Tag Archives: yir2015

CHS Year in Review 2015 | The ‘most’ posts — most read, most commented, most viral

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Don’t worry. CHS will move fully into 2016 soon. We have to keep pace with 2015 when we published 1,530 stories. First, we still have a few more things to take account of in the year that was. Below, we’ve tallied CHS’s 2015 ‘most’ posts including the stories that were most-read and most-commented on during the year. All of our Year in Review 2015 coverage is here.

IMG_0315-600x397Most-Read CHS Posts

  1. Mayor Murray set to unveil ‘Rainbow Crosswalks on Capitol Hill’ — UPDATE: Unveiled!
  2. Seattle prepares for May Day 2015 with protests — again — planned for Capitol Hill
  3. Broadway says goodbye to Charlie’s — UPDATE: Confirmed :(
  4. Five injured in shooting at Broadway and Pike
  5. Capitol Hill Value Village to close after one last Halloween

IMG_20150831_191624-400x400Most-Viral CHS Posts
(did not appear on the CHS homepage during the year but were widely shared and read)

  1. Spoiler Alert: Mystery of the Capitol Hill Mystery Coke Machine’s mysteries REVEALED
  2. CHS Community Post | Now trending in Hill male fashion
  3. Starbucks Reserve Roastery and Tasting Room opens at the base of Capitol Hill
  4. Whole Foods coming to Capitol Hill in new development at Broadway and Madison
  5. Two years of being an aPodment building neighbor

2015-10-15-The-Bluff-Building-600x400Most-Pondered CHS Posts
(articles with longest time on page, read by at least 1,000 readers)

  1. 5 final questions for District 3: model city, transit choices, ‘newcomers,’ design review, home owners
  2. 20 things CHS heard during Monday’s *hot and heated* Seattle rent control smackdown
  3. Capitol Retrospective | The Bluff Building: A lesson in escapism at 10th and Pike
  4. Here’s what Bernie Sanders said at the Comet
  5. Dr. Jen closing Capitol Hill shop, moving drag-inspired cosmetics company

IMG_6866-367x550Most-Commented CHS Posts

And, last, but not least, thanks to our roster of 2015 most-active CHS commenters:

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CHS Year in Review 2015 | The year in Capitol Hill pictures

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May Day protection for the Starbucks roastery

Below, we’ve selected some of the images that helped tell the story of the past year on the streets and in the neighborhoods around Capitol Hill. The work includes images from our many reporters and writers and our community of photography contributors. We’re also fortunate to be able to again thank reporter Bryan Cohen and photographer Alex Garland for their ongoing work to make CHS great. This year, we can also thank neighborhood shutterbug Tim Durkan for his views of Broadway and Pike/Pine by night. Thanks to all the photographers who shared their work with CHS in 2015. Continue reading →

CHS Year in Review 2015 | Capitol Hill’s most important stories

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For those who believe Capitol Hill died in 1993, you can stop reading. For the rest of you, below is some of the biggest news CHS covered on and around the Hill in 2015. There were stories of triumph and exciting new things. There were stories of tragedy and troubles. There was a rogue garbage truck. For a neighborhood that has been dead for more than twenty years, it sure was busy up here.

YIR 2015
+ Our first look at the new Capitol Hill — the year in development
+ Capitol Hill’s food and drink booms again
+ CHS Pics | This YEAR in Capitol Hill pictures
+ A Capitol Hill bookseller’s list: best books of 2015
CHS YIR: 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015

Survey – Mobile Version

IMG_8159Capitol Hill Station unveiled: One of the most-viewed news posts of the year was CHS’s report with the first photos from inside the completed Capitol Hill Station. While the light rail extension isn’t slated to begin service until 2016, enthusiasm for the new subway connection ran high in 2015. “Tens of thousands of people will use this as a way to commute to work, to enjoy life when they’re not working. It’s going to make a difference,” Mayor Ed Murray said before his first visit inside the station at Broadway and John. Meanwhile, the ongoing delays for the surface-level First Hill Streetcar became an ongoing joke.

