The victim of an armed hold-up told police two men wearing ski masks pointed a handgun as they demanded a cellphone Sunday night near 23rd and Jackson.
According to the victim, the two suspects were black males in their 20s who ran northbound on 22nd Ave after the crime. Each wore a ski mask during the hold-up, the victim said.
The hold-up occurred just before 8 PM Sunday but the victim was not able to call police to report the crime until about 30 minutes later, according to police radio. A search of the are did not immediately turn up the suspects.
Of the eleven reports of street and strong arm robberies in the Central District in the past 30 days, five have occurred near the 23rd and Jackson intersection.
Plans for the re-development of Mt. Zion Baptist Church are moving along, and developers tell us they plan to hold a public meeting in April. Plans for the new campus at Madison and 19th Ave are “not quite ready for public consumption,” said Sam Cameron from Rolluda Architects, which is working with the Church on its plans.
A project model from a 2001 study (pictured on this post) shows plans for two new buildings in addition to the two currently on the grounds as well as the construction of structured parking. Cameron was formerly with Streeter & Associates, a partner with DKA on the 2001 project. The new Master Plan for the Mt. Zion site will be generally similar to the 2001 plans, but with some changes, Cameron said.
“We’re looking at more community oriented spaces as well as some commercially oriented spaces along East Madison Street and still trying to consolidate parking in a parking structure,” said Cameron in an email. “We would like to have a community meeting to solicit ideas about our plans and get feedback prior to moving further.” The meeting has not yet been scheduled.
According to Mt. Zion’s Web site, the church was formed in 1894 and moved to 19th and Madison in 1918 when the congregation purchased an eight-room house at the location.
Zion’s new neighbor: the 1818 East Madison project
Despite ongoing budget challenges on the operations side of things, thanks to the Parks and Green Space Levy, the city still has money to acquire and develop new park land. After Thursday’s meeting of the City Council’s parks committee, Capitol Hill and the Central District might have five new green spaces in motion including a new park at 19th and Madison and an injection of cash to boost an effort to build Jimi Hendrix Park next to the Northwest African American Museum.
5. C.B.117122 Relating to the Opportunity Fund category of the 2008 Parks and Green Spaces Levy; accepting the recommendations of the 2008 Parks and Green Spaces Levy Oversight Committee; authorizing the acquisition of real property commonly known as 18th Ave. SW & SW Brandon St. (Puget Ridge Edible Park) and 19th and Madison Neighborhood Park; authorizing acceptance of the deeds for open space, park, and recreation purposes; amending the 2011 Adopted Budget and 2011-2016 Capital Improvement Program; and increasing appropriations in connection thereto; and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts, all by a three-fourths vote of the City Council. BRIEFING, DISCUSSION AND POSSIBLE VOTE
Presenters: Christopher Williams, Acting Superintendent, and Kevin Stoops, Director, Planning and Development Division, Seattle Parks and Recreation; Pete Spalding, Levy Oversight Committee; Norm Schwab, Council Central Staff
More than $2 million in new park space across Capitol Hill and the Central District will be on the table Thursday afternoon as the City Council committee considers recommendations for the latest round of Opportunity Fund projects.
Here are details and previous coverage of some of the recommended projects that made the final list of 15:
John Street Enhancement project — $260,000: “This proposal enhances the new park and P-patch by adding a bioswale, planting area and providing better pedestrian connections.” CHS wrote about the plan here.
McGilvra Place Green Infrastructure — $364,000: “The project proposes closure of 15th Ave between E Madison St and E Pike St and modifications to the existing park for the creation of bioretention cells and rain gardens to accept runoff from the Cascadia Center’s new building to the east.” CHS wrote about a study of the existing pocket park here.
Seattle Parks Foundation is backing the project:
In 2010, Seattle Parks Foundation entered into a fiscal sponsorship for the creation of the McGilvra Place Park Green Infrastructure Project. This project will restore an underutilized .06 acre park as part of the Bullitt Foundation’s Cascadia Center Green Infrastructure Project. The proposed restoration of McGilvra Park will create pedestrian-friendly neighborhood space, activate an existing neighborhood park, and advance urban sustainability goals. The project will complement the Cascadia Center project as a demonstration site for green stormwater infrastructure, natural drainage systems and permeable pavement. It could potentially become the first landscape project to meet the The Living Building Challenge, the highest benchmark in sustainability.
Farther into the Central District, two projects are up for a portion of the $7 million in funding.
Jimi Hendrix Park Development — $500,000: “The goal of this project is to complete the development of the park, bringing to life an open green space that is welcoming and provides an unique experience which clearly defines its namesake. CONDITIONAL: A comprehensive design plan must be developed and approved by Parks before any elements are constructed.” Central District News wrote about the project here.
