photo by kjten22
The Central District Flickr Pool contains hundreds of images of scenes in and around our neighborhood. Interested in being part of it? Check out the pool here. If we like your photo, we may feature it on the front page of Central District News!
photo by Slack Action
The Low Income Housing Institute (LIHI), which develops, owns and operates affordable housing for the benefit of low-income people in Washington state, recently announced it was awarded $5.5 million from the Seattle Office of Housing. The award will enable LIHI to build 60 affordable units for families and individuals on LIHI property at 2020 S. Jackson Street. This is the current location of one of three Nickelsville homeless encampments in the Central District.
LIHI plans to house its offices on the first floor of the building. Above that, the building will have 15 studios, 20 one-bedroom, and 25 two-bedroom apartments. LIHI will rent the apartments or below 60% of the King County Area Median Income (AMI) — that’s an income of about $36,000 – $52,000, depending on the size of the household.
Sharon H. Lee, LIHI Executive Director, provided more details on the subsequent Nickelsville relocation in an email to Central District News:
This is the site that currently houses Nickelsville on Jackson. They will be looking for a new site later in 2014 to provide shelter for up to 35 men, women and children. LIHI, Nickelsville, and the Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church would like to thank the many neighbors who have donated food, warm clothing, toys and gift cards. They are in need of firewood, gift cards to purchase construction materials and food, and donations to pay for the honey buckets and utilities.
Credit: Runberg Architecture Group
This post is part of a series of profiles of Central District residents, part of the “People of the Central Area” project developed and written by Madeline Crowley.
About Laura:
Laura works tirelessly to share her years of knowledge from owning and running successful restaurants with lower-income community kids in the pursuit of Food Justice.
What made you choose the Central Area for the Green Plate Special project?
I was looking farther south when an opportunity arose with Marty Liebowitz of the Madrona Company, a family-owned contractor/builder and property owners. I thought it could be a good fit, being on the edge of the Central District but I wondered if Madrona was the demographic I was looking to serve in the first stage of our project. In reality, Madrona K-8 School has the highest rates of subsidized lunches in the city. Roughly 80% of the youth in the school are youth of color and many are financially struggling. So, it was an organic process; and it came to us in a really special way.
The Green Plate Special project teaches kids how to grow and tend food, but also about nutrition.
That’s correct, because 50% of what we do is in the garden and the rest is in the kitchen. The garden now is a temporary site, we’re moving farther south at the end of this year. We planned to build a kitchen in this garden but funding didn’t happen at that point. This kitchen now is in the Madrona Presbyterian Church. Since you don’t see an on-site kitchen, people have the impression it’s a youth garden program or a community garden. It is very much a community garden but our focus is on middle school youth. They get to experience the process of planting through harvest and then going into the kitchen to cook.
You touched on this earlier but why did you focus on the Central Area?
As the Central Area and south of it tend to be families of color, despite Seattle being liberal, we have a huge skew from white and black upper middle class and middle class to lower middle class people struggling financially. The lower middle class has high levels of diabetes, heart disease and obesity. In our community there’s a higher rate starting in elementary school of about 20-30% kids are overweight in the community of color. In the nation we’re about number three in that skew of what people of color are able to access in terms of healthy food, of what they know about nutrition as opposed to what upper middle class families have access to in terms of education and food.
(Image: Alex Garland for CDN/CHS)
The long-awaited opening of Chuck’s Hop Shop in the Central District finally arrived this weekend, when the new Chuck’s Central District opened its doors at 20th and Union.
Chuck Shin, owner of the popular Greenwood bottle shop, announced back in March he’d signed a 10-year lease at the former Copymaster building on Union. The shop delayed opening several times throughout the spring and summer as they awaited permits from the city. Chuck’s passed its final inspections before the holidays and flung open its doors Friday afternoon. Neighbors trickled in, and by Friday evening, the place was packed.
Chuck’s Central District is part bottle shop, part community gathering place: kids and dogs are welcome. They’ll soon be announcing a line up of visiting food trucks. Check their Facebook page for news on the truck schedule, open hours, and the rotating tap list.
A huge refrigeration unit lines the back wall of the building, where you can choose bottles of porter, IPA, stouts, and sours. A smaller cooler holds ciders, many of them local. Chuck’s charges a small corkage fee for bottles consumed in the building and also offers pours of 49 rotating beers on tap. They’re not quite at full capacity yet, but you can find about 18 beers on tap this week.
In another sign Chuck’s is integrating well with the neighborhood, the shop has already scheduled a brewer’s night with the Central District’s own Standard Brewing. On January 18, look for four Standard Brewing beers on tap at Chuck’s.
Last night we reported on the shooting at 12th and Jefferson, and this morning SPD has more details:
A call of “shots fired” in the area of 12th and Jefferson last night is now being investigated as a shooting after a 24-year-old man walked into Harborview Medical Center with gunshot wounds to his arm and side.
