Monthly Archives: January 2025

Laurel, now open for coffee, beauty, and light on E Olive Way

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A picture of workers preparing the new Laurel cafe and bar for opening

The crew readying the 500 square feet for its daytime start (Image: Laurel)

Seattle is a big city and sometimes it takes a really long time to open something new here — even one of the tiniest joints on Capitol Hill.

After a year of planning, paperwork, and elbow grease, Laurel has opened for daytime hours along E Olive Way. You can stop in for daily 9a-2p coffee service starting Friday. Its nighttime hours will follow.

Little Laurel might be the most personal of Kate Opatz’s food and drink ventures. CHS reported here last summer on the light, beauty, daytime coffee, neighborhood investors, love for a lost friend, and mom behind the project transforming the former home of Crumble & Flake Pâtisserie. Continue reading →

Voices Off Lounge, a hub for the Deaf community, now growing on Capitol Hill

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A flyer for the grand opening of the Voices Off Lounge with an illustration of purple signing hands in motion

A note about CHS alt text: As a small community news provider, production time on the site sometimes gets cut short and we have frequently fallen short of the mark when it comes to certain usability features. Adding useful, descriptive alt text to our images is an ongoing challenge but we’ve been hoping to do a better job with it. For this story on the communities around Visually Speaking, it is a good time for us to pledge to do better. Alt text is a valuable element for all users. Please provide feedback as we try to make sure to meet a higher standard with all of our images here and across our social media posts and updates. Thanks!

An image showing the front door of the Voices Off Lounge. Through the glass, a black and white checkerboard floor is visible.

(Image: Visually Speaking)

Since moving to Capitol Hill 15 years ago, Kellie Gillespie has wanted to create a safe, inclusive, and dedicated space that could serve the Deaf and hearing communities alike by offering opportunities to socialize, network, and teach/learn American Sign Language.

“I’ve toyed with creating a space where ASL thrives,” explained Gillespie, the CEO of Visually Speaking, a company that offers ASL courses taught by Deaf instructors.

“Over the years, conversations with others made me realize that I’m the one who has to make it happen. ASL students often asked me, ‘Where can I go to practice?’ I never had a good answer—until now.”

This weekend marks the grand opening of Capitol Hill’s Voices Off Lounge. Located in Broadway’s 1905-built Capitol Crest Building—in a walk-up space formerly occupied by ACE Barbershop and $pent Studio—the new venue will offer a variety of six-week ASL courses taught by Visually Speaking instructors with hopes of also growing as a hub for the Deaf community.

“There’s an overwhelming demand from students who want to continue signing and Deaf individuals in desperate need of social spaces,” Gillespie tells CHS. “This new space is not just for ASL practice—it will serve as a dedicated place for community-building.”

The Voices Off Lounge will host two grand-opening celebrations—one on Fri., Jan. 31, 5-8 p.m., for the Deaf community (Deaf, DeafBlind, Hard of Hearing, cochlear implants, hearing aids, and no-voice/mute); and one on Sat., Feb. 1, 5-8 p.m., for all community members (hearing and Deaf). More information about Visually Speaking and the Voices Off Lounge is available online here. You can sign up for their newsletter here.

This isn’t the first iteration of the Voices Off Lounge. Two years ago, they partnered with Seattle Restored, a City of Seattle program that reactivates empty storefronts, to open a five-month pop-up downtown at Second Avenue and Spring Street in offices formerly occupied by the Washington State Department of Licensing. That experience inspired them to spend most of last year scouting locations, forging partnerships, and gathering input from the Deaf community to open another Voices Off Lounge pop-up, this time on Capitol Hill.

Continue reading →

SNOWBRUARY? Not quite, but Capitol Hill forecast calls for wintry mix of cold, rain, and snow

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Photo of a Broadway street sign covered in snow from February, 2019This will probably not be a SNOWBRUARY storm but forecasts predict Capitol Hill is likely to see some snowfall over the coming weekend — and week ahead.

Here is what our federal friends at the National Weather Service have to say about the uncertain conditions around a possibly snowy Seattle:

Looking at the variables, first the positive variables for snow. Temperatures aloft are cold enough, model 850 mb temperatures -6 to -9C through the weekend, 1000-850 mb thickness values drop below 1300 meters late tonight and remain below 1300 meters through Sunday as well. The negative variables for snow, surface gradients remain onshore and 925 mb winds are also southerly. Even with the cold air aloft these two variables are snow killers. Continue reading →

New Seattle Police Chief Barnes arrives with support for cops in schools and a focus on ‘recruitment and retention’

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An image provided by the Seattle Police Department showing new police chief Shon Barnes in a suit and tie

(Image: SPD)

New Seattle Police Chief Shon Barnes chose the look of a civilian executive as he was introduced to the city with media interviews and press releases this week.

Barnes has promised to hit the ground running. “I want to have my command staff fully set within the first 100 days,” Barnes said during a TV interview, according to the SPD’s announcement of the start of his command. “We will be making sure we’re establishing a culture of excellence and procedural justice within the department. People need to know their voices matter.”

With the arrival of Barnes, Mayor Bruce Harrell has placed an outsider at the top of the Seattle Police Department. His selection marks the first time the city has turned to someone from outside the department for years. Chief Kathleen O’Toole who stepped down in 2017 after leading SPD for four years after coming to the city from Boston, assisted in the selection of Barnes, the city says.

