Travel to North Carolina for City Employees Banned and More News

A national tour of Hamilton, the Broadway musical based on author Ron Chernow’s biography of founding father Alexander Hamilton, will hit the Paramount Theater stage for the 2017-2018 season. The performance features a score that blends hip-hop, jazz, blues, rap, R&B and Broadway showtunes. Subscribers who renew their subscription for the 2017-2018 season will be able to guarantee their seats for the premiere of Hamilton before tickets become available to the general public. Information regarding Hamilton dates and how to purchase tickets will be announced at a later time. For more information visit HamiltonOnBroadway.com.

Cody Lee Miller, better known as “Man in Tree” after he sat at the top of an 80-foot Sequoia tree in downtown Seattle for more than 24 hours last week, was charged Monday with third-degree assault and first-degree malicious mischief. Beyond harming the tree, Miller’s disruptive behavhior forced police to close off sections of a major intersection at Fourth Avenue and Stewart Street and police said he threw cones, branches, and fruit at officers and firefighters, striking and injuring one officer, Elizabeth Kennedy, behind the ear. According to KING 5 News, Miller, 28, has a criminal history in Oregon for criminal mischief, trespass, assaulting a public safety officer, and some boating violations. Miller is currently being held on $50,000 bail. He is expected to return to King County Superior Court for arraignment on April 11 and he was also ordered to stay away from the tree. 

In response to North Carolina’s passage of a bill that revoked civil rights protections for the LGBTQ community, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray signed an executive order Monday banning travel to the state for official business by City of Seattle employees. It specifically target’s North Carolina’s recently passed legislation that overrides existing LGBTQ nondiscrimination ordinances in the state and bans transgender people from using restrooms that match their gender identity. The law also ends the longstanding right for any group receiving protections under the law, including women and people of color, to enforce their rights in state courts. Mynorthwest.com also reported that Murray committed to signing additional Executive Orders to ban city travel to any state that follows in North Carolina’s footsteps. “It is my hope for our nation that we do not allow issues of discrimination to divide us,” Murray said. “Our union is only made stronger when all Americans are treated equitably.” The mayor of San Francisco also has also restricted travel for city employees, and corporations such as Google, Facebook, the NBA and NCAA have voiced opposition to the law.

REI, the outdoors co-op currently headquartered in Kent, has chosen Bellevue as the location for its new campus. On Tuesday, REI announced that it signed a nonbinding letter of intent to develop eight acres in Bellevue’s Spring District between State Route 520 and Bel-Red Road. According to The Seattle Times, if the deal is finalized the relocation of the headquarters will take place in 2020. Plans for the headquarters, which have been located in Kent since 1988, include the construction of office and residential buildings as well as a central park space that will provide natural elements and places to gather. REI should know by summer if the deal to develop in the Spring District can move ahead. 

Seattle’s downtown bike lane is about to get a whole lot bigger. Once considered a pilot project to test the potential of protected lanes in heavy city traffic, now the bike lane between Pike Street and Yesler Way is slated to become a permanent feature. Additionally, according to MyNorthwest.com, the existing Second Avenue stretch will receive some upgrades, and the lane will also be extended through Belltown. The northern stretch that currently ends at Pike Street will now extend north to Denny Way. Not only will the bike lanes become bigger, but they will also be improved with planter boxes to replace the plastic posts separating the bike and car lanes and the installation of new and improved bike traffic signals. Portions of the bike lane will also be raised by about two inches to make it stand out from the road where cars cross the bike lane in to garages or parking lots.