Tag Archives: i-5 shores

Seattle Fire battles Monday night triplex fire on Capitol Hill — UPDATE: Cause determined to be accidental

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Thanks to a CHS reader for this picture of the scene

Firefighters were battling a fire in a 1950s-era triplex Monday night after flames broke out in the Capitol Hill residential building in the 400 block of E Republican between Bellevue and Summit.

Just over 20 minutes later a second fire was reported in a three-story, 25-unit building in the 500 block of E Denny Way about a half mile away but that report turned out to be mistaken.

On E Republican, crews arrived shortly before 8:00 PM to find heavy flames visible on the main floor of the single-story building with a basement. Additional teams were deployed to protect a nearby residence. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill’s global cafe flavors expand with ‘Chinese-inspired’ Offline Coffee

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(Images: La Marzocco)

The tile of a Bellevue Ave cafe space is shining again. Offline Coffee is ready to roll out spring and summer flavors after a winter opening on the northwest edge of the Hill. Its flavors add to an increasingly international mix of espresso and cafe love on Capitol Hill.

CHS reported in September on plans for the “Chinese-inspired coffee + matcha cafe and light eatery” from first time food and drink entrepreneurs Krystal Graylin and Lucy Kong. Continue reading →

Man suffering crisis falls to death from Capitol Hill apartment building — UPDATE

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(Source: Google Maps)

A man suffering crisis who had been in and out of contact with police through the day Sunday is reported to have leapt to his death last night from the Ben Lomond Apartments building on the western slope of Capitol Hill above I-5.

According to a Seattle Police Department brief on the incident and emergency radio updates, police were first called to a disturbance involving a 40-year-old man possibly armed with a knife or a firearm in a fifth floor unit of the Bellevue Ct E apartment building around 2:30 PM.

SPD reported the man was “experiencing severe delusions and paranoia” and had been locked out of a unit of the building.

According to police, officers were preparing to take the man into custody under “Involuntary Treatment Act” protocols. Continue reading →

‘Our home and our history’ — A new era for Capitol Hill’s iconic El Capitan Apartments

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(Image: City of Seattle)

A classic Capitol Hill apartment building is reportedly set to be sold by its longtime family ownership amid Seattle’s stubbornly expensive rental market and ongoing worries about the end of “small landlords” in the neighborhood.

Residents of Yale Ave’s five-story, 101-year-old El Capitan Apartments at the base of Capitol Hill above I-5 received a letter last week from the Hendricks family notifying them of the sale. The letter was posted to Reddit and residents of the 86-unit building have confirmed the notice.

“This building has been more than just a business to us; it has been our home and our history,” the letter about the iconic building’s future from Manny Hendricks reads. “My father, Alvin ‘Bubba’ Hendricks, purchased El Capitan in 1970, continuing a legacy started by my grandfather, who managed the building for years before that.” Continue reading →

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 →