Residents upset about Queen Anne motel that was scene of fatal 2020 fire

SEATTLE — Queen Anne residents are up in arms over a motel that was the scene of a deadly arson 14 months ago.

They say since then, the Hillside motel has been taken over by drug-dealing squatters.

Neighbors say much has changed since the deadly fire, most of it involving drug dealing spilling out of the motel onto places like this stairwell.

They say the city isn’t acting quickly enough to clear the motel out.

“Here’s a syringe right here,” said Christopher Goodwin, an automotive repair business owner. “That wasn’t here yesterday because I cleaned up down here yesterday.”

Goodwin pointed out what he finds each day in the backyard of his automotive business that faces busy Aurora Avenue.

He says this greenbelt on the eastern slope of Queen Anne Hill has become a violent, open-air drug market, and he has the video to prove it.

“This summer, it was a shooting a week, at least a shooting a week,” Goodwin said. “Active prostitution. Prostitutes at the bus stop. Runners coming down here and supplying drugs to people who then overdose. I was witnessing an average of three overdoses a week on these stairs.”

He blames it on what was the Hillside Motel, just a few hundred yards away. He and his neighbors say they have been trying to get the city to act.

“Everybody who’s staying at the Hillside Motel is squatting there,” Goodwin said. “It’s not a residence at all. It’s a commercial drug enterprise. It’s people selling drugs and prostitutes.”

This is likely how many people even learned of the Hillside Motel—it was the scene of a deadly arson in July 2020. Two people died. And the flames rendered a building on the property uninhabitable. Residents say the motel owner abandoned the property. Now, Spokane-based mortgage lender Inland Capital owns and is trying to sell it.

In the meantime, those who have moved in are making life unpleasant for those living anywhere near here.

“They walk down the stairs to the hillside,” said Paula Mueller, Queen Anne Block Captains Network leader, “come back to their cars, do their drugs and pass out in front of these people’s homes.”

A spokesman for Seattle’s Department of Construction and Inspections says people are allowed to live in the motel.

Those who are living there are not squatting. He says the city is responding to complaints, even cleaning up this week, and will continue to do so until the property is sold.

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