Screen-Shot-2015-11-23-at-7.59.47-AMGun violence: Seattle and, especially, Central Seattle suffered from a wave of shootings and gunfire incidents. A dramatic drive-by shooting in November that injured five at Broadway and Pike got the most headlines while East Precinct shooting deaths included an August slaying in lower Pike/Pine and a deadly July shooting at 24th and Spring. Each of the three incidents mentioned here, by the way, remain unsolved. In all, there were four shooting deaths across the East Precinct in 2015 but across Seattle as a whole, gunfire incidents were trending 27% higher in 2015 vs. 2014. With help from the feds, city officials vowed to address the violence and do more to enable East Precinct officers to focus on serious crimes in 2016. Continue reading →

CHS Year in Review 2015 | Capitol Hill’s food and drink booms again

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Optimism Brewing was a big opening for Capitol Hill in 2015 -- and a small victory for small beer in a year when global brewing aspirations reigned (Image: CHS)

Optimism Brewing was a big opening for Capitol Hill in 2015 — and a small victory for small beer in a year when global brewing aspirations reigned (Image: CHS)

CHS’s yearly tallies are probably missing a name here or there, include some stretch-y borders, might include a double-count or three, and… well, you get the idea. (Source: CHS)

CHS’s yearly tallies are probably missing a name here or there, include some stretch-y borders, might include a double-count or three, and… well, you get the idea. (Source: CHS)


When it opened on 14th Ave in January, global modernist Nue — by our count — was the 100th new food and drink joint debut we’d covered going back through the Capitol Hill restaurant and bar boom to 2012. Using the same not-exactly-scientific methods and including a small handful of joints in the Central District, we’d venture a guess of 38 new bars, restaurants, and cafes opening around Capitol Hill in 2015. Only slightly offsetting that continued growth were a dozen or so closures — with most of those spaces either already returned to service or with new tenants lined up. And we didn’t even include rebirths and overhauls in the tally. In short, the Capitol Hill food+drink boom continued in 2015. But that’s what we said last year. With dozens of new ventures in motion, there is no other way to put it. Below are the stories, people, and places that made it happen.

YIR 2015
+ Our first look at the new Capitol Hill — the year in development
+ CHS Pics | This YEAR in Capitol Hill pictures
+ A Capitol Hill bookseller’s list: best books of 2015
Food+drink: 2014 / 2013 / 2012 / 2011 / 2010

Big beer: 2015 started with a double-edged indicator that it would be a big year for brew as global beer giant Anheuser-Busch announced its takeover of E Pike-born Elysian Brewing. Co-founder Dick Cantwell told CHS of his “mixed feelings” over the estimated $60 million deal. Three months after the takeover, he resigned. Meanwhile, the year ended with news of another big beer player settings its sights on Capitol Hill as Redhook announced plans for an E Pike small batch brewery and pub. The punchline? Redhook is owned by the Craft Beer Alliance, a company partly owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Optimism

Optimism

Small big beer: With all that big beer money being thrown around, the biggest beer investment in the neighborhood was actually made by a Capitol Hill husband and wife team with a start-up mentality when it comes to brew. Optimism Brewing — a 16,000 square-foot brewery designed by Olson Kundig Architects — opened in November in an overhauled auto row-era showroom at Broadway in Union. Meanwhile, tiny Outer Planet opened on 12th Ave.

RIP Bauhaus: For many, Bauhaus died when it left its birthplace cafe at the corner of Melrose and Pine. The departure was completed for the rest of us in early December when the Bauhaus businesses imploded and its cafes shuttered across the city. The closure ended what many had been hoped would be a story of a neighborhood favorite overcoming the area’s relentless pace of development.

