(Photo: Matt Goyer)

With the Brix auction taking place last weekend, neighbor Bill asked us to look into another notable Capitol Hill real estate development – 25 on the Park – that is struggling with the down economy. Urbnlivn reported on some of the development’s problems back in summer. We’ve dug in to learn a bit more about these empty homes that seem to be stuck in limbo on the edge of Cal Anderson Park.

CHS can confirm that on February 24, 2009, Everett-based City Bank foreclosed on the development and the Dwelling Company (“Jacobsen House Inc” is the holding company) no longer markets or owns it (full notice of foreclosure is attached to this post).  City Bank foreclosed on the property for the following reasons :

a. Failure to pay second half 2008 real estate taxes of $13,019.22 plus interest and penalties.

b. Failure to pay when due the following amounts which are now in arrears:

Monthly Payments:

Monthly Payments of $101,874.23 due 10/10/08, $106,582.11 due 11/10/08, $103,313.17 due 12/10/08, $106,756.94 due 01/10/09 and $106,756.92 due 02/10/09

Late Charges:

Charges for monthly payments not made within ten days of its due date $29,450.61

Default Interest Increase:

Default interest increase from 01/20/09 to 02/24/09 $145,907.30

TOTAL MONTHLY PAYMENTS, LATE CHARGES AND DEFAULT INTEREST INCREASE $700,614.28

Though the notice anticipates an auction in June 2009 and there was an auction scheduled for August 2009, no auctions have apparently taken place.  From City Bank’s comments after its most recent earnings release, they may be attempting to find someone to finish the build out on the units to sell them:

“We are prudently financing the construction of homes in housing developments where sales are actively occurring,”  [CEO Conrad] Hanson said. “We are not planning on selling building lots where the appraised value is significantly below the value of the land with a completed house.” 

City Bank board member Marty Heimbigner said developing holdings is a key component of the bank’s survival strategy.

CHS contacted City Bank for an update on the status of the development and will add any new information to this post if we hear back from them.

While we’re already busy planning where the next park developed on Capitol Hill will go, work is set to begin on a new green space coming to the top of Capitol Hill at 16th and Howell. Celebrate the start of construction with a groundbreaking ceremony and community poetry event this Saturday in the paved parking lot the new park will soon be replacing.

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CAPITOL HILL PARK GROUNDBREAKING CELEBRATION

The Friends of Capitol Hill Park and Seattle Parks and Recreation will celebrate the beginning of construction for the new park located at 16th Avenue & E Howell Street on October 3, 2009 from 4 – 5 p.m.

The celebration features poetry from Marion Kimes, Susan Kerry, Ashley Flannagan and Jesse Minkert.  Community members are encouraged to bring a 3”x5” card with their favorite word or line from a poem or play to add to the poetry tree

Seattle Parks and Recreation Superintendent Tim Gallagher will be a featured speaker at the event.

Through the Pro Parks Levy, Seattle Parks and Recreation purchased the .21-acre asphalt parking lot. The Levy allocated $545,800 for park planning, design and construction. Mithun Architects is the landscape architect firm in charge of design and construction. Incorporating feedback from community meetings held in 2008, Mithun created a design concept for the park.

The construction contract was awarded on September 24, 2009 to Precision Earthworks. Construction will begin in early October. The awarded contract includes basic park elements such as grading, lawn, pathway, plaza, steps, barbeques and picnic tables and both bid additives.  Parks will install benches, bike racks, and the art feature under this contract. Completion is targeted for January 2009.

The Friends of Capitol Hill Park community formed in the summer of 2008 and spearheaded fundraising efforts that enabled a more complete build out of the park.

The 16th and Howell park will be built to its base design leaving community groups to raise funds for things like BBQs and bike racks. You can learn more about how to help raise funds for those elements at Saturday’s event or by checking out http://www.capitolhillpark.org/. For more on the park’s design, check out the Seattle Parks 16th/Howell project page.

We’re also trying to dig into the Seattle Parks naming process to find out what the status is on potential names for this park and the park at Summit/John. Maybe Capitol Hill Park is the official name — we’re looking into it and, if it is, will ask why our suggestions were ignored. CHS Capitol Hill Seattle Blog Park is much more catchy, no?

jseattle is a member of the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce and, while beholden to nobody and loyal to nothing but CHS and the CHS community, does have a financial interest in the longterm success of the Chamber’s member organizations.

The Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce was born long ago so it has probably held benefit dinners before. But this one is different. It is the first big benefit for a re-born Chamber — and a first step in that re-birth’s growth into something that can serve Capitol Hill and sustain itself as a useful entity.

We first told you about the Chamber’s Spirit of the Hill dinner back in August. It’s a foodie event showcasing one of the new members the Chamber is most proud of, Jerry Traunfeld’s Poppy. The event will feature a special Poppy menu, a chat with Traunfeld about his business and an auction and raffle to keep you entertained. You can go for all that stuff.

Or you can go to support the Chamber — and Capitol Hill — as it deals with a weakening economy and the challenges and opportunities presented by Broadway’s light rail construction.

“We think it’s fun to recognize a new member on the block who has creted a signature dining experience,” Chamber executive director Jack Hilovsky said. “The dinner is a start and we need people to support it. But most of our support will come from individuals.”

