundings for safety, execute a “safe operations plan for the building and the surrounding exterior spaces, including public sidewalks and other publicly accessible spaces,” and enter into a Good Neighbor Agreement with the city that “obligates the provider to meet certain safety and disorder standards to be negotiated with the provider.”

The Seattle City Hall letter of support is a key milestone in the so far limited public process around the proposal. Continue reading →

Spruce Street School will bring its kindergarten and elementary kids to First Hill in $22M project on Madison

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Spruce Street has been educating Seattle city kids for decades (Image: Spruce Street School)

The school’s future Madison home (Image: Spruce Street School)

By Matt Dowell

The private Spruce Street School is building its future on First Hill in the midst of the neighborhood’s mix of hospitals, medical facilities, and high-rise apartment towers.

The $35,000-a-year school of about 110 K-5th graders purchased the building in 2019 for $15.15 million as part of a long term plan to make it their “forever home.” This summer, the school applied for a construction permit to begin a $7 million renovation of the Madison at Summit building, though they don’t plan to relocate from their current address at 914 Virginia Street on the edges of South Lake Union and downtown until 2028.

School officials declined to comment on the project.

“By 2035, Spruce Street School will be the highest quality, most financially accessible K–5 independent school of its kind in the Seattle area – able to admit children who would thrive in our educational program and community, regardless of their families’ ability to pay,” the school says of its future. “In addition, we will continue to be distinguished for our unique program and excellent teachers.”

The urban campus will include the 20,000-square-foot classroom building plus the building’s roof which is planned to be developed as an outdoor play area and a massive underground parking lot.

The permit states that work will occur on all three levels of the property, which is currently home to Salal Credit Union and ATI Physical Therapy, plus another school, Seattle Academy. Continue reading →

Police investigate after shooter in a tux riding a scooter reported on First Hill

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Seattle Police were searching for a shooter in a tuxedo making his escape on a Lime rental scooter after gunfire Thursday afternoon near Freeway Park.

The James Bond-like scene was a serious deal. Police found multiple shell casings strewn across streets in the area. A check for victims around First Hill and at nearby Harborview fortunately turned up empty.

SPD says its officers were called to the area of Hubbell Place and University around 2:15 PM Thursday to reports of gunfire. Witnesses reported a shooter described as a white male in his early 30s, around 5’11” and thin with short blond hair, wearing a full tuxedo suit down to the black oxfords, and riding a rental electric scooter. It wasn’t clear who, if anybody, he was firing at. He was last reported headed south.

Police searched the area but found only the spent shell casings in the street. There were no arrests.

 

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Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍 

 
 

The Broadway Whole Foods is, indeed, closing — UPDATE

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That’s the 2018 price, by the way

Company officials say “performance and growth potential” are behind the planned closure of the Broadway Whole Foods grocery store.

“Like any business, we regularly evaluate the performance and growth potential of each of our stores and make decisions to position the company for long-term success,” a Whole Foods spokesperson told CHS Saturday morning.

The company says “all team members will transfer to roles” at other area Whole Foods Market locations. The final day of business is planned for June 20th. Clearance sales begin now.

“Our stores remain an important part of our growth strategy, and we currently have more than 100 new stores in the pipeline and continuously explore new sites,” the spokesperson for the Amazon-owned grocery giant said.

UPDATE: Amazon’s exit coincides with the sale of The Danforth development. Bellevue-based property management firm Kennedy Wilson announced the $173 million acquisition of the apartment tower headed into the weekend. The property had been acquired by seller Vanbarton Group for $209 million in 2019. Amazon apparently decided to seize the opportunity to exit its lease.

CHS reported here on the October 2018 debut of the much anticipated two-level, 40,000-square-foot addition to the Capitol Hill-area grocery scene. Continue reading →

Norma and Terri — Women in First Hill senior community bus accident identified

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(Image: Hilltop House)

The community around Terrace Street’s Hilltop House senior living facility lost two neighbors this week. Friends, loved ones, and family are remembering Norma Luisa Versakos and Terri May Marble.

