Tag Archives: 17th ave

Residents booted to make way for ‘Substantial Rehabilitation’ of Capitol Hill’s La Quinta apartments

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A rendering of the planned new building and the neighboring landmark La Quinta

Thanks — and sorry — to the La Quinta resident who alerted CHS to the notice

Residents of Capitol Hill’s La Quinta apartments have been issued a 90-day notice to vacate as a planned redevelopment of the landmarked property including plans for a new twin apartment building behind the old one at 17th and Denny moves forward.

The March 5th issued notice cites “Substantial Rehabilitation” for the order. Permits to enable demolition of two neighboring houses to make way for the new construction are also in motion.

CHS reported here in 2022 as DEP Homes, a small real estate investment firm that lists an address near Judkins Park in the Central District, purchased the property including the landmarked building and the two neighboring houses for $4.2 million and set about a planned redevelopment that would add a twin five-story apartment building behind the 98-year-old La Quinta structure.

DEP Homes did not respond to CHS’s messages about the notice and the company has not responded to any of our inquiries over the past three years. DEP owner developer Cao Huynh is a prolific Seattle real estate investor. Capitol Hill firm S+H Works is DEP’s architect on the project.

(Image: Viva La Quinta/Jesse L. Young)

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Man dead in 17th Ave apartment shooting — UPDATE

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A man was found shot in the head and police were looking for a woman reportedly seen fleeing the building after a shooting on the 7th floor of a 17th Ave apartment building Thursday morning.

Police and Seattle Fire were called to the Seattle Housing Authority’s Olive Ridge apartments just before 8:30 AM and began to render aid to the man found down in the building’s hallway, according to emergency radio updates.

UPDATE: SPD reports the man died at the scene.

Continue reading →

Police say another set of suspicious dumpster fires reported overnight

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Seattle Police is investigating after another night of arson fires set in dumpsters near area buildings.

SPD reports two fires were set early Thursday in the same area. One fire spread from one of the dumpsters to a garage before it was extinguished, SPD says.

Seattle Fire was called to the area around the 500 block of 17th Ave E just after midnight to handle the incident.

SPD says the other dumpster fire was contained and did not cause any significant damage. Continue reading →

Capitol Hill’s Gaffney House makes new home for Morningside Academy

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(Image: Morningside Academy)

(Image: Morningside Academy)

By Cormac Wolf, CHS Intern

A school that has found new places to live around Seattle including a stay decades ago on Capitol Hill is making its triumphant return. Morningside Academy, a private school teaching students in elementary and middle school, is celebrating their move into the historic mansion at 17th and Madison. The 1906-built mansion is a designated Seattle historical site, and prior to 2019 served as Gaffney House, an assisted living community for those with memory care issues.

Established in 1980 in a Wallingford living room, Morningside moved to Capitol Hill and was based there for its first two decades before moving to South Lake Union in 2003. Now that they’re back on the Hill after 20 years they plan to stay put for a while.

Morningside provides catch-up schooling for students struggling in traditional learning environments. The school has a student/faculty ratio of roughly 10:1, and enrolls fewer than 90 kids. Starting tuition is $23,600.

It’s the kind of school Capitol Hill and the Central District might be seeing more of in coming years.

Continue reading →

911 | 17th Ave shooting, 14th Ave death investigation

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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 Twitter reports from @jseattle or join and check in with neighbors in the CHS Facebook Group.

  • 17th Ave shooting: Police say a man suffered non-life threatening injuries to his hand and torso in a Friday afternoon shooting in a 17th Ave parking lot. According to the SPD brief, the victim told police he was shot in a dispute with the occupants of a vehicle that fled the scene in the 1700 block of 17th around 2:35 PM. A search for the suspects was not successful. Police are asking anyone with information about the incident to call the SPD Violent Crimes Tip Line at (206) 233-5000.
  • 14th and Denny death investigation: Seattle Fire says SPD is investigating after a man was found dead Wednesday morning in the 1800 block of 14th Ave near E Denny Way. According to Seattle Fire, a 35-year-old male was found dead at the scene. Witnesses reported a man who appeared to have been homeless found in a an apartment building stairwell around 11:30 Wednesday morning. There were no reported signs of foul play. We’ve asked SPD for more details.
 

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A decade later, checking in on what comes next for a Capitol Hill development once at the center of the Seattle debate over microhousing

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Thanks for the questions in the CHS Facebook Group about the changes at the property

An East Capitol Hill apartment development that became a centerpoint in Seattle’s early debates over microhousing has had an interesting decade and what comes next might say a little about the tiny apartment units and the industry that created them.

