Targeted for closure during CHOP, city plans $2.2M mechanical upgrade for Capitol Hill’s East Precinct

(Image: City of Seattle)

The center of the city’s 2020 unrest over police brutality and a negotiation point in its subsequent “defund” debate, new investments are coming to Capitol Hill’s East Precinct.

Home to the headquarters for the precinct for 40 years, the 109-year-old building is being lined up for a major infrastructure project as the Seattle Police Department prepares to renew its investment in the one-time automobile showroom, service center, and garage at 12th and Pine.

The City of Seattle has completed the pre-application phase for a $2.2 million mechanical overhaul of the building at 1519 12th Ave including its operational patrol headquarters, roll-call and administrative offices, locker rooms, evidence processing areas, and temporary holding cells for officers serving Capitol Hill, First Hill, and the Central District. The stuffed building also supports neighborhood community policing teams and maintains secured, monitored fleet parking for patrol cruisers, police bicycles, and specialized tactical vehicles.

A SPD spokesperson tells CHS the facility will remain open during construction and that “all precinct operations will remain fully functional.”

According to the paperwork, the capital project focuses on modernizing the facility’s heating and ventilation infrastructure to transition away from fossil-fuel heating in compliance with commercial energy codes.

The investment follows uncertainty around the building that first began serving the neighborhood as a showroom for the Wyllis-Overland Company and part of the city’s auto row in 1917. The East Precinct opened at the corner in the 1980s.

Prior to that time, patrol officers covering the precinct were dispatched out of centralized SPD headquarters at the downtown Public Safety Building located between 3rd and 4th Ave and James and Cherry.

Following voter approval to decentralize police stations in 1977, the City of Seattle initially planned to build the East Precinct in the Central District at 23rd and Yesler, but abandoned the plan in 1984 after years of resistance, protests, and a 1981 site occupation led by Black civil rights and community organizers advocating for housing over police infrastructure.

In response, officials selected 12th and Pine as a compromise boundary location serving both Capitol Hill and the Central District, moving forward despite pushback from Capitol Hill queer and progressive activists wary of police harassment, and alongside counter-appeals from local business owners seeking faster response times.

The station opened in January 1986.

June 2020 brought new scrutiny about the facility as Black Lives Matter protests grew in the city.

(Image: CHS)

The East Precinct’s location placed it directly at the boundary between Capitol Hill’s nightlife and LGBTQ core and the Central District. Barricades outside the station became the nightly standoff site for racial justice marches, with protesters opposing a fortified police presence in a dense arts and residential neighborhood. When police boarded up and evacuated the building on June 8, the precinct became the physical center of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and its walls were covered in art and memorials as demonstrators called for defunding and reallocating police resources.

After the city cleared CHOP four weeks later, the precinct’s future prompted debate over whether a station belonged at 12th and Pine. Officials eventually added a massive but temporary security barrier and continued signing off on repairs and upgrades for the old building.

Following CHOP, community organizers and civil rights groups argued the city should permanently shut it down and turn the site into a community center, echoing the neighborhood battles from the 1970s and 1980s over police facilities in residential areas.

In 2021, CHS asked the leading candidates for mayor if they would support closing the East Precinct at 12th and Pine. Two said yes and three, including eventual winner Bruce Harrell, said they would consider it.

The new $2.2 million infrastructure project represents a different direction. The work includes removing an old gas boiler and replacing an aging rooftop air handling unit with an electric heat pump system. The upgrade also will add variable air volume terminal boxes across the building and new “Energy Recovery Ventilator Dedicated Outdoor Air Systems” specifically designed to serve the facility’s locker rooms. Work will span across all levels of the structure, including the basement, first- and second-floor interiors, and the roof.

In a typical day, the number of sworn personnel operating out of the East Precinct is split across three 9-hour patrol watches, resulting in a quieter building than the facility’s overall headcount suggests. Out of roughly 75 to 90 total sworn officers and supervisors officially assigned to the precinct, daily street deployment typically translates to just 8 to 14 patrol officers and one or two sergeants on duty per shift to cover the precinct’s sectors. That equates to an average of about 25 to 40 total patrol shifts dispatched from the station across a full day, supplemented by a smaller set of detectives, community liaison officers, and command staff.

Because patrol officers spend the majority of their shifts on the street, on beats, or answering priority calls, the 12th and Pine building itself rarely holds more than 15 to 25 officers at once in brief spikes that occur during morning, afternoon, and late-night watch changes, with the interior settling back down to a front-counter officer and building security for the rest of the day.

The city is getting an early start on the city’s long permit wait times. There is no announced start date for construction.

But, five years later and with 109 years of neighborhood history now having played out inside its building walls, the East Precinct isn’t going anywhere.

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