A retailer about to mark its thirteenth summer on Capitol Hill is making plans to leave its longtime home. Fortunately for neighborhood fans of fancy footwear, Edie’s is simply moving from Pine to Pike.

“I felt really lucky about this,” Erin Dolan tells CHS about her move planned for June to leave her storefront below the Pinevue Apartments for a new home being readied for her as part of the overhauled Brocklind’s Costume Shop building. “I had been scouring all of Capitol Hill. It’s a lot of new construction — a lot of times, that’s not really small business friendly.”

There’s no denying the retail space where Dolan founded her popular shoe shop in the summer of 2000 was good for small business. It is part of one of the earliest “mixed use” buildings in the city that just missed being approved for landmark protection earlier this spring. The rejection of the building further clears the way for the seven-story development planned for the block.

Dolan said that leaving the old building is bittersweet but her business needed a solid solution faced with years before construction of the new project was completed. “Two years is basically too long for anybody to wait to move back in,” she said of the planned development. “It naturally displaced the store.”

Dolan also continues to operate a second Edie’s opened in West Seattle in 2005.

 

While Bauhaus has said it can remain operating at Melrose and Pine through the end of summer, the remaining retailers on the block don’t seem to be waiting around. In addition to Edie’s, Mud Bay has already pulled up stakes for Broadway. The empty retail bays won’t necessarily be dead space until construction, however. Pibu Soma, a skin care and fragrance pop-up shop, has already opened in the former pet supply store space.

[mappress mapid=”51″]Following a June moving sale, Dolan will open her new Edie’s shop in the overhauled Greenus Building. Earlier this year, Capitol Hill old-timer Brocklind’s closed shop as Jim and Diane DeAmbrosio headed into retirement — and cashed in their most significant asset: the auto-row era building at 500 E Pike. Capitol Hill-based developer Hunters Capital added the building to its portfolio and set about a preservation-minded restoration of the property due to be completed this summer. Across the street at 501 E Pike, another Hunters acquisition is being teed up for a major preservation and development project.

The Greenus overhaul includes the new space for Edie’s and the developer has said it is working to partner with a significant restaurant project to anchor the space. Longtime tenant 8 Limbs Yoga also now has an overhauled facility upstairs. Another fashion-related business is also slated for the project. “It’s a beehive of activity,” Dolan says.

She’s looking forward to the new home in a building with old bones and a refreshed restoration of its historic features. “It adds so much to a place when it has some history,” she said.

It’s also just a tad bit larger — giving Dolan “an opportunity to take it up a notch,” she says.

Part of her plan is attempt to cater to a new demographic. Perhaps in tune with the zeitgeist of the changing population of Capitol Hill, Dolan said the new Edie’s space will include an opportunity to “test the waters” with her first children’s section.

She hopes that even those with little people feet continue to appreciate having an independent shoe store on Capitol Hill.

“There’s still a great number of people who don’t want to shop big box, who want a neighborhood experience,” she said.

You can learn more at ediesshoes.com.