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A recent REVIVAL market at Capitol Hill Station (Image: Capitol Hill EcoDistrict)

A new rain mural hidden at Broadway and Howell (Image: Capitol Hill EcoDistrict)

Capitol Hill no longer has a community council and its chamber of commerce is dead and gone. But the Capitol Hill EcoDistrict is moving forward to represent the neighborhood as Seattle makes new plans for growth.

Last week at a community forum held outside in the plaza part of the mixed-use housing and retail development above Capitol Hill Station, the organization announced a $300,000 grant from Wells Fargo to further power its work to champion development to bring some of the vital elements of life on Capitol Hill including robust access to public transit to more parts of the city while bringing more projects creating affordable housing to more parts of Seattle including densely populated areas like the Hill and the Central District.

“While we differ in our identities and we come from various walks of life, we want to suggest that feelings of safety and belonging can come from activation and accessibility, not necessarily surveillance,” Capitol Hill restaurant owner and EcoDistrict executive director Donna Moodie said at the Thursday evening forum. “With the climate crisis on our heels, what a better way to empower community than with affordable housing and proximity to transit. Our transit systems and especially housing affordability are critical to the success of public life in Capitol Hill.”

More market scenes (Image: Capitol Hill EcoDistrict)

The EcoDistrict’s research based on studies in the neighborhood and online that took place before, during, and now in this latest phase of the pandemic is being used to shape its advocacy for a new philosophy and new strategies as Seattle shapes a new comprehensive plan that will reshape the city’s land use policies for decades. CHS reported here on efforts from the EcoDistrict and parent organization and affordable housing developer Community Roots Housing to shape the process and guide the city away from its longtime “urban village” strategy in which development was concentrated in the city’s most densely populated areas.

In 2021, the EcoDistrict was selected by the Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development as one of five organizations to support “community engagement” for the Seattle 2035 Comprehensive Plan.

“This is what we call public life, our relationship to public spaces and the connection to each other within them,” Moodie said Thursday about the EcoDistrict’s research and studies. “But we didn’t just stop at the physical spaces. The pandemic has shown all of us how important our resilience can be. So we also looked at what you can’t see, you too, and what we rely on to meet the needs like food, health, housing, and safety.”

Erin Fried, deputy director of the EcoDistrict, says the group’s work is forming answers for Seattle’s next stages of development based on learnings about Capitol Hill as the city begins “reorienting potentially away from the urban village model.”

A major flaw of the existing urban village strategy that emphasizes clustering development in only the already most densely populated areas of the city is it “ignores the connections” between the areas, Fried said. The results can be surprising as in one EcoDistrict finding that examines how a “north/south” divide has developed on Capitol Hill and the Central District where you find income inequality, tree canopy inequality, and “heat islands” as you move south.

“What is really interesting about Capitol Hill is this north/south divide,” Fried said. “It’s indicative of the larger story of Seattle.”

Breaking up those islands — or, better, connecting them — isn’t necessarily only about building heights and multifamily housing. Fried said EcoDistrict strategies that show promise include shaping “biodiversity corridors” or “pollinator pathways.”

The EcoDistrict has also gained ground building community connection. An ongoing REVIVAL Market Street series has helped fill the Capitol Hill Station plaza with activity in a unique program that pays vendors to be part of the event. And, though the unusually dry start to fall hasn’t provide the best canvas, the EcoDistrict has also backed creation of some of the largest rain activate murals ever attempted in new works around the station using the Rainworks technique to mark hidden layers of art on pavement and sidewalks. You can find artist Amol Saraf’s creation hidden at E Olive St and 11th and designer Lourdes Jackson’s “rain paint” at Broadway and Howell.

“Our rainfall is what keeps us unique,” Jackson says about the work. “And as sometimes it may be a pain, it’s all worth it when you realize the beauty of the foliage and wildlife it keeps us close to.”

But there are also very straightforward factors that need to be addressed in the EcoDistrict’s work.

Fried says the EcoDistrict has found that the median household income in the north of Capitol Hill is “double what you see along Summit or Pike.”

“There is a major difference in between what people experience in Volunteer Park than in Cal Anderson,” Fried said of the divide.

Work to bridge those gaps — both here on the Hill and across Seattle — will continue with more Capitol Hill EcoDistrict events and forums and more research and more studies as the city’s comprehensive plan process moves forward.

Learn more at capitolhillecodistrict.org.

HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

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