For sale: New Capitol Hill developer sought for mixed-use City Market redevelopment

Speaking of neighborhood groceries, it has been 111 days since the “MUP-ready development site” also known as Capitol Hill’s much-loved City Market hit the Seattle real estate market.

November’s unpriced listing — if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it — was the surest sign that much-hyped San Francisco-based property developer Juno is now out of the picture after shepherding the property through several rounds of Seattle process on the way to plans for a mass timber mixed-use building topped with 98-residential units, including 58 studios, 21 “deep” one-bedrooms, 13 one-bedrooms and 5 two-bedrooms, above a future home for the popular Bellevue Ave grocery and new underground parking.

To make way, the existing City Market building and the laundromat next door as well as a small surface parking lot were planned to be demolished. Continue reading

Sprinkler system knocks out Capitol Hill apartment building fire, Seattle Fire investigating — UPDATE

Seattle Fire investigators were trying to determine how a fire started Tuesday night on an upper floor of a new Capitol Hill apartment building.

SFD responded to the blaze just after 5 PM Tuesday in the 600 E Howell Clay Apartments that rose on the site of the former Redwood bar but reported that the seven-story building’s automatic safety systems had put the fire out. There were no reported injuries.

The Fire Marshal was called to the scene to investigate. Limited damage was reported.

UPDATE: SFD reports the fire was determined to have been intentionally set. Seattle Police is now investigating. Damage was limited to about $5,000, SFD reports.

 

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Calling the heartbroken but happy, the hungry, and the thirsty, The Jilted Siren now open on Capitol Hill

 

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Amy Graham — accompanied by her daughter Kayla — at The Jilted Siren

A new mural by Justice Fox-Hille

A popular neighborhood space has taken new shape as a shadowy and adumbral hangout for creatures of the night and the people who love them on Capitol Hill.

The Jilted Siren calls Bellevue Ave “the heart of the locals’ favorite part” of the neighborhood. It is a dark heart — with a big smile.

The new bar inspired by love and loss from industry veteran and first-time owner Amy Graham has opened in the former home of Kedai Makan. CHS reported in February on Graham’s plans for a “dark and broody” makeover of the restaurant into a neighborhood lounge with “Spice Trade Route” flavors. As for The Jilted Siren name, the veteran bartender knows her way through the human heart — and the classics.

“The Iliad… the Odyssey… this time Odysseus does not get away,” Graham told CHS earlier this year. “We’ve all been heartbroken at some point. Understanding this is the human condition.” Continue reading

‘What does it look like to change?’ — Kedai Makan is for sale, set to complete the Capitol Hill food and drink lifecycle on its own terms

From a stall at the farmers market to neighborhood walk-up counter to its own “monster” of a restaurant space, Kedai Makan has lived and breathed every phase of the Capitol Hill food and drink life cycle on its own terms.

Husband and wife Kevin Burzell and Alysson Wilson are now bringing Kedai’s lifecycle to a close — also on their own terms — after ten whirlwind years of 15-hour days and some of the best customers you can find in Seattle.

“We took baby steps from each place, never wanted to be big,” Wilson tells CHS. “We’ve taken Kedai as far as we can take it. We’re ready for some kind of a change.”

Long running Kedai fans now have a few weeks to stop through to say goodbye and congratulations. Kedai Makan’s final night of service is planned for October 29th.

Kedai Makan is for sale. Continue reading

Police search for BB gun sniper in string of Capitol Hill airgun attacks

 

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Police are looking for a shooter targeting people with an airgun near Crawford and E Olive after a person was shot and injured by a BB or pellet late Saturday night, the latest in a string of similar shootings reported in the area.

According to Seattle Police, officers were called to the Capitol Hill Kaiser Permanente just after 11 PM Saturday night after a man with what was believed to be a gunshot wound arrived at the facility. Police say it turned out the victim had been shot in the buttocks with a BB or pellet. Continue reading

Police: Capitol Hill Door Dash driver clings to windshield and hangs on across city as thief speeds off with his delivery car

A Door Dash driver’s late Thursday night assignment on Capitol Hill turned into a ride for his life after someone tried to steal the the delivery person’s car and sped across the city with the victim screaming and witnesses calling 911 to report the strange scene as it crossed into downtown Seattle.