Last night, at about 8:15 pm, East Precinct officers responded to several calls of “shots fired” near 12th and Jefferson. Officers arrived but did not locate anything at that time. Approximately 15 minutes later, officers were notified that a gunshot wound victim had walked into Harborview’s Emergency Room and was taken into surgery. The preliminary information is that the injury is not considered to be life-threatening. Officers investigating the original call were able to locate shell casings in front of a business in the 400 Block of 12th Avenue. A witness later informed police that the victim had been at the scene of the shooting. Officers collected evidence from the scene and the hospital. Detectives were notified and will be following up on this incident.
photo by Michael Holden
The Central District Flickr Pool contains hundreds of images of scenes in and around our neighborhood. Interested in being part of it? Check out the pool here. If we like your photo, we may feature it on the front page of Central District News!
Photo by urlgirl
Before Christmas, Central District News reported on an incident involving an apparently homeless man found dead outside the E Madison Safeway on the morning of Thursday, December 19th.
Unusually cold Seattle weather and the circumstances of the man found dead in his wheelchair concerned many readers who had written or called us to find out more about the medic and police response that morning.
According to the King County Medical Examiner, Eric R. Leigh died on the 19th of heart disease. He was 56. Central District News doesn’t know much more about the man but we wanted to update the details given the concern the initial report generated.
Humble Pie, hops plants in the foreground.
With 2013 drawing to a close, we’re revisiting our most popular articles of the year. One thing is clear from this list: Our readers are often drawn to stories about food and crime. And sometimes those two topics are linked in the same story.
Top Ten Most Popular Articles of 2013:
1. Humble Pie brings farm-fresh pizza and local beer to the Central District
2. Med Mix fire started intentionally
3. More updates on the Med Mix fire story
4. Chuck’s Hop Shop CD coming to 20th and Union
5. Woman gives birth in front seat of car while stuck in traffic
7. New graffiti appears at Med Mix; Artists caught on surveillance
9. Set your phasers to stun with this summer’s Outdoor Star Trek performances
The Landmarks Preservation Board is set to consider whether the Liberty Bank building at 2320 E. Union merits landmark status. The meeting will take place in February.
Now Key Bank, the application cites the building as the “first banking institution for African Americans in the Pacific Northwest region.”
The application lists other, related reasons why the building should receive the designation:
This building is a worthy historical landmark in Seattle for a number of reasons, notably:
1. It opened as the FIRST and ONLY African American bank in the Pacific Northwest region of the United Sates;
2. Its founders included a number of people of historic note, and it was designed by one of America’s few well known African American architects, Mel Streeter (1931– 2006);
3. Its design is reflective of the culture that characterized Seattle’s predominantly African American Central Area in the 1960s, and is one of the few remaining high quality examples of this type of utilitarian urban blue-collar architecture left in the neighborhood and
4. The changing demographics of Seattle’s Central District, without protection of the neighborhood’s historical landmarks, portends an erasure of a rich cultural past and heritage created by Seattle’s African American community.
The nomination will be considered at a public meeting on Wednesday, February 5 at 3:30 p.m. in the Seattle Municipal Tower, 700 5th Avenue, 17th Floor in Room 1756. The public is invited to attend the meeting and make comments. Written comments should be received by the Landmarks Preservation Board by 5:00 p.m. on February 4 at the following address: Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board, Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, P.O. Box 94649, Seattle WA, 98124-4649.
Police say a man attacked a librarian at the Douglass-Truth Library last Monday. KOMO News has more:
SEATTLE — A Central District library employee was attacked by a ‘nice-looking young man’ who had rented out a conference room for a religious meeting and then refused to leave at closing time, according to the Seattle Police Department.
According to the police report for the incident, the man came into the Douglass-Truth Library and checked out a conference room for a religious meeting Monday.
When two library employees later went to tell him the library was closing, the man repeatedly refused to leave, according to the report. Instead, he walked toward one of the employees, who was standing in the doorway, and reportedly slammed the door on her, catching her between the door and the frame.
The employee later told officers she was shocked by the man’s unexpected violence because he did not appear intoxicated, was dressed well and appeared to be a “nice-looking young man.”
According to the report, the employees said they were going to call the police, and the man told them to go ahead.
Minutes later the man left the library. The employees later told officers he appeared to be smiling at them as he did so. A second man, who had been sitting in the conference room the entire time without doing or saying anything, left with him.
The employees said they would call 911 if they saw the man again.
When it comes to King County buses, it might be time for Plan B. In November, Exec Dow Constantine said King County would employ a “Plan B” if state leaders couldn’t pass a new transportation funding package. While the Olympians have promised to resume discussing the funding when regular sessions resume in January, no special session was called to nail down the needed multi-billion dollar package:
The Senate majority wants that slice of sales-tax revenue to be applied to transportation projects, estimating it could boost spending by $750 million over the next 12 years.
Democrats have said they want the money to remain in the general fund, noting the state will need billions of dollars in the coming years to meet a state Supreme Court mandate to increase funding for education.