Columbia City, Seattle, Washington

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Columbia City

Rainier Valley Cultural Center seen from Columbia Park. The center is a former Christian Science church, built 1921.

Columbia City is a neighborhood in the Rainier Valley area of Seattle, Washington. Its main thoroughfares are Rainier Avenue S. and Martin Luther King Jr. Way S. (until 1988 known as Empire Way S.) (north- and southbound) and S. Alaska Street (east- and westbound).

[edit] History

The area was once dense conifer forest, inhabited by the local Salish peoples, until the arrival of the Rainier Valley Electric Railway from Downtown in 1891. A lumber mill was built soon after, and in 1891 settlement began in earnest in "Columbia," named either for Christopher Columbus or the song "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean" (listen). Three streets in the neighborhood bear names of other famous explorers, a Columbia Street already existing Downtown: Ferdinand Street after Magellan, Hudson Street after Henry Hudson, and Americus Street after Amerigo Vespucci.^[1]

Columbia incorporated as "Columbia City" in January 1893. Annexation to the City of Seattle came May 3, 1907^[2] following a petition by citizens to the City Council to hold a special election on the matter.^{[citation needed]} Although opposition to annexation had initially been strong due to citizens' desire for local control, the March 5 vote was overwhelming: 109-3 in favor of annexation to Seattle.^[2]

In 1905, the newly-renamed Seattle, Renton and Southern Railway extended south to Renton. In 1912 the streetcar line went bankrupt and was reorganized as the Seattle and Rainier Valley Railway. Its last run was just after midnight on January 1, 1937.^[1] Meanwhile, Columbia City's ambitions to become a seaport were thwarted with the completion of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in 1917, which lowered Lake Washington by nine feet and caused Wetmore Slough to dry up. The former slough was used as a dump from 1941 to 1963, and is now Genesee Park.^[1]

[edit] Recent History

As African Americans moved to Seattle to be part of the wartime industrial boom, many settled in the area, and in the 1960s the area began to suffer the effects of redlining and racism. By the 1970s, the neighborhood had fallen victim to poverty, housing stock had deteriorated, and many storefronts along Rainier Avenue S. were vacant.

The Columbia City business district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 as the Columbia City Historic District, bounded on the north by S. Alaska Street, on the south by S. Hudson Street, on the east by Rainier Avenue S., and on the west by 35th Avenue S.^[3][4]

Beginning in the late 1980s, Columbia City saw a large influx of minority professionals, artists, gay and lesbian couples and "urban pioneers" seeking classic housing stock at low prices. By the late 1990s, Columbia City was already referred to as one of Seattle's most creative neighborhoods. In the last decade, it has seen some of the sharpest rises in property values in the entire Seattle metropolitan area. The result has been widespread gentrification, including the restoration of many of the older homes and, in the last several years, the building of numerous condos and the planned construction of several hundred more^[5]. As of 2008, Columbia City is one of Seattle's most diverse neighborhoods in terms of income and ethnicity, encompassing everything from public housing to multi-million dollar view homes.

[edit] Columbia City Today

Today, the thriving pedestrian business district along Rainier Avenue S. has become something of a citywide destination, and is home to six bars, a number of restaurants, assorted retail shops, a successful farmer's market, an art gallery, a book store, a new bakery, a Starbucks, a yoga studio, a locally-owned gym, a fraternal clubhouse, Columbia Cinema (a newly renovated movie theater) and Columbia Theater (a music venue), BikeWorks (a community charity that lets kids earn bikes by learning to repair them), a biodiesel coop, several community service centers and the national headquarters of the Freedom Socialist Party. The neighborhood hosts a bustling monthly "Beat Walk," every first Friday May-October, and many of the local businesses participate with Jazz bands, open houses and art shows.

The surrounding blocks are mostly single-family homes, in many cases older craftsman bungalows, with a handful of low-income apartment buildings and more expensive new townhouses and condos. On the ridge above the business district, where views of Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountains are common, many new expensive homes have been built, and many smaller homes expanded and updated. This area is part of what's known as the "Gold Coast"^{[citation needed]}, a swath of often extremely expensive homes with lake views.

Crime is very rare, by big city standards, although there is still drug-dealing in the neighborhood, and a fair number of car break-ins. Though the area has gentrified rapidly, it still contains a few pockets of real poverty, and the clashes between the needs of the area's poor and the desires of the area's better-off residents are somewhat defining of the neighborhood's politics. Despite both gentrification and class conflict, though, the neighborhood remains perhaps the most diverse in the Northwest, according to the US Census^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] The Future

In accordance with the Washington State Growth Management Act, and Seattle's strategy of concentrating growth in neighborhood cores to promote livability, quite a bit of change is coming to Columbia City over the next few years. A few see this as a threat to the community, but most residents appear to welcome change, seeing it as an opportunity to enliven and improve the neighborhood (and perhaps their property values).

Train service at the neighborhood's light rail station is scheduled to begin in 2009, connecting the neighborhood to both SeaTac airport and Downtown Seattle. Rainier Vista, once a blighted public housing project, has been redeveloped into a much-acclaimed mixed-use, mixed income community built around the light rail station, and will include more than 900 new homes (some subsidized, some rental, some owner-occupied) when completed^[6]. In addition, a controversial transitional housing building for homeless men and women is being built nearby.

A number of other new development projects are in the works in the neighborhood, ranging from small-scale condo conversions and townhouse developments to four 100+ unit new condo buildings on Rainier Avenue alone. Community estimates have put the number of new homes in the planning pipeline as numbering at least 1,500.^{[citation needed]} Many have green building attributes. Little of this development will directly impact the single-family housing stock, as Seattle's zoning laws are quite strict.

Besides the new businesses that will come along with these projects, there are quite a few new community and non-profit initiatives breaking ground, especially for children. The Boys and Girls club is building a new regional facility in the neighborhood, the Audubon Club is opening an environmental learning center in nearby Seward Park and in 2008 the Brighton Science Park - one of the few free public science parks in the nation - will open. The neighborhood's existing "p-patch" community garden will be joined by two new plots of gardening land. Other plans are said to be in the works to revamp the neighborhood's large (and not well-used) Genesee park.^{[citation needed]}

A local arts group, the Pomegranate Center, is leading an effort to use public art, infrastructure changes and street furniture to slow traffic on Rainier Avenue and better connect Columbia City with the Hilman City neighborhood to the south, which has not yet seen the same level of reinvestment and renewal. Most observers seem to assume that the Hilman City business district will eventually catch on, and the two neighborhoods will grow together.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Columbia City, Seattle, Washington

• Columbia Citizens, the neighborhood community wiki
• Citizens' community calendar
• Columbia City in the news
• the Citizens' Wikli, Columbia City's neighbor news
• Columbia City Running Club
• Columbia Cinema
• Columbia City
• Columbia City Farmers' Market
• Captain Columbia City, a neighborhood blog of events
• Citizens' photo gallery
• Columbia City cybertour from HistoryLink.org
• Seattle Times article on light rail-related development
• Rainier Valley Historical Society
• Guide to the Columbia City Records 1893-1913
• Columbia City Beatwalk, a monthly community celebration