According to the SPD brief on the January 20th incident, witness reported the auto theft in progress around 11:30 PM near Boylston and Olive: “1 MIN AGO, VEH SPED BY WITH SOMEONE ON FRONT OF VEH HOLDING ONTO WINDSHEILD SCREAMING STOP STOP, L/S SB.”

“Officers conducted an extensive area check and spoke with witnesses in the area and determined a general direction of which the vehicle traveled with the subject on the hood of the vehicle,” the report reads. “Officers were unable to locate the vehicle.”

Continue reading

Seattle City Light searches for cause of stubborn POWHat power outage — UPDATE

The outage as of 4:30 PM Wednesday

One thousand Capitol Hill customers spent Wednesday without power as Seattle City Light crews worked to locate the cause of a stubborn outage somewhere under the densely popular blocks just south of E Olive Way.

Power problems in the Pine-Olive Way-Harvard Ave Triangle were first reported just before 8 AM and have continued through the day.

Approaching the ninth hour of the outage, a City Light spokesperson said that crews were still trying to locate an underground system failure and pinpoint the exact point of the problem. A 7:15 PM restoration estimate posted earlier in the day on the City Light outage map continued to be displayed despite the ongoing search.

The area of the outage is home to hundreds of apartments and homes but away from commercial buildings and restaurants. But with many still working remotely under COVID-19 restrictions, Wednesday’s outage also surely disrupted more than a few businesses.

UPDATE 7:00 PM: City Light crews identified the problem and were reported working to make repairs starting around 5:30 PM. The plan was “energizing roughly half of the customers out of power” and then to briefly “deenergize” these customers again before restoring power to everyone. The estimated time for full restoration is around midnight, City Light says.

You can visit seattle.gov/city-light/outages for updates.

 

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Plan for new City Market building: eight stories, mass timber, and a new home for the longtime Capitol Hill grocery — UPDATE

A rendering of the preferred design showing the proposed basic layout of the development (Image: Ennead Architects)

Plans spawned pre-pandemic for a mixed-use development to replace — and create a new home for — Capitol Hill’s City Market along with eight stories of new apartment and retail space just off E Olive Way will move forward Wednesday night with the “mass timber” project’s first pass through the Seattle design review process.

The review will be a test for Juno Residential, a San Francisco real estate startup launched only last summer with Apple and Tesla pedigree that is seeking to change the residential development market with mass production and pre-fabrication techniques. New York’s Ennead Architects is designing the project while Capitol Hill’s Board & Vellum has provided the landscape plan.

UPDATE 4/1/2021: Wednesday night, the review board agreed the project is ready to move forward in the city’s development permitting process. It will move on to its second and possible final review in coming months.

CHS first reported on the Bellevue Ave and E Olive Way development plans from local firm Barrientos Ryan for the property and early promises that City Market would remain in the mix in the fall of 2019.

Juno’s just revealed plans propose an eight-story, 102-unit timber apartment building with 6,200-square-feet of ground floor retail including a new home for City Market. Parking for two vehicles — presumably for City Market’s needs — is included in the proposal. Continue reading

From market rate to affordable, Low Income Housing Institute buying brand new Capitol Hill apartment building

(Image: LIHI)

A newly constructed Capitol Hill apartment building destined to become part of the neighborhood’s market rate housing will instead be used for affordable housing.

With a mix of public financing, Low Income Housing Institute says it is buying the newly constructed, seven story, 76-unit apartment development in the 600 block of E Howell. LIHI announced the Clay Apartments deal late last year but the Seattle Times reported on the transition of the “building planned for upscale market-rate rentals into affordable housing for people who are currently homeless” this week. Continue reading