Seattle

There are a couple of ways to tell it’s spring in Seattle: The cherry blossoms and flowers are blooming — and so are your allergies.

If it seems like your runny nose, sneezing, watery eyes, and all those other lovely allergy symptoms are sticking around longer every year, it’s not just you. A recent analysis by Climate Central, a climate change research group, found allergy season in the Seattle-Tacoma area has gotten about 12 days longer since 1970.

Tens of thousands of riders came out to ride the 2 Line across Lake Washington Saturday, as Sound Transit inaugurated the light rail link between the east and west metro.

In an announcement that she immediately noted will please no one, Mayor Katie Wilson announced Thursday that she is pausing the expansion of an existing police camera surveillance program until the city gets the results of a “privacy and data governance audit” that will be conducted by researchers at New York University’s Policing Project, a process she said will take a few months. In the meantime, the city will install, but not turn on, 26 new cameras in the stadium district south of downtown, which can be switched on if there is a “credible threat” that warrants their use, such as an attack during the upcoming World Cup games in June.

On Monday, the Seattle City Council got its first, partial look at Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposal to build 500 new shelter units by the end of May, and 1,000 before 2027. The mayor’s office is waiting until later this month to announce the sites they’ve identified for the first few new tiny house villages, so the briefing was mostly an opportunity for the council to ask questions about the proposal—including how much new money it will require, how the mayor’s office plans to get buy-in from neighborhood residents, and why the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), which manages the region’s shelter contracts, has been effectively cut out of the proposal.

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson rolled out new legislation intended to expedite production of emergency housing and homeless shelter at the Hope Factory in SoDo. She aims to produce 1,000 units in her first year.

Seattle Police delivered their report on federal immigration enforcement policies to the City Council, but did not directly address some questions, highlighting the limitations SPD faces in responding to ICE overreach in Seattle.

Here’s everything you need to know about the venue, located in the heart of Seattle and considered by many as the loudest in the country

Washington's Court of Appeals will decide whether the legislature left a major loophole in place when it passed recent laws to prevent zoning changes that increase housing capacity in cities from being mired in lengthy legal appeals.

The proposed $410 million levy is around 50% higher than the 2019 library levy, adjusted for inflation. With a focus on maintaining hours and modestly expanding services, the package doesn't include many big ticket items.

Iran’s sports minister told state television that the country cannot play in this year’s FIFA Men’s World Cup, including its June 26 game against Egypt in Seattle, according to reports from multiple media outlets Wednesday.

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The Seattle City Attorney’s Office is grappling with a large case backlog of more than 5,000 cases left by the previous administration run by Republican Ann Davison. Successor Erika Evans is hoping to tighten up practices to trim the backlog.

After rumors that a McDonalds is opening just up the street in the old vacant Rite-Aid building on Broadway, today Dick’s announced it’s prepared to compete against it with an even sticker, hairier ball pit.

“Everyone knows we’ve got the better burgers and fries no one would fake barely taking a bite of and now we’re going to have the most sticky, diseased ball pit in the city too,” said Dick’s CEO Jasmine Donovan. “And you can bet I’m not just dipping the tip of a socked toe in it like some prissy McDonald’s CEO—I’ll be diving in face-first to gargle those balls for all to see.”

This summer, Seattle becomes one of 16 North American cities to host FIFA World Cup matches.

That includes six games, a projected 750,000 visitors, and nearly a billion dollars flowing into King County.

Whether your favorite local business catches a windfall or gets relegated to the sidelines depends partly on how well they prepare, according to Lynnette Buffington with the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

The Metropolitan King County Council voted Tuesday to ban any new detention centers in the county for at least the next year, becoming the latest local jurisdiction to attempt to block any new immigration detention facilities in the region.

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A global study named Seattle the best place to live in the U.S. and the eighth best in the world. See the full ranking here.

Jane speaks with regular contributor Marcus Harrison Green and special guest Andrew Eagleson, journalist and founder of The Cascadia Journal about soft-succession, bills in the legislature around data centers and surge-pricing.

This week Lynnwood became the first city in the state of Washington to officially terminate its contract with Flock and remove all its cameras to better protect the identities of everyone who has to live in Lynnwood.

A Sightline Institute study quantified the impact of growing up, not sprawling out, estimating that the Seattle metro area’s slightly less-sprawling growth since 2000 was keeping 1 million tons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere every year, compared with what Seattleites would have been emitting if they had sprawled like Dallas.

King County Library System today announced KCLS Rewind, opens a new window, a first-of-its-kind challenge for adults that taps into the unmistakable thrill of earning pizza for turning pages – now remixed for the 21st century. Think pizza boxes, throwback playlists, and the satisfying click of a library checkout scanner. KCLS Rewind invites adults to relive a favorite childhood motivation while discovering everything today’s library has to offer. And if patrons didn’t get the chance to read for pizza in the 90s, they can discover it for themselves through KCLS Rewind.

The Seattle Social Housing Developer smashed projections and pulled in more than double the amount expected from a recently voter-approved "excess compensation tax." Social housing advocates' priority bill at the state legislature is also making significant progress.

The small infrastructure of Seatttle's Men's World Cup preparations continues with an announcement of four free fan zones in the city core.

Sound Transit tallied a record-smashing day, exceeding 200,000 boardings on Link light rail during Seattle's victory parade day. Lime added nearly 60,000 rides on its shared scooters and e-bikes.

Seattle Public Schools (SPS) is seeking to add a new football/soccer hybrid field for Lincoln High School in Lower Woodland Park, but has chosen a plan that prioritizes parking over accessibility and events, scrapping a recently rebuilt soccer field and historic trees to cram two fields into a footprint that’s too small. The community has proposed an alternative utilizing a gravel parking lot to site a soccer field.