Continue reading →

A Capitol Hill bookseller’s list: best books of 2015

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By Hilary Lawlor / Special to CHS

As a bookseller at one of the most famous bookstores in the country, the Elliott Bay Book Company, I see a lot of books come and go. It gets to the point where it seems overwhelming. How could anyone ever read all of these? What’s the point of writing anything, if the market is flooded with so many great choices? Well, the point of writing, and encouraging authors to continue to write, is that once in a while, a book appears that is so fantastic, so memorable, so great that it eclipses all the others, if only for a moment. This is my list of the books that came out in 2015 that I think accomplished that difficult feat.51npiQtVa-L._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_

  • 15) Too High and Too Steep by David B. Williams

In the late 19th and early 20th century, the entire topography of downtown Seattle was reshaped. As hilly as Seattle-ites may think the city is now, the landscape was once much more varied, particularly in the downtown area. In Too High and Too Steep, WIlliams describes the processes that leveled Denny Hill and erased cliffs and tide flats from Seattle’s waterfront. He evokes the setting the way it used to be, and you won’t believe it now, but you might wish you could have seen a hillier Seattle.

  • 14) Stories in the Stars by Susanna Hislop

In this beautiful volume, Hislop combines beautifully designed illustrations of constellations with page-long histories concerning the legends behind them. Or sometimes, when they’re not interesting enough, she makes up new ones, and her prose is warm, funny, and engaging. After laying out Hercules’s to-do list (including items like “Snatch Hippolyte’s snazzily-decorated girdle” and “Go to Crete and deal with a white bull”), for instance, she includes a note-to-self at the bottom: “Urgent: Buy Life Insurance.”

  • 13) Seattle City of Literature: Reflections from a Community of Writers

In this awesome book from local publisher Sasquatch Books, several of Seattle’s best-known writers combined their powers to create Captain Planet a work that embodies the history of literature and growth in this great city. Advertised as a “bookish history of Seattle,” the little red paper-over-board volume boasts essays and stories from the likes of Tom Robbins, Sonora Jha, Garth Stein, Frances McCue, and Karen Finneyfrock, among many others. Pick this one up if you want to feel a little bit more connected to the ground beneath your feet, or at least to the history behind it. Continue reading →

CHS Year in Review 2015 | Our first look at the new Capitol Hill — the year in development

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The grand opening of Chop House Row was a 2015 highlight (Image: CHS)

The grand opening of Chop House Row was a 2015 highlight (Image: CHS)

Chop House developer Liz Dunn bet on office space. It sounds -- so far -- like it was a good call for the neighborhood. Meanwhile, developers of other projects in the Pike/Pine core have turned to larger solutions to fill thousands of feet of commercial space (Image: CHS)

Chop House developer Liz Dunn bet on office space. It sounds — so far — like it was a good call for the neighborhood. Meanwhile, developers of other projects in the Pike/Pine core have turned to larger solutions to fill thousands of feet of commercial space (Image: CHS)

The transformation of Capitol Hill continued in 2015 as a core set of projects in the latest development wave either opened or were finally preparing to after years of planning and development. The result was a year full of revelations about the kinds of tenants — residents and new businesses — the redevelopment of Central Seattle’s neighborhoods will bring. In the meantime, groundwork was set for City Hall’s attempt to push against market forces seemingly aligned around a more expensive, less diverse Seattle. Capitol Hill and the Central District served as the backdrop for many of Seattle’s biggest headlines in affordable housing policy and projects, including bold proposals from City Hall and transit oriented housing. Meanwhile, change never rests.

CHS YIR 2014 — More than supply and demand
CHS YIR 2013 — Capitol Hill development and the quest for affordability
CHS YIR 2012 — The re-development of Capitol Hill

Looking ahead
As usual with development, 2015’s story was also prelude. At least 600 new apartment units were expected to open on greater Capitol Hill with even more on the way in 2016, according to analysis from Dupre+Scott Apartment Advisors. In the short term, the continued housing boom seemed to have little effect on demand. Vacancy rates in the region were still declining to historical lows and rents throughout the region rose by 7.4%. Continue reading →