Neighbors around 17th Ave E and E Olive St. began asking questions about the twin apartment buildings last month as plywood went up and the property was fenced off.

A decade ago, neighbors and anti-growth advocates cited the 1720 E Olive St. congregate housing project as an example that the city wasn’t doing enough to limit microhousing — especially near areas of single family-style housing and complained that the buildings were poorly made and that the tiny living spaces would become undesirable to residents.

The 60 units across the two buildings at 17th and Olive average 138 square feet apiece, according to King County records. Continue reading →

Residents of Capitol Hill’s La Quinta fought to have their building saved — Now they’re getting a new La Quinta building behind the old one

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(Image: Viva La Quinta/Jesse L. Young)

While residents at one historic Capitol Hill apartment building are calling for their building to be saved from market forces that will likely bring costly upgrades and higher rents, tenants at another “saved” landmark building are going to get new neighbors.

Early filings with the city this summer show plans for a new twin apartment building taking shape to join the landmark-protected La Quinta apartments at 17th and Denny.

According to the early paperwork, developer DEP Homes is preparing a plan to demolish a set of old houses that have served a range of capacities from duplex and up over the years to make way for a new apartment building on the land behind the Frederick Anhalt-designed La Quinta and its clay tile roof, its dozen two-story apartments, and its large central Mediterranean Revival courtyard. Continue reading →

A visit to the new Volunteer Park Cafe, carrying on the tradition of ‘a cozy corner spot’ on Capitol Hill

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You might think, with Canlis alums and a Yakima winery owner as the new creative forces behind the neighborhood favorite, the new Volunteer Park Cafe would have three-star, four-course ambitions.

It’s a much softer affair.

“I’m just hanging out, doing my thing, trying to make a beautiful space for people,” Melissa Johnson tells CHS about the cafe that has reopened under new ownership and with an overhaul of the 1904-built cornershop house at 17th and Galer.

Baker Johnson and pastry chef Crystal Chiu have teamed up to create a new vision of the neighborhood cafe — “a fresh start,” Johnson says, “bountiful, and bright, and ever-changing.” Continue reading →

Thanks to Seattle’s Notice of Intent to Sell ordinance, residents hoping for chance to buy their Capitol Hill apartment building get window of opportunity

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Earlier this month, CHS reported on Capitol Hill’s La Quinta apartments hitting the market and the hopes of residents of the landmarks-protected building at 17th and Denny to have a shot at purchasing the property even as its listing was already live and a sale nearly ready to close.

Thanks to Seattle’s still relatively new under-used Notice of Intent to Sell ordinance, those residents now have at least 30 days to organize a possible bid.

According to an aide to City Councilmember Lisa Herbold, her office looked into the planned sale after learning of the situation through CHS’s coverage and found that at least one unit in the building is renting at rates affordable to those earning no more than 80% of the area median income, requiring the building owners to participate in the Notice of Intent to Sell program. Continue reading →

Overhauled Volunteer Park Cafe — and Pantry — reopens on Capitol Hill

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(Image: CHS)

The spirit of Groucho’s lives on at 17th and Galer. The Volunteer Park Cafe is open again on Capitol Hill.

Melissa Johnson and Crystal Chiu are so busy in the overhauled kitchen and the cases are so full that they have barely had time to update the website or post operating hours. Those things will come.

UPDATE: “Now that the cat’s out of the bag, will we see you this weekend? We’ll be here with pastries, snacks and drinks galore (wine pours by the glass included 🍷) and AC,” the cafe’s latest update to Instagram reads.

For now, the Canlis veterans are learning the ropes of operating this new iteration of the neighborhood favorite. VPC is now the Volunteer Park Cafe and Pantry, a nod to aspirations to revive more of the cornershop spirit of one of the last spaces of its kind in a city that used to be a little more mixed in its “Neighborhood Residential” uses.

Restarting that history has been a chore. James DeSarno, principal at D3 Architects and co-owner of the Freehand Cellars winery, purchased the 1904-built, two-story market and apartment on this corner of northern Capitol Hill’s single family-dominated residential zone in a $1.4 million deal that was in the works for months after a previous plan to purchase the property fell through. DeSarno said his plan for VPC was to try to keep a good deal of the relationship with the neighborhood in place with cafe and coffee offerings but add a renewed focus on wine featuring his Yakima Valley winery’s creations.

For its start, the Volunteer Park Cafe is focused on daytime offerings and its pastry case along with a well-stocked selection of bottled libations. Continue reading →