Tag Archives: i-5 shores

Councilmember says Capitol Hill park got a public safety ‘facelift’ with new strings of lights, improved maintenance

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Catenary lights, improved maintenance, and a volunteer group are helping give a challenged Capitol Hill park a “facelift,” Seattle City Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth says.

“Tashkent Park in Capitol Hill just got a little facelift. New lights and regular maintenance that make a real difference,” the District 3 representative said over an instrumental soundtrack of T-Pain’s “I Can’t Believe It” in a video posted to social media Friday.

“Seven Hills Park, you’re up next for some love and upgrades,” Hollingsworth’s post concludes.

The announcement follows a community meeting held by the city in November to gather feedback as Seven Hills Park remained fenced-off while the city has planned changes there and at the Broadway Hill Park and Tashkent Park spaces due to complaints of crime and disorder. Continue reading →

Welcome to I-5 Shores? Add your Capitol Hill streets to the Seattle Design Festival ‘Name That Neighborhood’ project

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Welcome to I-5 Shores!

A project underway for this year’s Seattle Design Festival is right up CHS’s alley.

The “Name That Neighborhood” project is crowdsourcing the hyperlocal knowledge of Seattleites to define — and name — neighborhood boundaries across the city.

“We are gaining feedback on Seattle City Clerk’s Official Neighborhood Map from Seattleites to see if they agree or disagree with the neighborhood the City has them in,” designer — and onetime mayoral candidate — Andrew Grant Houston tells CHS about the project.

“I think this is particularly poignant given the different neighborhoods the City currently divides Capitol Hill into and could be a way to answer the question: what do we call the area around 15th?” Continue reading →

The fallen willow at Streissguth Gardens

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The fallen willow (Image: CHS)

The maple bench (Image: CHS)

By Domenic Strazzabosco

Streissguth Gardens, on the sloping hillside between 10th Ave and Broadway, lost an iconic willow tree after a wet snowfall this winter. The willow, seemingly weighed down by the snow, fell westward and perpendicular across two of the park’s paths of thin, winding trails.

“It’s kind of bizarre. I never really thought about losing it until it came down,” said Ben Streissguth, who describes himself, unofficially, as the director of the gardens. Streissguth’s parents’ personal gardens were the beginning stages of what constitutes the one-acre space today, and though it’s unknown how old the tree was, he can remember it as far back as his teenage years. Based on Streissguth’s memory, photos and size of the tree, it is estimated that it was around 80 years old.

Streissguth, his wife and a few others, including some community members, have been working to do as much cleanup of the willow and surrounding area as possible. He estimates they’ve spent about 120 hours cleaning up and restoring the space as best they can. Further work will have to be done by Seattle Parks and Recreation.

Just three weeks after the willow fell, a maple toward the southwest side of the park toppled, too. Streissguth has taken what he can of the trees to work on the gardens. So far, there’s a new bench beneath the top of where the willow fell, made out of maple, while the pathway above where the willow stood is being reconstructed using slices of the felled maple. Instead of walking behind it, you can now look down at the willow’s massive root structure. Other projects include creating a wattle fence to create a stronger border between one of the trails and the vegetation running up to it, and edging portions of other trails with willow branches.

Though what will happen to the tree and the space left behind has yet to be decided, the Capitol Hill community around the garden has found ways to mourn the tree, often sharing different connections residents each had with it. Continue reading →

The Summit hustlers: Weekly pool competition draws shot makers and neighbors to Capitol Hill pub

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By Matt Dowell

“Some fat ass cats show up here,” said Ronnie on a recent Wednesday night at the Summit Public House. He’s a regular at the pool table there and he’s been shooting pool on Capitol Hill since the ’90s.

Summit’s free-to-play table attracts good players on any night of the week. But for the last few years, a weekly Wednesday night tournament has become a center of the scene.

Show up around 7 PM on a Wednesday and you will see players warming up. A stack of cylindrical cue cases abuts the long bench at one end of the table. Competitors chalk up with focus, break racks with a whip crack heard around the bar. As Katy, the organizer, takes $10 buy-ins, she adds names to the bracket on a nearby TV screen.

It might look serious to an outsider, especially one who doesn’t play pool. But chat up a few people gathered around and you’ll quickly see there’s more to it than the game.

“They’re fat, but friendly cats,” Ronnie revised. “I like the competitiveness here, and the chill. Everybody’s friendly. Everybody polices themselves. You can come out here [to the patio between games] and smoke your cig, your doobie, your spliff.”

“It’s a good way to spend some time on a Wednesday night.”

Continue reading →

4,000 without power on Capitol Hill after ‘Bird/Animal Contact’ — UPDATE

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Seattle City Light says more than 4,000 customers around the areas above I-5 on the western edge of Capitol Hill and swaths near E Thomas were without power after a Thursday afternoon outage attributed, sadly, to “Bird/Animal Contact.”

SCL reports the outage began around 2:15 PM and says it expecting service to be restored by 8:45 PM. Typically, the city’s restoration estimates are conservative and power can be restored much earlier depending on the damage being repaired.

