Conflict on the hill

Residents and business owners in Seattle are urging officials to halt plans for a crisis care center on Broadway at the heart of the beleaguered area where First Hill bumps into Capitol Hill.

It's an about-face for a community that voted overwhelmingly two years ago for the $1.25 billion property tax levy to fund five 24/7 centers and other mental health treatment programs in King County. At the time, there was no walk-in urgent care facility anywhere in the county, and the number of mental health residential treatment beds had fallen by about a third over the preceding five years.

Some people in the neighborhood say they still support establishing crisis care centers, but oppose siting one in the old Polyclinic campus at 1145 Broadway. There have been encampments and pockets of homelessness for decades in the neighborhood where today the fentanyl epidemic is evident.

Two of the 10 places with the highest concentration of overdoses and crime in the city are located in the area, and some say it is not the place for a walk-in behavioral health and substance abuse treatment facility.

https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/news/2025/08/26/first-hill-raises-crisis-center-location.html