Sous Sol Winery

Five friends; a half-ton of Sangiovese grapes; a basement. “Sous Sol” is French for basement.

Pledge $10-$1500 to help bring a fully-functioning urban winery to Pioneer Square.

Ends Saturday June 22, 2013.

Trabant Coffee and Chai

Trabant Coffee is building a patio. Outdoor seating for your coffee or chai!

Contribute $10-200 to build the patio.

Ends July 11, 2013.

Delicatus

Delicatus is teaming up with Pioneer Square neighbor Community Sourced Capital. Buy a Square to expand their deli and tap offerings!

Become a Squareholder by buying a Square. A Square = $50 each.

Ends July 11, 2013.

E. Smith Back Bar

E. Smith Mercantile wants to add a cocktail bar to their beautiful retail storefront.

Contribute $10-10,000 to help fund the bar build-out.

Ends July 18, 2013.

Other crowdfunding campaigns have had great success in Pioneer Square in the past. The enormous salmon mural on 2nd Ave Ext S was a Kickstarter project; Intrigue Chocolates funded new branding and packaging design; and Salt Room Yoga funded a Himalayan rock wall.

1. The Pike Place Express Market is coming to Occidental Park every Wednesday, June 19 through September 25. Get your locally-sourced produce at the farmers market. 10 am to 2 pm.

2. The Pioneer Square Fire Festival is back on July 13th! Antique fire trucks, vintage police cars, youth firefighting competitions, bagpipes, and Pluggie the talking fire hydrant. Bring the kids! 11 am to 5 pm.

3. Dancing til Dusk presents, “Fire on the Bricks”. Think of it as Salsa Thursdays in Occidental Park. Warm bricks from the summer sun translates to hot dancing feet! July 11 with music by Camalache, and July 18 with music by Tumbao. 6 to 9:30 pm.

4. Out to Lunch Concerts return with Ayron Jones and the Way on July 19, and Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks on July 26. Bring your lunch or takeout from any of the surrounding restaurants and enjoy the music!

Date: Saturday July 13, 2013

Time: 11:00 am to 5:00 pm

Location: Occidental Square Park (between S. Main St. & S. Washington St. and between 1st & 2nd Ave S)

The Pioneer Square Fire Festival, a Seafair Sanctioned Community Event, will take place on Saturday, July 13 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm in Occidental Square Park. The annual festival commemorates the re-birth of the Pioneer Square area following the Great Seattle Fire of June 6, 1889 that destroyed most of Seattle’s original Commercial District and gave rise to today’s Historic Pioneer Square Neighborhood.

The Pioneer Square Fire Festival gives attendees of all ages a glimpse into Seattle’s past featuring displays by the Last Resort Fire Department, the Seattle Metropolitan Police Museum, and the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park – Seattle. Along with displays of antique and classic fire engines and classic police cars, the Seattle Fire Department will provide different fire apparatus of today on a rotating basis during the festival, and Seattle Fire Department’s Medic II Program will have a display in the Last Resort Fire Department Museum.

In addition there will be many family-friendly activities. Come cheer on the area Fire cadets and Explorers as they compete against each other. Try your hand a putting on firefighting turnout gear on “Are You Faster Than a Fire Cadet?” Kids can learn about fire safety through games such as the “Pump Can Game” and “Smoke Crawl”. Don’t forget a
bout the opportunity to color a picture while sitting in the back of a 1940 fire engine, or pan for gold. Also making appearance will be Pluggie the talking fire hydrant.

This year the festival will also be honoring the 100th anniversary of the oldest known surviving motorized Seattle Fire Department vehicle. This City Service Ladder Truck will be on display in Occidental Square Park during the festival. Come on down and help us celebrate!

Located one to two blocks away from Occidental Square Park are: the Last Resort Fire Department Museum, located in Seattle Fire Department Headquarters; the Seattle Metropolitan Police Museum located in a historic building; and the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park – Seattle, located in the restored Cadillac Hotel. All three museums have activities for kids, and they will be open and FREE to the public on the day of the Fire Festival.

