Here’s hoping the strong window display game will continue in the space (Image: Lifelong Thrift)
It will be a smooth transition and the launch of a new Seattle nonprofit dedicated to reuse and recycling as Magpie Thrift opens on Broadway this spring.
The new store will take over the Lifelong Thrift space — and mission — on Broadway. Continue reading
(Image: Hugo House)
Instability in its leadership will continue at Hugo House, one of Capitol Hill’s most prominent arts nonprofits and operator the 11th Ave literary center and complex across from Cal Anderson Park. The organization announced this week that executive director Diana Delgado will resign her position after less than a year on the job.
It comes amid reports of signifcant financial challenges for the organization.
CHS reported here last April as Hugo House brought on Delgado with hopes of forging new paths for the literary center after years of conflict over diversity.
Delgado was Hugo House’s first permanent executive director since Tree Swenson resigned in February 2021 in response to a letter demanding her removal based on racial equity concerns. Continue reading
(Image: Gay City)
The Seattle Office of Arts & Culture has announced Gay City and Africatown are part of the mix in the award of $1.1 million in “neighborhood recovery” funding “to support arts and cultural organizations impacted by the pandemic and increase citywide recovery efforts.”
The two core Capitol Hill and Central District-focused nonprofits have made the list, the city says, to “sub-contract with neighborhood-based organizations and small businesses to carry out inclusive and creative activation projects and events that further the neighborhoods’ and city’s pandemic recovery process.”
The city says these fourteen organizations are now in their Request for Proposal (RFP) processes to select neighborhood-based groups to be part of this “one-time funding” from the JumpStart “Payroll Expense Tax approved by the Mayor and Seattle City Council” in 2020 to help the city stabilize and recover from the pandemic. Continue reading
The public design process to create a new home for arts nonprofit Photographic Center Northwest in a new seven-story mixed-use development on the site of the center’s 100-year-old 12th Ave building begins this week.
The Central Area Design Review Board is set to take up the first design proposals for the Focus on 12th Apartments development Thursday night. Plans call for 171 apartment units above the new photography center and underground parking for around 42 vehicles.
Design review: 900 12th Ave
Design Review Early Design Guidance for a 7-story, 171-unit apartment building with institution (Photographic Center Northwest) and retail. Parking for 42 vehicles proposed. View Design Proposal (26 MB)
Developer Vibrant Cities told CHS earlier this year it expects the new building to offer market rate housing along with Seattle Mandatory Housing Affordability and Multifamily Tax Exemption factors that could add a few affordable units to the mix. There is also a possibility of working with nearby Seattle University to offer school-affiliated housing. Continue reading
The “blueprint” for the new new Gay City — “Some of the exciting features include:”
Room 100 – Youth Space (middle)
Room 106 – Community Organization Partner TBA (middle bottom)
Room 107 – Large Meeting Space/Rental Area (middle bottom)
Room 121 & 122 – Pharmacy (upper right)
Room 133 – Library with new furniture (lower left)
Gay City is saying goodbye to Pike, hello to Pine (Image: Gay City)
There will be a Pride Place on Broadway — and a Gay City on E Pine.
Gay City, the LGBTQ center serving Seattle for 26 years displaced from its E Pike location last year by planned development, is staying on Capitol Hill in a new home that will allow the nonprofit to continue to expand its services.
“We’re trying to really want to step further into who we are,” Gay City’s Melvin Givens tells CHS. “We want to make sure that Seattle has that LGBTQ center that’s really located on Capitol Hill and easily accessible.”
Gay City’s new home on the ground floor of the Pine Bellevue office building at 400 E Pine will have room for an expanded slate of services and offerings at the center including a new pharmacy in partnership with Kelley-Ross. At the core of the facility, Givens said the new Gay City location will center around a new service added to its mix with a new “Youth Space” in the middle of the new center.
