2023 should have been a year of recovery. Squeezed between the city and the country regaining their footing out of the pandemic and the coming dumpster fire of the 2024 presidential election, 2023 probably should have given us more time to rest. But life in the big city never really slows down. The year brought massive public safety issues and an important political race of our own to the neighborhoods around Capitol Hill and the Central District. There were also tragic losses. It wasn’t all grey. There were also big new starts and a few nostalgic goodbyes. Here are CHS’s most important stories of 2023.

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• PRIDE PLACE OPENS: Pride Place, a 118-unit, affordable, LGBTQIA+ focused senior housing and services development, opened on Broadway… neighboring Neighbours.
• NEW GLO’S: After three decades on E Olive Way, Glo’s arrived in its new home above Capitol Hill Station — a space three and a half times bigger and much improved over the original. Even in the big expansion and fancy new digs, owners Julie Reisman and Steve Frias continue to proudly work the line. Meanwhile, the diner became a symbol of Capitol Hill’s changing labor environment as its workers agreed in a neck and neck vote to reverse efforts to organize as a union.
• HOLLINGSWORTH WINS AS SAWANT STEPS ASIDE: She began the year with a MLK Day announcement. Joy Hollingsworth — a Black, queer, Central District cannabis entrepreneur and community leader — was running for the District 3 seat on the Seattle City Council. Weeks later, incumbent Kshama Sawant announced she would not seek reelection ending her decade-long run at City Hall. In 2013, the Seattle Central and Seattle University economics professor included a promise of a fight for a $15 minimum wage in announcing she would take on incumbent Richard Conlin for his seat on the Seattle City Council. A decade later, she is leaving office after that successful upset and a string of political victories that included overcoming an attempted recall in 2021. The $15 now victory came first in 2014 — though it would take years for the city’s required wage to reach that level. A push for rent control followed but fell by the wayside in 2020 when the city’s shifting political tides put the effort to tax large employers on the frontburner. The pandemic sealed the deal. By that summer, Seattle had a new payroll tax and Sawant, another victory like $15 an hour — a far left movement translated into a version palatable at Seattle City Hall. Her run of success on those largest initiatives came to an end at City Hall this year as she was preparing to step down from office. In July, Sawant’s final bid for rent control in Seattle fell short at the council. She will now focus on Workers Strike Back, her nascent campaign to form a new leftist national party. Hollingsworth, meanwhile, flipped Seattle’s most progressive district and cruised to victory with a moderate platform focused on public safety, equity, and economic opportunity shaped by her life and family history in the Central District. Continue reading →