SEATTLE IS NO MORE!!!

Submitted by: W.G.E.N.

The ENEMY WITHIN has taken over Seattle -  The FAIRY BOATS are FLOATING  HIGH on the Hills.

https://www.capitolhillseattle.com/2020/06/spurred-by-seattle-protests-city-says-will-finally-transfer-central-districts-fire-station-6-to-africatown/

Spurred by Seattle protests, city says will finally transfer Central District’s Fire Station 6 to Africatown

Posted on Friday, June 12, 2020 - 1:20 pm by jseattle

(Image: Joe Mabel/City of Seattle)

Seattle’s crises of 2020 have caused major disruptions, delays, and postponements. But they have also accelerated and unstuck some changes that should have happened in the city long ago.

Friday, the City of Seattle announced it will transfer the Fire Station 6 property at 23rd Ave and Yesler to community ownership, clearing the way for an Africatown-led redevelopment plan after more than seven years of process over the decommissioned facility.

“We at the City of Seattle understand the urgency behind making bold investments in the Black community and increasing community ownership of land in the Central District,” the brief announcement reads. “The City believes in the vision behind the William Grose Center for Cultural Innovation and we remain committed to making the transfer of Fire Station 6 to the community a reality.”

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Africatown and a coalition of community groups included the station in a list of six Central District-area properties that should be put in community control as part of a roster of demands including cutting SPD’s budget released in conjunction with a rally and protest at 23rd and Jackson last weekend.

The vision for a new William Grose Center for Cultural Innovation at the landmarked station property is the most well-shaped and long-formed project on the list. Discussion of community ownership of the facility first began in 2012 as the city was looking to sell the property. The new Station 6 opened in 2013 on MLK. In 2015, the city began a process for community groups to take over the building but the stages of the effort dragged on. Along the way, ideas and needs for the station came and went.

By 2016, the ideas behind the planned center were more fully shaped. Africatown’s K. Wyking Garrett said his organization was proposing that Fire Station 6 be repurposed as an “innovation hub” instead of housing Seattle Police traffic patrol vehicles.

The concept for the development could include room for business, enterprise and education support, technology facilities and maker space, as well as about 20 housing units focused on young adults.

The center will be named for William Grose, a pioneer of Seattle recorded as the city’s wealthiest Black resident whose property holdings near the current-day E Madison became the center of the city’s African American neighborhoods. CHS wrote about Grose here in our report on the history of the racial covenants on Capitol Hill:

In 1882, William Grose, an early black pioneer in Seattle, bought 12 acres of land in Madison Valley from Henry Yesler. At the time, the plot was a thickly wooded area far from the hub of activity along the city’s waterfront. But when the Madison Street Cable Car began service in 1889, it made the area accessible to other citizens and more black families moved in.

It’s not clear if the city’s announcement marks the official acceptance of a deal to put the property in Africatown’s control.

It also isn’t clear how the city, county, and state will respond to demands regarding the full roster of properties identified by the Africatown-led King County Equity Now coalition:

• Decommissioned Fire Station 6 on 23rd and Yesler to become William Grose Center for Enterprise as designated in the City of Seattle Equitable Development Plan
• Vacant Sound Transit lot on Martin Luther King Jr. Way S. and S. Angeline St. to become Youth Achievement Center
• Formally Black-owned Paramount Nursing Home recently acquired by Washington State to revert to Black-community ownership.
• Seattle Housing Authority Operations Site (Martin Luther King Jr. Way S. & Dearborn) to become affordable housing.
• Halt development at the King County Records Site project on 13th and Yesler to allow for equitable participation by a Black-led, community-based organization
• Halt the corrupt Priority Development Area proposal for the Seattle Vocational Institute (“SVI”) put forward by the Washington State Department of Commerce to conduct and start a new RFP process that is truly open, transparent and accountable to the community in which SVI is located

“We have received Africatown’s list of community requests along with a longer list of asks from other black-led organizations,” the city announcement reads. “Deputy Mayor Shefali Ranganathan has already met with the King County Equity Now coalition and on behalf of Mayor Durkan, she will be working with Department of Neighborhoods and Office of Planning and Community Development to work on next steps with the community.”

The land deal joins another big announcement about proposed development in the Central District that has come this week in the midst of ongoing protests over police brutality and racial and social inequity. At 23rd and Union, Black-owned developer Gardner Global announced it is buying all the Mount Calvary Christian Center properties as part of development plans on both sides of 23rd Ave that will create new business space and more than 200 new apartment units.