“We wanted to expand the agency so we could introduce some new, exciting features,” Givens said. “Like our dedicated youth space — they can own that space, be themselves, commune, get to know each.” Continue reading
Swenson (Image: Hugo House)
Calls for change at Hugo House have led to the resignation of executive director Tree Swenson, the organization announced Friday morning:
The Hugo House Board of Directors today announced the resignation of executive director Tree Swenson, effective immediately. Swenson leaves Hugo House in strong financial health after nine years of steady growth under her leadership, including a new home for the organization on Capitol Hill. Continue reading
Writers, teachers, and members in the community around Capitol Hill’s Hugo House are calling for the resignation of the nonprofit’s leader for failing to adequately respond to calls for change born out of the Black Lives Matter marches and occupied protest this summer on the streets outside the 11th Ave literary center across from Cal Anderson Park.
UPDATE: Representatives for the group calling for the resignation tell CHS their “advocacy to reform Hugo House has been ongoing for several years.”
“This latest push came as a pushback to (Hugo House’s) performative statement on race equity sparked by the events in summer of 2020,” Shankar Narayan, an advocate involved in the effort, writes. “So it was a response to HH’s false effort to capitalize on BLM, not BLM itself” that inspired the effort.
In an open letter from July, a group of writers and members were joined by a list of around 200 signatories criticizing executive director Tree Swenson and Hugo House over “structural and systemic racism” and the nonprofit’s failure to serve as “a welcoming and supportive place for writers of all races” — Continue reading
(Image: Food is Love)
Food is Love. It’s the name of a meal delivery project that started when pandemic restrictions set-in but not a new concept for Linda Di Lello Morton and chef Tamara Murphy, co-owners of “Earth to Plate” restaurant Terra Plata.
“The mantra that we’ve had since I met Tamara 20 plus years ago is we feed people and food is love,” Di Lello Morton said.
Di Lello Morton and Murphy started the Food is Love Project in March alongside Broadway Business Improvement Area director Egan Orion and community advocate Marina Gray. Their mission is to provide meals for food insecure families and in turn bring business to local restaurants.
“It really is this immense win-win for our local small businesses — our restaurants — and for families that need a little extra support when it comes to food,” Orion said.
The program currently feeds over 300 individuals from Seattle Public Schools families and around 100 people living in homeless encampments. Over 21,000 meals have been delivered so far, from restaurants including Din Tai Fung, Pagliacci Pizza and Rancho Bravo Tacos.
Over the past seven months, Orion says food delivery has shifted between providing families with around one to three weekly meals.
So far Food is Love has largely depended on fundraising and donations to compensate restaurants and cover expenses but, thanks to a $40,000 grant from United Way of King County, the project is set to continue as a biweekly delivery service through the end of the year. Continue reading
A new generation of Capitol Hill is experiencing its Bauhaus moment this week as word spreads about plans for a new mixed-use development destined to replace the block currently home to LGBTQ+ nonprofit Gay City and the E Pike Kaladi Brothers.
Capitol Hill-based Hunters Capital confirms its is entering into an agreement to develop the property at the corner of Belmont and E Pike into a new eight-story apartment building with street-level retail. As with most developers, a spokesperson for Hunters who confirmed the plans with CHS emphasized the long-term and said construction is still years away.
But for those who consider the 500 block of E Pike a second home, once the development clock begins ticking, it’s difficult not to worry about what the future will bring. Continue reading
Powered by more than 2,000 online donors plus big time help from the likes of Bill and Melinda Gates, Macklemore, and the Seattle Seahawks, the Seattle Foundation’s COVID-19 Response Fund has reached $15.7 million. The effort announced its first round of grants this week.
“Over the last week, the COVID-19 Response Fund made $10.175 million in grants to community-based organizations responding to the immediate needs of vulnerable workers and families in the Puget Sound region,” the foundation said in its announcement. “The grants were made to boost groups’ capabilities to provide disproportionately impacted communities with emergency assistance, such as rent support, food security, healthcare, and childcare.” Continue reading
