When you walk down Broadway in Capitol Hill, what stands out most is how involved and proud people are of their neighbourhood. People from all walks of life, backgrounds, and income levels use the Capitol Hill Station to get to and from Capitol Hill. They go to arts organisations, community parks, and schools.
One of Seattle’s biggest cities, Capitol Hill, is linked to Downtown by the underground Capitol Hill Station. With careful planning, the Capitol Hill community was able to reach its design goals to make the Broadway District more lively. The entrances to iconic stations are set up to fit the way people move around the neighbourhood now and in the future.
Capitol Hill Station
Capitol Hill station is a light rail stop in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. The station is near where Broadway and East John Street meet and is served by Sound Transit’s Link light rail line. It is between the 1 Line stops at Westlake and University of Washington.
The station has an island platform about 65 feet (20 m) below street level. Two mezzanines connect the platform to three entrances on the street level. It has pieces of public art, like the sculpture Jet Kiss by Mike Ross and two murals by Ellen Forney, who is a cartoonist.
TIMELESS QUALITY
Elements of the station’s design were carefully chosen to give it a timeless feel and help it last for a long time. To make it easier for people to get around on foot, the north entrance opens at a major intersection on Broadway.
A terracotta-painted steel trellis holds up a “green wall” made of plants. This wall is an extension of the nearby Cal Anderson Park.
The west entrance is right next to a streetcar stop and a bus stop, making it easy to use more than one type of public transportation.
It is built to be the same size as the retail buildings around it, with larger setbacks to make room for more foot traffic and bike parking.
From the west entrance, people can walk directly to the platform through a lit tunnel under Broadway. The ceiling plane, floor tile accents, and sloping interior walls invite people in while reducing noise.
The location and layout of the station are best for the nearby transit-oriented development (TOD) and for making it easy to get from TOD to the station.
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PUBLIC ART
At each of the three different entrances to the Capitol Hill station, there are plazas that help support the nearby shops and businesses. The murals Walking Fingers and Crossed Pinkies by Ellen Forney and the sculpture Jet Kiss by Mike Ross draw people into and through the station.
IMPACT ON THE NEARBY AREA
A 2018 Sound Transit study found that 7,698 people use the Capitol Hill Station each week, making it the third most used station in Seattle. Capitol Hill, the University of Washington, downtown Seattle, and the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport can all be reached from the station.
Both Seattle Central College and Seattle University are a short walk away, so students can get to them quickly. The station is in the middle of the city, so people can walk quickly to places like the Northwest Film Forum, the Hugo House, 12th Avenue Arts, and the Century Ballroom.
What the project is about
Just east of Broadway and south of E John Street, the underground Capitol Hill Station will be built. At street level, there are three ways to get into the station
- West entrance is on the west side of Broadway, just south of East Denny Way.
- South entrance on the corner of East Denny Way and Nagle Place
- At the corner of Broadway and E Olive Way is the north entrance.
The station will serve the heavily populated neighbourhood and the Broadway business district, as well as Seattle Central College, Group Health Medical Center, and other nearby employers. The trip to downtown will take six minutes, and the trip to the University of Washington will take three minutes.
Where The Capitol Hill Station Located
Capitol Hill station is in the Broadway District of Capitol Hill, which is northeast of Downtown Seattle. It is on Broadway between East Denny Way and East John Street.
The station is right next to Cal Anderson Park to the west, and Seattle Central College to the north. Close to the station are the Seattle University campus, the Pike–Pine nightlife corridor, and Volunteer Park.
The area around the station is mostly zoned for multi-family homes. There are 15,098 housing units with 20,890 people living in them within a half-mile (0.8 km) radius. Most of these units are rented, and about 17% of them are affordable to low-income households. There is also some subsidised housing nearby.
also a big commercial strip on Broadway with retail stores and other businesses on the ground floor. There are 15,171 jobs in the area.
With 55,000 people per square mile, the western slope of Capitol Hill has the most people of any place in Washington state.
History
History and making plans
Between 1900 and 1930, the Broadway business district on Capitol Hill grew up along the new city streetcar lines that went from Downtown Seattle to the University District. In his 1911 plan for Seattle, urban planner Virgil Bogue proposed a subway system with an underground loop on Capitol Hill and Broadway that would connect to an east–west line on Pike Street. This plan was turned down. [7][8] Voters turned down the Forward Thrust Committee’s plan for a regional rapid transit system in 1968 and 1970. The plan called for a station at the corner of Broadway, Union Street, and Madison Street, as well as other stations in the eastern part of Capitol Hill.
In the 1990s, a regional transit authority, which later became Sound Transit, was set up to study a modern light rail system for the Seattle area. For the section between Downtown Seattle and the University District, both a surface line through Eastlake and a tunnel under Capitol Hill were considered. [12] During a vote in March 1995, the tunnel was chosen as the best choice. [13] [14] Voters turned down the $6.7 billion plan, which included a 69-mile (111 km) light rail system that would connect Seattle, Washington, to Bellevue, Lynnwood, and Tacoma. It was changed with a plan that was smaller. [15] In November 1996, voters approved a shortened regional transit plan for $3.9 billion that included a light rail station under Capitol Hill that was built in a tunnel.
Building and starting up
Late in 2012, the station box had been dug out and a concrete floor had been poured.
During a series of public hearings and meetings with the city’s design commission in 2007 and 2008, the final design of the Capitol Hill station was chosen.
After Sound Transit bought the properties at the station site in 2008, the businesses and people who lived there had to move.
Sound Transit arranged for pieces of art to be put in the empty buildings for a short time.
Late in 2008, people started to take things out of the empty buildings to reuse or recycle them. For example, there was a community event where people took small plants to be replanted by neighbours;
About 90% of the materials were recycled, and the money from the sale of scrap metal was used to feed the homeless with hot meals.
Buildings on the station site were torn down in March 2009, just before the official start of the University Link project, and the work was done by August.
A three-story apartment building, a used book store, the Espresso Vivace coffee shop, a nail salon, and a copy shop were among the 20 buildings that were torn down.
During construction, many of the nearby businesses that had to move moved to the northern end of the Broadway district. They did this with help from Sound Transit and the neighborhood’s
In January 2010, work on getting ready to build the station began. East Denny Way was closed and a construction wall was put up around the site.
During the five years it took to build, street artists in the area painted the 24-foot-high (7.3 m) wall red and added pieces of public art to it.
The station box was dug out starting in July, and the level of the future platform was reached in December.
In June 2011, the “Brenda” machine, the first of three that will dig tunnels, was sent from Capitol Hill to the Westlake station in Downtown Seattle.
“Balto” and “Togo,” two different machines, left the University of Washington station at the same time and arrived in March and April 2012 at the Capitol Hill station.
In May 2012, Brenda finished the two tunnels to downtown.
In October 2012, Turner Construction was given a contract worth $105 million to build and finish the inside and entrances of Capitol Hill Station.
Turner started building the inside of the station in March 2013. They used a steel PERI truss and a system of movable concrete forms to pour concrete for the station’s parts.
Starting in November 2013, work on the west entrance and its cut-and-cover tunnel under Broadway meant that the street had to be closed and moved several times.
By the summer of 2015, 90 percent of the work on Capitol Hill Station was done, and the construction wall was slowly taken down.