The King County Medical Examiner has identified the women as the victims in Tuesday’s terrible incident in which a shuttle bus serving the facility was backed into a smoking shelter in the Hilltop House parking lot. Both women died at the scene. A third narrowly escape injury. Police say the driver was evaluated and no signs of impairment were found.

Results of the state collision investigation will not be released for weeks.

Versakos was 77 and Marble, 66. Continue reading →

Two dead after bus reportedly backs over smoking shelter in First Hill parking lot — UPDATE

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Two people were reported dead after a bus struck a smoking shelter in a parking lot near Broadway and Alder in the First Hill neighborhood Tuesday morning.

According to emergency radio updates, a 911 caller reported the horrific incident and said a bus had backed over the shelter occupied by two victims just after 10:30 AM in the parking lot behind the Hilltop House retirement community.

Original reports described the shelter as a tent but SPD clarified that the structure is a smoking area behind the building.

SPD says a third elderly woman barely escaped without injury. Continue reading →

See yourself in art in the new Frye Parlor

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Installation view of Frye Parlor x Jayme Yen, Frye Art Museum (Image: Jueqian Fang/Frye)

Jayme Yen (Image: Colin Beam)

By Caroline Carr

The Frye Art Museum has long been one of the grandest spaces Seattleites could dare consider a third place. Short of a first Thursday, it is one of the only museums in Seattle to offer free admission, a personal value of its founder Charles Frye. In collaboration with a local artist Jayme Yen, the museum recently launched Frye Parlor, a new exhibit that engages in ambitious alchemy, fusing an art installation with a gathering space.

This new concept takes elements from a traditional art exhibit and places them in a lounge, inviting guests to stay a while, socialize, and see themselves as participants in the art. Located outside the museum’s cafe, the installation is Yen’s abstract take on Frye Salon, the ornate, floor-to-ceiling display of the museum’s founding collection. Continue reading →

‘In crisis’ — County makes case for Crisis Care Center on Broadway amid biz owner pushback

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Around 50 people attended last week’s meeting (Image: CHS)

By Matt Dowell

King County officials reaffirmed the value of a planned mental health Crisis Care Center on Broadway at a community meeting last week but members of the public pushed back — “Why here?”

Officials tell CHS the meeting was the next step in a process they say is both just beginning — and well under way. There is an offer for the property on the table. More community meetings are being planned.

Meanwhile, a letter sent to District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth protesting the consideration of the Broadway at Union property for the new center has made waves in the neighborhood business community.

Meeting attendees inside Seattle U’s Wyckoff Auditorium and organized by the county and the GSBA chamber of commerce Thursday pushed for keeping the crisis center out of Capitol Hill and shifting the focus to a new location. Ice cream entrepreneur Molly Moon Neitzel took the mic.

“I’m Molly Moon, I’ve lived on Capitol Hill for 22 years. I have gone from a partying kid on one side of the Hill to a mom on the other side of the Hill. I’ve [operated] a thriving business in the Pike/Pine corridor for 16 years. I located that business there in a thriving time for the Hill. Our neighborhood is in crisis.”

“I think probably everyone in this room supports the mission of the Crisis Care Centers and believes that they need to exist,” Neitzel said. “The need for first responders to have the ability to take these folks in need to a Crisis Care Center — we can all give a standing ovation to that mission.”

“Do they need to come to a neighborhood in absolute dire crisis for the last five, six, seven years? No they do not.”

“I would encourage you to look at a site that is in a neighborhood that doesn’t have so much crisis going on right now.”

CHS broke the news last week on the county’s plans to open a facility in the former Polyclinic building at Broadway and Union as part of the $1.25 billion Crisis Care Centers measure approved by voters in April 2023. The nine-year levy calls for a network of five facilities that provide walk-in behavioral health care. The first opened in Kirkland in March. Continue reading →