For more up-to-date information visit www.lastresortfd.org and locate the Fire Festival page in the left navigating column.

You can now go directly to the Alliance for Pioneer Square’s GiveBIG page and give now: Alliance for Pioneer Square’s GiveBIG page

Please consider giving to the Alliance for Pioneer Square during GiveBIG this year. Not only will you be supporting efforts to revitalize historic Pioneer Square, but your gift will go further because of matching stretch funds from the Seattle Foundation. See AllianceForPioneerSquare.org‘s three big reasons to give big today. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks for your support!

Advance registration is required.

 

You can sign up here or in person at the project information center, Milepost 31, located at 211 First Ave. S. in Seattle. If you have questions, please contact viaduct@wsdot.wa.gov or 1-888-AWV-LINE (298-5463).
 
Tours are offered at the following times:

• Tuesdays: 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

• Wednesdays: Noon to 1 p.m.

• Saturdays: Noon to 1 p.m. and 3 to 4 p.m.

Please check the website frequently as there may be adding additional tour dates through the spring and summer.
 

Tour details

• The tours are ½ mile round trip. Visitors must be able walk over uneven ground and climb up and down 50 stairs.*

• Tours last one hour.

• Tours begin at Milepost 31, 211 First Ave. S. in Pioneer Square in Seattle. Map.

• Parking is available on city streets and in nearby parking garages. Please visit www.downtownseattleparking.com for additional parking information.

• Tours will be conducted rain or shine. Please dress for the weather.

• No pets allowed.

• Tours may be canceled for any reason. We will do our best to accommodate the public on a future tour but we cannot guarantee that there will be space available.

 
*Because the tour is within an active construction zone, we offer our guests with limited mobility an opportunity to participate in a self-guided tour along the paved path west of the construction area. Accommodation requests for people with disabilities can be made by contacting the WSDOT Diversity/ADA Affairs team at wsdotada@wsdot.wa.gov or by calling toll-free, 855-362-4ADA (4232). Persons who are deaf or hard of hearing may make a request by calling the Washington State Relay at 711.
 

Important information

• Tour participants must wear sturdy, closed-toe shoes. No sandals, flip-flops, high heels or slip-on shoes allowed.

• No one under the age of 13 is permitted.

• Minors age 13 through 17 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

• Participants are advised not to wear skirts or dresses.

• All participants must sign a liability waiver on the day of the tour.

Investors to Receive Free Classes, Yoga Mats, and Unlimited Yoga for Life!

Salt Room Yoga from Lucky Ant on Vimeo.

For the past several years, Rhonda Hobgood has been hearing about the struggles and revitalization efforts for Seattle’s oldest neighborhood, Pioneer Square. Filled with picturesque buildings and rare pieces of America’s historical culture, and with a booming tech and start-up business community, Pioneer Square’s street-level retail community has been struggling to fill vacancies for the past two decades.

When location scouting for her new studio Salt Room Yoga, Rhonda decided to open her in Pioneer Square to fill a street-level vacancy and help revitalize the Pioneer Square neighborhood and foster community. “The way to build up a neighborhood, a city, or even a person is to start a business and create work. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have in our society. Starting a business is difficult though, especially if you come from a middle class background, work a middle-class job, and you’re not a trust-fund baby like me. Banks won’t loan me money even though my credit rating is very healthy and I have a low debt ratio,” Rhonda explained.

The problem? “While the studio doors are now open, I struggled to open the doors and it took all my resources. I don’t have enough start-up capital to create my full vision,” Rhonda said. Salt Room Yoga needs funds to build out the space in order to fully establish a presence in Pioneer Square. The two projects currently stalled are installing a Himalayan salt brick wall, and installing a spiral staircase to access the office space which is currently inaccessible. “I want to create a very special environment, so people feel they walk into a one-of-a-kind sanctuary when they take classes at Salt Room,” Rhonda said.

