Tag Archives: preservation

St. Mark’s affordable housing and adaptive reuse development on agenda at Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board

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A rendering showing the planned massing of the new structure (Image: Atelierjones)

The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board will be briefed this week on the planned redevelopment and adaptive reuse project envisioned to create more than 100 affordable homes on the St. Mark’s Cathedral campus on northern Capitol Hill.

The project would transform the landmarks-protected St. Nicholas building that has stood on the property for 98 years. CHS reported here on the project taking shape with designs calling for 109 affordable apartment units in a development that would create a new twin to the historic building.

Designated as a protected landmark in 1982, the St. Nicholas structure’s protections include the “entire exterior of the 1926 building” and “the entire site” but the restrictions do not extend to the structure’s interior. Continue reading →

Kerry Hall hits the market as Cornish College of the Arts says goodbye to Capitol Hill

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(Image: Cornish College of the Arts)

The Cornish College of the Arts is ready to sever its final connection after more than a century of dance and music education on Capitol Hill.

Kerry Hall, the three-story studio and performance hall at E Roy and Broadway where Nellie Cornish called home at the time of the school’s 1914 founding and part of the school for more than 100 years, is now for sale.

“This is an exciting moment for Cornish College of the Arts,” Emily Parkhurst, chair of the board of trustees, said in a statement. “The decision to sell Kerry Hall completes the Board’s plan to unify the campus in South Lake Union, first outlined in 2007.”

CHS reported here in 2021 on preparations for the property sale as Cornish sought to solidify its growing presence in South Lake Union.

The announcement did not include a price tag for the property. Cornish says proceeds from the sale will be “reinvested into Cornish’s existing facilities and operations, allowing the college to continue to grow.” The school says its enrollment is expected to exceed 530 students in the 2024/2025 school year. Continue reading →

As we drink to Linda’s 30th, raise a glass to 97 years and counting at 707 E Pine

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Capitol Hill at Pine and Boylston, looking southwest at downtown, Seattle, Washington, July 22, 1991. 707 E Pine is in the foreground and Linda’s was about to be born. (Image: University of Washington Libraries, Special Collection)

So, you know the secret of how Linda’s has survived and thrived on Capitol Hill for 30 years  — Linda Derschang isn’t wrong when she says it is about people.

But the 1927-built store turned Middle Eastern restaurant with belly dancing turned grunge-era bar is also a key component.

Somehow over its three decades at 707 E Pine, Linda’s hasn’t directly faced the challenges that come with new landlords and new development plans.

King County records show the same family who gave Linda’s its first lease 30 years ago continues to hold the property. Continue reading →

With demolition plan for 120-year-old Wilshire Building, seven-story affordable housing project’s ‘fast track’ finally ready to play out on Broadway

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(Image: Knit Studios)

The Bait Shop block isn’t the only stretch of Broadway being readied for redevelopment to add new housing to the core of Capitol Hill. Demolition permit filings this month show the project to create a new seven-story affordable apartment building in the 200 block of Broadway E is rounding into shape after years of planning.

CHS reported here in November 2022 on the Seattle Landmarks Board rejection of Broadway’s Wilshire Building for historical protections, clearing the way for the now more than 120-year-old structure to be demolished to make way for a new seven-story, mixed-use building with 95 apartments, five ground floor live/work units, and new street-level retail space.

The project has been developed by Cannon Commercial, TAP Collaborative, and $3 million in affordable housing funding from the 2021 round of Office of Housing grants. A company registered to Joe Cannon and TAP’s Rebecca Ralston purchased the property for $6.25 million in 2018, according to King County records. Continue reading →

The Bloch House is Capitol Hill’s latest landmark

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(Image: Marvin Anderson Architects)

The Blochs (Image: Marvin Anderson Architects)

The latest landmark on Capitol Hill will be a Tudor Revival style home that has stood on a corner across from Volunteer Park for more than 115 years.

The Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board last week voted to designate the Bloch House at 15th and Prospect for landmarks protections of the structure’s exterior “and portions of the interior that include: the entry vestibule, foyer, main staircase, dining room, living room, study, rathskeller, and ballroom.”

The board agreed the house is “associated in a significant way with a significant aspect of the cultural, political, or economic heritage of the community, City, state or nation” and “embodies the distinctive visible characteristics of an architectural style, or period, or a method of construction. The board also declared the structure worthy of protections as an example of “an outstanding work of a designer or builder” — Congratulations, Clayton D. Williams and Arthur Loveless.

By the way, you’ve probably enjoyed some of Arthur’s other work in the neighborhood. Continue reading →

After 16 years on Capitol Hill, Kaladi Brothers Coffee is headed back to Alaska

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(Image: Kaladi Brothers)

Thanks to a CHS reader for the picture

There is finally a date for the end of one of the last of the Capitol Hill coffee houses as E Pike’s Kaladi Brothers is preparing customers for the change.

