Concrete removal on Capitol Hill

The Harvard-Belmont Landmark District was approved for designation in 1980, after residents started the process themselves. The City describes it as a well-preserved, mostly residential area of fine homes built in the early 1900s, with tree-shaded streets and wooded ravines.

The order of operations is what trips people up. The Department of Neighborhoods says a Certificate of Approval from the Landmarks Preservation Board is required before the issuance of any building, demolition, street use or other permit for work in the district that is visible from a public right-of-way. That includes "addition or removal of major landscape and site elements such as retaining walls, gateways, trees or driveways."

So if you are on one of those blocks and want to break out an old concrete drive or a failing wall, the first call is to the Landmarks Preservation Board staff, not a contractor's scheduler.

Capitol Hill was not annexed; it was inside the city early. The City's 2017 MHA environmental impact statement says the area of today's First Hill-Capitol Hill urban village was added to Seattle between 1869 and 1886. The same document names First Hill-Capitol Hill as an urban village, which matters for the dumpster rules below.

Where the debris container goes is usually the first logistics question. SDOT requires a Street Use permit before a dumpster or storage container is placed in the right-of-way, and a construction container needs the fuller ROW Construction Use permit if it is on an arterial or on any street in an Urban Village or Urban Center. The City names First Hill-Capitol Hill among those designated areas, so check your address on the City's map before applying.

If your container will sit in a paid parking area, SDOT says you must set up a temporary No Parking Zone as well.

Seattle's Office of Emergency Management lists Interlaken among the areas with large numbers of recorded landslides and among its deep-seated slide areas. It also notes that Seattle water supply lines cross slide-prone ground in the Interlaken area of Capitol Hill, and that I-5 runs along slide-prone slopes on parts of the hill.

If your lot is on a mapped steep slope or landslide-prone area, SDCI's grading permit threshold drops to more than 25 cubic yards of disturbance, and removing pavement counts as disturbance. A big driveway on a slope can cross that line.