911 | Police: ‘Extraordinary’ Tesla crash on First Hill, ‘vacant’ house fire, and E Jefferson gunfire

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See something others should know about? Email CHS or call/txt/Signal (206) 399-5959. You can view recent CHS 911 coverage here. Hear sirens and wondering what’s going on? Check out reports from @jseattle or join and check in with neighbors in the CHS Facebook Group.

(Image: SPD)

  • ‘Extraordinary’ First Hill crash: A woman walked away from her wrecked Tesla in a spectacular high-speed crash Sunday night on First Hill. The Seattle Police Department reported details of the strange incident that ended with the 37-year-old driver smashing into a building in the 1100-block of University Sunday around 6 PM:

    Police determined that the motorist was traveling eastbound on University Street when she attempted to make a U-turn near the intersection at University and Boren Avenue. The driver accelerated back through the intersection before the light turned red. While making the U-turn she hit a parked vehicle then continued onto the sidewalk through a railing, and onto a ramp attached to an apartment building.

    Continue reading →

With planned seven-story development inching forward, old Olive Way Improvement Company building faces demolition ‘under emergency conditions’

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(Image: CHS)

With reporting by Domenic Strazzabosco

Failing masonry appears ready to rip apart Seattle’s web of public reviews, permits, and financing windows to move a major Capitol Hill development project forward at the corner of Denny and E Olive Way.

City permit paperwork shows demolition approval moving forward “under emergency conditions” on the more than 100 year old, historic — but not landmarks protected — property once home to Capitol Hill classics Holy Smoke, Coffee Messiah, and In the Bowl. The facade of the 1917-era unreinforced masonry building is falling off, according to the filings, expediting the long awaited demolition of the old structures.

Filings show a traffic control plan, right of way impact plan, and haul route map being submitted for approval.

A plan for developing a seven-story, 106-unit mixed-use apartment building at the corner awaits but any work on construction is still a long, long ways off.

The project has yet to begin the public review process and will then need to await the alignment of economic trends and financing windows that has left many Capitol Hill projects on the back-burner.

The property’s developer has declined to comment on the situation and also directed the contractor being brought on to handle the demolition not to speak with CHS about the project. Continue reading →

Seattle voters considering Social Housing funding, school levy replacements on February Special Election ballot

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Voting in the February 2025 Special Election is underway. Ballots are due by February 11th.

  • Social housing funding vote: Ballots are being mailed for the February 11th Special Election including a vote on a new Seattle Social Housing payroll tax featuring a proposal from housing advocates and a competing proposal form the Seattle City Council. Seattle voters will face two questions when filling in the bubbles — 1) Should either of these proposals be approved? and 2) Which one? The Let’s Build Social Housing ballot Initiative 137 would add a 5% tax on companies for every dollar over a million paid to a Seattle employee in annual compensation including salary, stock, and bonuses to fund the city’s new public Social Housing Developer. A Seattle City Council-backed alternative would not create a new tax, instead amending the existing JumpStart payroll tax to provide $10 million annually to the Seattle Social Housing Developer in funding administered by the Office of Housing for five years with an option for extending the program. The House our Neighbors group behind the salary tax proposal says it would add up to around $50 million a year to fund the development authority and power its ability to borrow to build or acquire 2,000 units of housing over 10 years. Social housing advocates, meanwhile, have blasted the city council alternative saying the proposal would slash funding to the newly formed developer while also limiting how that funding can be used in ways that would undermine the effort’s key tenets around expanding affordable housing to include a wider range of income levels. Under the proposition, JujmpStart funding would limit the Social Housing Developer to offering affordable housing to only the city’s lowest income levels.
  • School levy replacements: The February ballot also includes a vote on replacing two expiring levies to fund Seattle Public Schools. While the city’s voters have typically enthusiastically backed school spending in past votes, the new ballot arrives fresh after a tense reversal by the district on a school closure plan that has bolstered criticism of the state’s largest school system. The new proposed operations levy would provide SPS with $747 million to pay its faculty and staff while the new capital levy proposal weighs in at around $1.8 billion to help the district construct new buildings and facilities. The capital levy faces increased skepticism after the fall’s showdown over closures as the district has focused increased resources on larger campuses including the proposed closure of North Capitol Hill’s Stevens Elementary that was planned to include consolidation of its student boundaries with the newly overhauled Montlake Elementary School and its $64.8 million renovation and expansion. Voters will consider each levy replacement proposal separately with yes/no votes on each. UPDATE: Looming over all of this are the increasing challenges to local budgets presented by the state’s 1% cap on levy revenues. The complicated restriction limits the total revenue collected in property tax to 1% annually leaving local governments scrambling to keep up with inflation.
 

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Seattle City Council selects six finalists for open District 2 seat

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Six finalists for the open District 2 seat representing South Seattle on the Seattle City Council will take part in a public forum Tuesday night.

CHS reported here on the 20 candidates who stepped up for consideration by the council. The council is replacing Tammy Morales after the veteran District 2 rep unexpectedly announced her resignation over accusations of toxic work culture and politics under Council President Sara Nelson.

Tuesday’s forum is being hosted by the Seattle City Club and will take place from 5:30 to 7:30 PM at Columbia City Theater and streamed live on the Seattle Channel.

Friday, the council settled on six finalists to be considered for the appointment. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill’s Rocket Taco launches plan for big move — across the street

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The old Kingfish will soon need a new tenant

(Image: Rocket Taco)

Rocket Taco is making an important adjustment to its Capitol Hill orbit.