The rebirth of the Chamber in 2006 came as the City of Seattle was looking for a community organization on Capitol Hill to partner with as the area prepared to face the light rail construction and zoning changes that would radically reshape the Hill. A three-year, $500,000 grant from the city supported the Chamber’s work. This summer, the last of the grant funds were spent as those three years came to an end. The Chamber still has work to do to advocate for the Hill as it is massively altered and, hopefully, improved by the light rail work and new development. They are only part of the process — but they can be a big part of the process. The Broadway design charrette earlier this month illustrated the power of an organizing force to help shape what comes next. The Chamber wrote the check to make that happen.

“I think Broadway looks better and there is so much potential with the coming of the light rail station,” Hilovsky said. “But we can’t do it without the community getting behind our work.”

The dinner has drawn some large sponsors from the community like SRM Development and R.D. Merrill. Buying a ticket to the Chamber’s benefit is a chance to expand the community to include support from a more grassroots level. Not everybody can shell out 75 bucks for dinner — but for those who can, the Spirit of the Hill dinner is a chance to show support for an organization representing Capitol Hill and ‘getting behind’ that work.

(And, if you can’t shell out 75 bucks, CHS is giving away two tickets bought with our own hard-earned advertising revenue. Check out the grey box above!)

CHS is built by you. Anybody can be part of the site to comment, publish articles, post pictures, create calendar events and more. You can participate with or without a CHS account — you can leave a comment without joining the site, for example — but being part of CHS gives you a lasting presence in your community news site and makes it easier for us to create an extremely open environment for everybody to be part of.

With all that as prelude, it’s exciting to announced that we just zoomed through a fun milestone. Please meet CHS member #1000:

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Washington Ensemble Theater might not be the first type of neighbor you think of on Capitol Hill but the little theater (and Little Theater!) company is fitting from CHS’s POV. Our ideal community is a mix of the people who live, work and play on the Hill. Some of us — ahem, @jseattle — identify deeply with the organizations they help drive. So, on CHS, your neighbor just might be a fringe theater group.

For a look at the other 999 members of CHS — oops, 1,009, now — here’s our CHS member roster sorted in our favorite fashion: newest first! (We like old friends, too, but new friends are always exciting)

As for WET, you can swing by and congratulate them for their numerical, um, achievement and check out their new show. Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom plays through late October. While it sounds like it could be based on the CHS life story, it’s probably not. Here’s a review from The Sunbreak.

In the meantime, if you’d like to join the neighborhood, you can create a CHS account here.

Neighbor Ryan is looking for help — if you saw anything, leave a comment or drop CHS some mail and we’ll put you in touch.

I was the victim of a hit and run while I was riding my bike to work this morning.  I was riding down Boren between Pine and Olive when a white truck pulled a mid-block u-turn in front of me.  I ran into him and while I was pulling myself up on the flatbed he started dragging me down the street.

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There were a good number of witnesses but I didn’t get anybody’s name down.  If anybody saw anything, I would love to hear from them.

Anyhow, I was wondering if you could give a shout out to the CHS community if it’s not too much trouble.  Thanks.

-Ryan

UPDATE:
CHS talked with chef Robert Abergel who owned Esmeralda and operated it with his son. He also was the man behind Topolino’s Pizza and Burrito Express that also took a swing at winning a place in Cap Hill tummies at the same 12th Ave location. Abergel said he has sold the restaurant business — equipment and lease — to a group planning to open a Chinese restaurant at the 12th Ave location. The 40-year veteran said his experience running a restaurant on Capitol Hill for the last five years was generally positive but also challenging.

“It’s a hard area to work because it’s a very transient crowd,” Abergel said. “People are here for short time and then they go. When more than half the people move away, nobody becomes a regular.”

Still, Abergel said, he would have preferred to have kept Esmeralda. “I’m selling it half-heartedly,” he said. “But with my knees and my son going to school, what are you going to do?”

Instead, Abergel will now focus his energy on the Topolino’s Pizza restaurant he still owns in Bellevue and a takeout concept he is starting called Squared Meal.

“Thank you for the patronage,” Abergel said when asked if there’s anything he’d like to tell Capitol Hill as he closes shop. “I’d like them to patronize these new people. The only food I eat out is oriental. There is an art to it and this woman is very, very talented.”

Original Post:
It was only last September when 12th Ave ‘Mediterranean Euro fusion bistro’ Esmeralda first set its neon sign ablaze.

Slog says that pink beacon is extinguished tonight — ‘one meat + 2 sides’ will be replaced by, according to the sign the Slog saw posted in the window at 12th and Denny, ‘GREAT CHINESE FOOD COMING SOON!!’

As for Esmeralda, never went inside after the reinvention of the restaurant space in the neon bistro style and the pizza CHS experienced at the old incarnation (same owners, we believe) was best described as regrettable. Maybe it was a bad night. Urbanspooners liked Esmeralda well enough, though, and the restaurant’s operator has apparently been in the business a long time. Worth a CHS follow-up — only regret is that we’re coming to the story with time only for an epilogue.

You might have heard that indie celebs Zooey Deschanel and Ben Gibbard were married earlier this month in ‘a town near Seattle.’ Turns out, they honeymooned on Capitol Hill (oh, and she might not be vegan):

Zooey’s MySpace page. That is not her husband.

zooey’s vegan? hardly. she and ben were in the fatty, cheese-infested french bistro (aka cafe presse, in the capitol hill neighborhood of seattle) where i work about 11am this (monday) morning. i had no idea they had just gotten married! they were with ben’s whole side of the family and ben kept addressing his grandmother as ‘granny.’ it was pretty cute.

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Now, before you think we’re giving credence to this report because of some random comment on the Internet, we also found corroboration for the sighting in Seattle University’s gossip rag student newspaper.

Hat tip to @lannyb for giving CHS a reason to read People magazine.