Crime is down almost across the board on Capitol Hill, but the neighborhood is still trying to counter a lingering public impression that the area is rough and ready or even unsafe, according to a couple of longtime local business owners and an outgoing crime-prevention coordinator.
The reality is that Capitol Hill is in better overall shape than the city as a whole, according to crime statistics for 2005 and 2006 (see Capitol Hill crime by the numbers).
But there are statistics and statistics. Police do a wonderful job dealing with hard crimes like assaults and bank robberies, according to Sonja Richter, an East Precinct crime-prevention coordinator whose last day on the job was Friday, March 30.
But she qualified the praise. "Quality-of-life issues are in the toilet," she said of such problems as illegal parking and loud clubs. "People are being literally driven out of their homes (by club noise)," she railed.
Michael Wells, owner of Bailey-Coy Books, is more circumspect. "I think part of the problem is public perception," he said. The area had a reputation in the 1990s for heavy drug use, and it was "part of the whole grunge movement," Wells noted. "Heroin for a long time was a big concern."
In fact, Wells said, he used to find used syringes in front of his business. That hasn't happened for a while, the longtime resident said. "I feel a lot better now than I did in 2003."
Panhandlers on Broadway are an issue for many, according to Wells, who also chairs the Broadway Business Improvement Association (BIA). "None of us in the business community are thrilled with panhandlers," he added. "But some customers would be upset if I asked [the panhandlers] to move."
Other customers at the bookstore would just as soon see the spare-changers go elsewhere, added Wells, who takes a philosophical approach to the problem. "If you live in a city like Seattle and panhandlers make you nervous, maybe you're in the wrong urban environment."
Paul Dwoskin, owner of Broadway Video, agrees with Wells that public perception of crime on Capitol Hill doesn't jibe with reality. But there are problems, he conceded.
"I know there's drugs up here ... and lots of drug dealers," Dwoskin said of two examples.
Still, he believes 450 new housing units coming to Broadway will make a difference, along with a recently reformed Capitol Hill chamber of commerce and ongoing efforts by the BIA.
"I think we keep saying all this stuff is going to happen, and that will change the perception," said Dowskin, who is BIA member and on the chamber board. "It's not like we have thugs beating people up on the street."
But some signs of the seamier side Capitol Hill are hard to ignore. "Right now, I'm watching some guy peeing in front of a building," he said during the interview for this story. "It's all these little things chipping away."
Still, Wells said, the city is paying more attention to the neighborhood than it used to. The mayor's Broadway task force, for example, helped a lot and spurred the creation of the new chamber of commerce. Wells also serves as co-chair of the new chamber of commerce.
"One of the big things on the agenda was promoting Capitol Hill as a unique destination for shopping, dining, working and living," Wells said of the task force conclusions.
The task force also did public-opinion surveys, and a number of different individuals and groups in the neighborhood had a lot of different anecdotes about crime - some true, some not, according to Wells. "Now we have that information, we can put something together about the real state of the Hill," he said. "Now it's really time for us to get to work."
The new chamber is more broadly based than the old one, Wells noted. "We're really trying to bring everyone into the fold." That includes not just businesses, but also non-profits and area schools and colleges, he said.
Richter, the crime-prevention coordinator, applauds the formation of a new chamber of commerce, but she noted that individual efforts can make a difference as well.
"Cal Anderson Park is much better," Richter pointed out. "That was an example of community effort, but the neighbors had to work their butts off," she said.
For Richter, the quality-of-life issue is an important factor in how a neighborhood or city is perceived. "We're a dirty, bourgeois city, and we don't even sweep our streets," she groused.
Maybe not, but part of the revitalization efforts on Capitol Hill is doing just that, Dwoskin said. "The BIA spends 80 percent of our budget keeping the streets clean."
A long-range plan for the neighborhood is to have enough money to create an ambassador program like the one downtown, he added. Mayor Greg Nickels has also launched a neighborhood-policing effort that would add more than 100 new officers to the force, and both Wells and Dwoskin approve of the effort.
"We would love to have more police officers on the streets," Wells said.
"The more the merrier," Dwoskin said. "I think we're way under-copped."
Russ Zabel is a reporter for Pacific Publishing Inc. newspapers. He can be reached at editor @capitolhilltimes.com.[[In-content Ad]]