Seven years after touching down on 19th Ave E, the Seattle sibling to the Whidbey Island original is making a big switch from the more than 100-year-old restaurant space where Kingfish Cafe once ruled and leaping ahead 105 years to the empty restaurant in the 2014-built 19th & Mercer “luxury apartments” building across the street.

Owner Steve Rosen confirmed the planned move to the intersection’s southeast corner and said Rocket Taco could not pass up the opportunity to operate in a newer space with a modern kitchen and expansive patio.

Rocket Taco’s new restaurant home was first designed for Linda Derschang and her Tallulah’s venture. Continue reading →

With smaller crowds but lots of resistance, People’s March Seattle crosses Capitol Hill

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By Domenic Strazzabosco

The People’s March Seattle gathered Saturday morning in Capitol Hill’s frost-covered Cal Anderson Park, 48 hours before Donald Trump was set to be sworn into his second non-consecutive term in office. An estimated 3,500 people marched down Pine and toward the Seattle Center.

A much smaller event than the demonstrations eight years ago from the Seattle Women’s March organizers, those who showed up Saturday as part of marches across the country still wanted their voices to be heard and their signs seen.

“I have goosebumps just seeing all the like-minded people coming together,” said Mariah Doty, who attended the rally with a friend. “It absolutely feels powerful.”

Tom Schleichert, when asked about what he hoped his young daughters would gain from attending the rally, said, “To know that they’re not alone.” Seeing so many people come together to speak about women deserving power and equality, he described as empowering and special. One of his daughter’s signs read “No Mean Laws” and the other, “We Vote For Girls.” Continue reading →

14 homicides in 2024: Remembering Capitol Hill and the Central District’s victims

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A memorial to Corey Bellett grew outside Harry’s Fine Foods (Image: CHS)

Three weeks in and of the nation’s 25 largest cities, Seattle is the only without a murder so far in 2025. A look back at those who were killed across Capitol Hill and the Central District in the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct reminds that the most heinous of crimes does not keep a calendar.

Altogether in 2024, CHS recorded 14 homicides across the neighborhoods of the East Precinct. That is twice as many as CHS recorded the year before in an oscillating pattern going back to 2020’s first pandemic-fueled surge. Fourteen in 2024. Seven in 2023. Eleven in 2022. Five in 2021. A dozen in 2020. The patterns of violence at the local level ebb and flow.

2023’s seven lost to homicidal violence here added to a record year in the city with more than 70 reported murders in Seattle. The East Precinct represented about 13% of the total. For 2024, that number will jump above 20% by the time the city’s statistics are officially compiled.

Assessing trends around the relatively rare crime at the neighborhood level is complicated. Does murder know the line between Capitol Hill and the Central District? What about Montlake and Madison Park where there has been one recorded homicide in the past decade?

Several of the killings in the East Precinct fit a familiar, tragic pattern — young Black people cut down by gun violence.

Taylor

Soloman Taylor was 15. The teen was gunned down on an October Monday night. Police say multiple 911 callers reported gunfire and a person down in the street near 27th and Spring around 7:45 PM. Officers began CPR as Seattle Fire was dispatched to respond. Taylor died at the scene. Police were looking for a vehicle reported fleeing the area. No arrests were announced. His family and loved ones said the St. Joseph’s and Garfield High student was known as “Solo.”

A week earlier, 25-year-old Breanna Simmons was killed in an unsolved shooting on 11th Ave amid Pike/Pine nightlife crowds. Police say a memorial for the victim early Sunday morning the next day was targeted in another shooting that sent a man and a woman to the hospital.Public records showed the 25-year-old resided in Renton. Continue reading →

Seattle City Council to choose finalists for D2 seat from among South Seattle second chances, city employees, and community leaders

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Solomon made an unsuccessful run for the seat six years ago

The Seattle City Council will spend Friday afternoon picking finalists to fill the open District 2 seat from a field of 20 candidates.

For many on the list, their most obvious qualification is living in South Seattle. Others are seeking to take the next step in careers that have been filled with public service and city employment.

The Friday 2 PM session will include current council members nominating potential finalists from the field and making a case for including them in the final decision which will come next week after a public forum featuring the selected candidates.

Applicants include Chukundi Salisbury who talked with CHS in 2023 about the Black Legacy Homeowners group organizing to protect and grow their presence in the Central District and across the Seattle-Tacoma region, former Capitol Hill Community Council leader Hong Chhuor, Randy Engstrom, former director of Seattle’s Office of Arts and Culture, and Seattle Police Department community crime prevention coordinator Mark Solomon who was a finalist in last year’s appointment process to fill a citywide seat on the council. The Seattle Times endorsed Solomon in his unsuccessful 2019 run for the D2 seat. Continue reading →

DESC Capitol Hill ‘supportive housing’ project part of $108M in city affordable development funding

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(Image: DESC)

Money from $108 million in Seattle Housing Levy funds will go to support affordable housing across the city and new developments across Capitol Hill and the Central District including a new “supportive housing” facility from the Downtown Emergency Service Center planned for Belmont Ave.

Mayor Bruce Harrell announced the funding this week, marking the first full allocation of funds from Seattle’s newly approved 2023 Housing Levy.

“This funding, awarded through the 2024 Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA), will support the construction of 655 new affordable homes, an important step in increasing Seattle’s housing stock to meet growing demand and ensure long-term affordability,” the announcement reads. Continue reading →