In Crisis Center plan, Capitol Hill’s ‘stairway to nowhere’ could finally become a public plaza

As the county has released details of a new, much higher construction budget for the Central Crisis Care Center set to open late next year on Broadway, there is also hope for Capitol Hill’s stairway to nowhere to finally get the community makeover neighborhood advocates first envisioned decades ago.

County officials tell CHS they will “assess potential uses” for the property’s fenced-off and empty northern triangle lot “in consultation with operators in the facility and the City of Seattle.”

“Community members have asked for green space, and the county is exploring that option,” a spokesperson tells CHS.

The fenced triangular lot where Broadway and Harvard meet just north of Madison on Capitol Hill has sat vacant and overgrown for more than 30 years. Today, the only visible structure left on the weed-covered property is a concrete stairway that once led into a building that no longer exists.

According to a history from writer and CHS contributor Dotty DeCoster, the site originally housed the Scottish Rite Cathedral, constructed by builder Frank Allen on a vacated city right-of-way. Opening in 1911, the two-story frame building featured classical pillars and Freemason insignia, serving as a hub for the Scottish Rite until the late 1950s when the organization relocated further north.

After the Freemasons departed, the building transitioned through several short-lived commercial reinventions. In late 1961, it was converted into the Music-Go-Round musical theater which folded within months. By the late 1970s, it operated as an antique store called Stop & Shop on Broadway, and during the mid-to-late 1980s, it served as a nightclub named Club Broadway.

Following the closure of the nightclub around 1988, the building fell vacant. It was demolished, leaving behind nothing from the historic structure except the concrete stairs leading up from the Harvard Ave sidewalk.

The Polyclinic later acquired the triangular parcel alongside other nearby real estate developments. Over the years, community advocates and neighborhood housing leaders proposed turning the uniquely shaped lot into a public plaza, park, or pedestrian corridor connecting to First Hill, but none of these concepts materialized.

In June 2009 when the City Council passed legislation making it possible for Polyclinic to develop its property for a medical facility, community leaders envisioned a stairway plaza.

“That strange shaped lot could be landscaped with a staircase to bring pedestrians up to First Hill,” one advocate said.

Today, despite extensive redevelopment across the surrounding neighborhood, the property remains an unresolved puzzle.

Any development would be guided by the citizen-led Seattle Community Advisory Group formed to help shape planning for the Crisis Center and working to allocate a $3 million county mitigation fund to address street disorder and public safety gaps.

CHS reported here on the advisory group’s early work around public safety improvements focused heavily on surrounding street conditions.

Keeping area plaza spaces clean and safe has typically required investment beyond the initial development. The AIDS Memorial Pathway plaza above Capitol Hill Station has been managed with city and county funding backing management and events programming of the space.

Officials are now targeting late 2027 at the earliest for the conversion of the former Polyclinic medical building and opening for the Crisis Center, the second in a network of five county facilities providing 24-7 walk-in and emergency care mental health clinics funded by a 2023 voter-approved levy.