The only lower-48 location of the Alaska coffee chain will close at the end of July. A sign has gone up at the cafe with the planned final day of service listed as July 27th 29th along with contact information for customers who might want to send a last tip to their favorite baristas.

There is no plan to move or reopen, manager Erika “EZ” Zumwalt tells CHS.

The planned closure comes after years of limbo for the block since CHS first broke the news in August of 2020 on a planned redevelopment of the auto row-era buildings along this stretch of E Pike. Zumwalt said one timeline originally had the cafe moving out last summer but Kaladi decided to take the offer of another year in the space from developer Hunters Capital. Continue reading →

This old Capitol Hill building is probably not a landmark

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From the report prepared by David Peterson Historic Resource Consulting

It may be the unlikeliest of the remaining major auto row-era structures on Capitol Hill to be considered, but the boarded-up, 1924-built Olive Way Improvement Company building lined up for a likely future of mixed-use redevelopment will get its day in front of the Seattle Landmarks Board.

A required nomination hearing for the nearly 100-year-old complex at the curving corner of E Olive Way and Denny will take place next Wednesday. The meeting will likely be prelude to a demolition, or, at least, a gutting.

CHS broke the news in January that Guntower Capital, a holding company formed by executives at two Seattle-area real estate and development firms, was in agreement to purchase the half acre or so property once home to a mix of businesses including the former In the Bowl, the departed Bus Stop bar and Coffee Messiah cafe and a sprawling dog lounge charred in a 2017 fire.

Its history, of course, goes back much further but the commercial building constructed by an Olive Way focused developer as a retail and automotive garage structure has seen better days.

Still, it has its auto row charms including massive heavy timber trusses, old brick walls, and some remaining decorative flourishes along the E Olive Way facing retail segment “clad in buff-colored field face brick with terra cotta ornamentation.” Continue reading →

Last of the Melrose spite mound houses demolished on Capitol Hill

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This week above Melrose — thanks to a CHS reader for the tip and photo

The last of the Melrose spite mound houses is gone. The old hill it rose up on also could be hauled away.

Demolition crews this week did quick work of the 117-year-old Queen Anne-style home that long ago became office space above Melrose as the street became home to popular food and drink and shopping destinations like Melrose Market, Mamnoon, and the Starbucks Reserve Roastery.

The family behind Boehm Design Associates sold the old house and its 5,250-square-foot parcel smack in the middle of the entertainment district for $2.75 million in January.

The house wasn’t a protected landmark but it was certainly historical, surviving decades atop the last remnants of Pike Street Hill. Continue reading →

Seattle permanently eases approval process for small changes to its roster of 480 (and growing) landmark buildings

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Broadway’s Capitol Crest building was designated as a Seattle landmark in 2022

The Seattle City Council voted 8-0 Tuesday to keep approvals on small changes to designated landmarks in the hands of city staff.

The mayor’s office legislation will keep in place changes made during the pandemic to handle “minor alterations” on the city’s growing roster of protected landmark buildings like signage, awnings, storefront renovations and building systems upgrades with administrative review by city staff.

New construction, demolition and major redevelopment proposals will not be eligible for administrative review under the plan.

The city says the permanent change will allow faster approval of necessary changes and repairs to landmark structures by Department of Neighborhoods staff while allowing boards and commissions to focus on more important business.

The city’s roster of protected properties has reached 480.

 

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Set to be replaced by affordable development and with a complicated history of women’s health, Broadway’s Wilshire Building considered for landmarks protections — UPDATE: Rejected

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From the nomination packet

The Seattle Landmarks Board is slated Wednesday to decide if the 119-year-old gabled parapets and semicircular bay windows of Broadway’s Wilshire Building are worthy of consideration for protections that could complicate a seven-story affordable apartment project planned to replace it.

The board will take up the nomination of the 200 block Broadway E commercial and apartment structure in an afternoon session to decide if the two-story commercial building home to the shuttered Jai Thai restaurant, a collection of businesses including a Mud Bay pet supply store location, and 14 upper floor apartment units should move forward in the landmarks process. The property’s owners were required to pursue the review as part of the city’s development process.

UPDATE: With many of its features significantly altered over the years and lacking an architectural and cultural history compelling enough to sway the vote, the building was rejected in the nomination process by the board Wednesday and will not move forward in the process, clearing the way for an easier path to demolition.

Old timers will remember it as the Broadway Rexall. CHS reported here in January on the historical significance of the old building and the affordable Broadway Urbaine project planned to rise on the block with its fast track through the city’s design review process thanks to its hoped-for addition of much-needed affordable housing. Continue reading →