James Court Woonerf — $500,000: “The goal is to convert an existing street and sidewalk into a green, pervious [sic] space which invites and accommodates uses by people on foot instead of only cars. It would be adjacent to the newly acquired 12th Ave Park which is in the planning stage.”
One interesting aspect for the five central Seattle projects that made the list is that two of them weren’t going to make the Opportunity Fund cut before a public hearing on the recommendation list last October. Prior to October’s session the McGilvra project ranked in the middle of the pack when the projects were considered by the fund’s selection committee. Same goes for the Hendrix park development proposal. But both projects brought out a crowd of supporters to Miller Community Center for the October meeting. On Thursday, the City Council is likely to move both forward toward reality.
Below we’ve embedded the Council’s memo on the Opportunity Fund roster which includes details of the selection criteria. We’ve also included a full list of recommended projects across the entire city.
Seattle Police and the King County Medical Examiner tell CDNews they have no new information to release in the death of a woman inside her Lakeside Ave apartment last Thursday afternoon.
Skillet’s Josh Henderson says he wants his new restaurant under construction inside the Chloe building at 14th and Union to be a neighborhood diner. With its location, the new Skillet Diner is poised to be a “neighborhoods” diner serving the growing area bridging Capitol Hill and the Central District.
Here’s what our sister site CHS has to say about the new joint slated to open early this spring. You can read the whole thing here.
The new Skillet space is nowhere near complete but the first fixed-place restaurant created by Henderson’s high-flying company is coming together quickly. Opening day should come sometime in April. Or maybe it will be opening morning.
“We’ll have a stand-up espresso bar for people to start their day with,” Henderson said. Skillet will open every morning at 7 AM and Henderson would like nothing more than a busy crowd of locals standing at the bar, getting their caffeine and morning news fix before heading into the neighborhood to begin their workdays.
Or maybe it will be an opening night. Henderson plans to keep Skillet open to midnight most nights and 2 AM on the weekends. After last call, he hopes the Pike/Pine party crowd will make a tradition of the short hike over to 14th and Union to visit Skillet’s poutinery walk-up.
There’s no light rail station at 23rd and Rainier (yet) but the Central District will help take over Seattle’s tracked rapid transit system on Saturday as the Magma music fest’s Light Rail Dark Rail brings live music to public transportation:
Hollow Earth Radio has curated a one-of-a-kind traveling show experience happening ON the Light Rail train involving “Racer Session” musicians, banjo-playing Jordan ‘O Jordan and 10 other performers including Wet Paint’s Jamey Braden and Portland’s soul singer, Tahoe Jackson. Later in the evening, we are hosting The Ya Ho Wha 33, (a parallel to the Ya Ho Wha 13 featuring Seattle artists w/ original Ya Ho Wha 13 member Djin Aquarian), along with a whole evening of psychedelic sounds.
To get on the bus train, be at the International District station at 5th and South Jackson at 5:30 PM on Saturday (March 5th!). More info here.
More on Hollow Earth and Magma Festival 2011 here.
After its drubbing of Puyallup, Garfield is looking like the team to beat in the 4A state boys basketball championship tourney, the Seattle Times says:
After failing to advance to the Tacoma Dome in 2010, the top-ranked Bulldogs, who took second in 2009, channeled their excitement into an up-tempo game that produced a 90-80 victory over No. 10 Puyallup in the quarterfinals Thursday.
Garfield’s Daeshon Hall (12) in the Hardwood Classic at the Tacoma Dome (Image: Greg Gilbert/The Seattle Times – Used with permission)
“It was good on the energy side, but it was bad, because sometimes the energy gets going a little too hard,” Haskins said. “They settled down. They played and we got stops and makes (on the other end) and that’s really what a championship is all about, stops and makes.”
Garfield (23-3) plays Gonzaga Prep in the semifinals at 5:30 p.m. Friday, while Puyallup plays Kentridge in a consolation game at 10:30 a.m. Friday.
An afternoon lightning strike near East Madison has left about 135 customers without power as City Light crews work to replace blown transformers.
Scattered outages on Capitol Hill and in the Central District have been reported related to the lightning jolt that produced a large boom just before 1:30 PM Thursday afternoon.
According to a City Light spokesperson, service will be restored in patches over the next few hours as the heavy transformers are swapped out by the two crews called out to respond to the damage.
The spokesperson said lighting damage to City Light equipment is an extremely localized phenomenon meaning the strike occurred somewhere near the main outage zones between East Madison and the Swedish Cherry Hill area of the Central District where 85 customers were without power.
The East Madison outage area is near the tall television and radio towers that loom over the neighborhood. It does not appear that operation of equipment at that facility has been affected by the current outage.