You can view outage information and track updates at seattle.gov/city-light/outages.

UPDATE: The outage was already reduced to fewer than 2,000 customers just after 3 PM.

UPDATE x2: SCL reported service was restored just before 8 PM after repairing a final downed wire near 15th and Thomas.

Two transformer fires were reported around the time of the initial outage. Seattle Fire was called to a pole fire reported at 15th and Thomas just before 2:15 PM and a second in the 300 block of Summit Ave E at 2:16 PM as the grid absorbed whatever failure resulted from the animal incident.

CHS reported here in June about the remaining areas of Capitol Hill where utility lines have not yet been moved underground by city work and redevelopment to improve service reliability and help avoid long disruptions.

 

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Seattle’s I-5 lid hopes get $2M federal ‘research and planning’ boost

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(Image: U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal)

(Image: Lid I-5)

Seattle’s hopes for someday lidding I-5 through downtown capping noise and pollution while re-connecting neighborhoods and creating millions in dollars of new development opportunities are getting a federal boost.

U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal representing the WA-07 district including Capitol Hill and much of the city’s central and northern neighborhoods says she has helped secure $2 million in federal funding “for the City of Seattle to continue their research and planning of a project to construct a lid over Interstate 5 (I-5) in downtown Seattle.” Continue reading →

Metro’s plan for RapidRide G service changes includes return of bus service to Capitol Hill’s I-5 Shores

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A new Metro coach ready for the center-loading RapidRide G line (Image: Metro)

King County Metro is planning for the return of Route 47 to serve Capitol Hill’s Summit and Bellevue Ave neighborhoods — kind of.

Metro and King County Executive Dow Constantine have arrived at a finalized plan for changes to area bus routes to better connect and optimize service with the planned 2024 opening of the RapidRide G bus line on Madison.

CHS reported here in December on Metro’s ongoing process to weigh rider feedback against available resources and hopes for increased service frequencies on key lines connecting to the RapidRide route.

Metro has been set on other changes including Route 10 and Route 12 with a proposal for the lines to be “reoriented” to operate along E Pine instead of E John and Madison, until they turn north on 15th Ave and 19th Ave. Metro is also going ahead with a plan to move Route 11 off Pine.

But the future of the former Route 47 service had been up in the air. Under the final plan being submitted for approval by the King County Council, Metro would restore service in the areas along Summit and Bellevue by “extending some Route 3 trips to restore trolley bus service in western Capitol Hill where the former Route 47 operated.” Continue reading →

This time, the goodbye to Capitol Hill’s Metro Route 47 looks permanent

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By Cormac Wolf — CHS Reporting Intern

Route 47, the storied ride along Summit and Bellevue Ave on Capitol Hill’s western slope, was shuttered during the pandemic. Now it seems likely King County Metro will restore service to the dense neighborhood, but without the 47. It’s hard to find anyone upset by the probable change.

As CHS reported earlier this month, Metro is shifting buses around in anticipation of the coming RapidRide G line on E Madison. They’re currently soliciting public opinion on whether to lend more buses to routes 10, 11, 12, and 49 (option A), or extend route 3 to include route 47’s old territory (option B). Option B would essentially revive route 47, serving Summit Slope residents every half hour.

We reached out to several community groups aiding riders to see what their consensus on the choice is and asked around about the line. We didn’t find much enthusiasm about saving the 47.

Central Seattle Greenways, the contingent of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways which works in Capitol Hill, was split on the potential options. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill ‘mini park’ to be cleared amid Seattle’s continued, smaller homeless encampment sweeps

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Thanks to a CHS reader for the picture from the mini park

The pace of Seattle homeless encampment sweeps has picked up under Mayor Bruce Harrell’s administration including clearances of small camps sometimes nearly as quickly as they take shape. The new pace will bring a clearance this week of one Capitol Hill encampment apparently formed by an individual camper at the Thomas Street Mini Park.

The latest clearance has been announced for the area around the 300 block Bellevue Ave E park on Thursday morning where city workers and outreach contractors are planned to be on scene to provide assistance and clear away any remaining belongings and debris.

“The City is addressing this encampment as it impedes access to the park and open space for neighboring communities,” a Seattle Parks spokesperson tells CHS about the planned clearance.

It isn’t the first time in the current pandemic wave of Seattle’s homelessness crisis that the park has been swept — CHS reported here on a clearance last September — but the small camp targeted for clearance this time is indicative of the increased and more rapidly deployed resources for removing encampments from public spaces under the Harrell administration as COVID-19 restrictions fade. Continue reading →

Local real estate company touches up new Capitol Hill home office

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Seattle-based real estate investment company Timberlane Partners has a new office on Capitol Hill. Timberlane purchased the 614 Boylston Ave E property for over $2.4 million in September. Shortly thereafter, the company began working towards office space renovations on the first level of the two-story building.

Despite its pristine exterior, the Boylston Ave E property is over a century old, having been built in 1906. It was purchased by the owners of brand design firm Phinney Bischoff in the mid-90s, and sold to Timberlane in 2021 after nearly three decades of ownership. Continue reading →