Real Change News | Just Heard - Dropped charges, Yesler Terr. fight

September 1, 2010
Vol: 17 No: 35

Just Heard

Just Heard - Dropped charges, Yesler Terr. fight

by: Cydney Gillis , Staff Reporter

Like it? Share it!

City drops vendor’s charges
It turns out that James Williams spent 30 days in jail for nothing, but he’s still ecstatic about what happened in his case. In a hearing on Aug. 13, a city attorney dropped the harassment charges against Williams, a Real Change vendor who sells papers at the Top Pot doughnut shop in downtown Seattle.

On May 14, a man attacked Williams in front of Top Pot, but police took Williams away on a warrant he didn’t know about for allegedly threatening a Department of Corrections officer last year. The case was dismissed, however, for lack of a prosecuting witness: The corrections officer did not appear in court.

“I think the City of Seattle decided [against] spending lots more money for something that was worthless,” says Bob Hannah, a friend who put up $1,000 to get Williams out of jail (“Top Pot customer bails out Real Change vendor,” June 23-29, 2010). “I’m just happy,” Williams says, “that Bob got his money back from the court.”

Yesler Terrace landmark fight
On Aug. 18, the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board voted 6-4 against giving landmark status to Yesler Terrace, a series of low-slung “garden” apartments that the Seattle Housing Authority built into First Hill 70 years ago and were the nation’s first integrated housing project.

Observers say SHA, which paid a consultant to prepare the landmark application, expected the vote. But something else happened at the meeting, they say, that SHA didn’t expect on the road to redeveloping the site: The board voted to nominate Yesler Terrace’s old steam plant and community center as landmarks.

The community center, in particular, stands where SHA plans to put a grand new central park in its redevelopment, which is slated to turn the site’s 561 low-income units into office towers and mixed-income high-rises. A landmark designation would “throw a major monkey wrench into SHA’s plans,” says John Fox of the Seattle Displacement Coalition. Not so, says SHA spokesperson Virginia Felton, who says the agency will do what’s needed to work the buildings into its designs.

But Felton stresses it’s only a nomination. The final vote is scheduled Oct. 6. Between now and then, Fox says, the landmarks board should brace itself for a lot of lobbying by SHA.

----