The former Madison, Wisconsin chief now leads a force with just over 1,000 sworn officers that just barely reversed a long trend of hiring struggles. The department reports it made 84 successful hires in 2024 — one more officer than it lost. Continue reading →

Still not much preserved when Pike/Pine preservation projects dig in — but the Booth Building will rise again

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On Capitol Hill, history repeats.

At Broadway and Pine, passersby are learning one of the cold, hard facts of the neighborhood’s historical conservation incentives: Not much is preserved when Pike/Pine preservation projects dig in.

The start of construction on the Broadway Center for Youth affordable housing and job training center has included a brutal round of demolition that is tearing down every last shred of the Booth Building that has stood at the corner since 1906.

The center’s development has been described as an adaptive reuse project and the development is utilizing the Pike/Pine Conservation District’s incentive program to build an extra story of housing in the eight-story project.

So, what happened to the preservation?

Developer Community Roots Housing says to wait for it — the development is set to echo past neighborhood preservation projects by rebuilding the historic structure. Continue reading →

As Seattle debates 20-year growth plan, mayor issues order hoped to strengthen $45M in anti-displacement spending

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As his administration bolsters its political will to update Seattle’s growth plan and address the region’s housing affordability crisis, Mayor Bruce Harrell issued an executive order Wednesday hoped to strengthen the city’s anti-displacement strategies.

The order includes five components hoped to address Harrell’s focus on helping existing homeowners in challenged communities hold onto their family properties while also bolstering Tenant Relocation Assistance, Economic Displacement Relocation Assistance, and Emergency Rental Assistance programs, and doing more to track housing statistics at displacement’s core: Continue reading →

Seattle anti-Trump protests including ‘PUNCH A NAZI’ illuminated display continue at Cal Anderson Park

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January 24th: Light projection artist @lightguerrilla illuminated display at Cal Anderson Park. (Image: @streetphotojournalism)

Demonstrators marching off the Hill Wednesday afternoon from a video of the protest posted to the CHS Facebook Group

“Yup, F Donald Trump,” says a Capitol Hill resident in their video posted to the CHS Facebook Group showing a hundred or so chanting protesters streaming by Wednesday afternoon on E Denny Way.

The afternoon demonstration starting in Cal Anderson Park had been promoted online as a warm-up for a larger rally planned on March 15th in a post encouraging demonstrators to march “for our reproductive rights,” healthcare, trans rights, and “to bring awareness to the housing crisis.” The marchers headed through the city to Seattle Center and kept mostly to the sidewalks to avoid conflicts with traffic and police. Continue reading →

Remembering Binyam Wolde, ‘the spirit of Dirty Dog’

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(Image: Dirty Dog)

The spirit of Dirty Dog has passed.

Binyam Wolde, the entrepreneur behind the Dirty Dog food cart business that has included the wiener stand at 11th and Pine that has grown into a core element of the Capitol Hill street scene, died earlier this month. Wolde was 44.

As his business continues, a fundraiser has been set up to help support his family. “Biny was a devoted and loving husband to his wife. He was a fun, patient , and loving father to his two young children- he absolutely adored them. He was the eldest of six siblings who looked to him as mentor and friend,” it reads. “He was generous with all who knew him and our community is devastated that we’ve lost him.” Continue reading →

Flowers Just 4 U closing shop after 40 years of business in the CD

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(Image: CHS)

When you are ready to retire from the flower business, you are ready to retire — even if you are only a few weeks from Valentine’s Day.

Flowers Just 4 U will mark its final day of business Friday after 40 years in the Central District.

Owner Mary Wesley told the South Seattle Emerald earlier this month she has been holding out hope a buyer will come along to keep a flower business going at 23rd and Cherry. Wesley said she also was invited to reopen her business on the corner after the planned affordable Acer House development demolishes the old building and finishes construction. Continue reading →

‘Downscale the Proposed One Seattle Rezoning Plans for Madrona’ — How Hollingsworth’s office is handling neighborhood pushback on Seattle growth plan update

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There are petitions in Madrona and letters from angry realtors.

“We are welcoming any and all feedback,” Anthony Derrick, chief of staff to District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth tells CHS about the ongoing process the council member is leading to forge an update to the city’s comprehensive plan and new zoning across its neighborhoods. “With the law, the city is going to see some massive density changes.”

Wednesday afternoon, the Seattle City Council committee Hollingsworth leads formed to take on the nearly impossible task of reaching compromise on Seattle’s comprehensive plan update will meet.

A report on displacement, a core issue for Hollingsworth who grew up watching her Central District neighborhood struggle with gentrification, is on the agenda. But the important statistics and challenges raised in the presentation on the city’s Anti-Displacement Action Plan (PDF) might get lost.

The second half of Wednesday’s meeting will focus on public engagement around the comprehensive plan update — including the city’s meetings on the update it has been hosting since 2022.

Protests and pushback from a growing chorus of property, business, and homeowners from across the city and District 3 are becoming louder as a key February 5th public forum on the comprehensive plan update proposal approaches.

In Madrona, groups are forming to oppose upzoning in the neighborhood as Seattle leaders say more areas of the city must rise to meet state required changes hoped to address growing housing and affordability challenges.

The Madrona neighborhood, they argue, should be treated differently than the rest of the city when it comes to efforts to increase density. Continue reading →