The solution? Crowd-funding. More specifically crowd-funding with the New York based website Lucky Ant, which specializes in structuring and hosting crowdfunding campaigns for small businesses looking to grow. “We’ve developed a crowdfunding platform specifically for the small business community,” says Lucky Ant co-founder and COO Nate Echeverria. “Crowd-funding is a growing industry. Right now there are crowd-funding websites for artists and creative types, non-profits, medical research, you name it. Lucky Ant is crowd-funding for small businesses, mom and pops, those types of places. That’s our focus, using crowd-funding to help local small businesses grow and improve.”

Hence the natural fit between Lucky Ant and Salt Room Yoga. The studio is raising $8,000 on the site to build out the space. To do this they are offering supporters exclusive rewards and discounts. For example, if you pledge $7 you receive a free class, which would normally cost you $16 to drop in. Other rewards include one month of yoga, yoga mats, and Himalayan rock salt lamps. And for you yoga fanatics? $4,000 gets you Free Yoga for Life. Salt Room Yoga will be the first small business crowd funding project on the west coast.

At the end of the day it’s a win-win. Salt Room Yoga gets the money it needs to grow, and their supporters get a great deal on yoga while supporting the Pioneer Square community as a whole. To learn more about the campaign, head to www.luckyant.com

If the Underworld Tour is a little too risqué for say, the little ones, Smith Tower will be open today from 6 to 10 pm. All you need is love: bring your loved one(s) and enjoy some complimentary flowers, chocolates, and grand views of Seattle. 

The artisans of letterpress over at Constellation & Co. in Pioneer Square have new runs of their popular You & Me prints. These have been selling like hot cakes on their online Etsy store, on the design-oriented Fab.com retailer, and you may even find them at Constellation & Co.’s new storefront collaboration with Klondike Penny’s. Great to see our neighbors collaborating and supporting each other.

Pioneer Pet and Pizzeria Napoletana inside Caffe Vita are even getting in on the Valentine’s Day spirit. Stop by the neighborhood pet store today as Pioneer Pet proprietor David Bovard is handing out valentine hearts for your dog or cat. Tiny tasty heart-shaped fish and potato grain free treats. Fortified with vitamins & glucosamine. And check out the heart-shaped Neapolitan pizza by Pizzeria Napoletana. Ridiculous! Thanks to Lillian Young on Twitter for sending that photo along.

And don’t forget the chocolate! What Valentine’s Day is complete without it? Intrigue Chocolates in Pioneer Square is serving up amazing artisanal chocolate in some beautiful brand new packaging today until 8 pm. Pick some up, keeping in mind the spirit of this lovely animated short the guys at Intrigue shared with us:

Pioneer Square is excited to welcome Skillet Street Food to the neighborhood! Skillet is one of many new restaurants and businesses coming to Pioneer Square this year (see Karen True’s community and business development updates over at the Alliance for Pioneer Square for lists of new businesses coming to the neighborhood).

Skillet Street Food will be at the 505 First Avenue Loading Dock on Tuesdays from 11:30am to 2:00pm, beginning on Tuesday, January 29th.  Thanks to some neighborhood friends, we’ve gotten hold of Skillet’s Pioneer Square menu. Take a gander and plan your lunch visit!

Skillet Street Food Vending Flyer for Pioneer Square

The Kitchen by Delicatus, located at 309 1st Ave S, is an event space, catering kitchen, and winery, that offers a unique urban retreat in Seattle’s Historic Pioneer Square.  The venue, along with its 20 foot ceilings and rustic brick walls has been restored to its original splendor, showcasing the integrity of our Historic District.  The space is available for cocktail parties, business meetings, and special occasion events up to 100 guests.  The Kitchen by Delicatus will also continually promote local chefs through Guest Chef Dinner series, host 1st Thursday Art Events, and showcase the best that our region has to offer.

Additionally, Delicatus has increased its offsite catering capabilities in order meet the demands of its customers.  From delivered lunch sandwich platters to on-site office parties, Delicatus is continuing  its commitment to high quality, local/sustainable ingredients, and exceptional customer service.

Join us in welcoming and supporting this new and exciting addition to Pioneer Square (one of many to come)!