Post navigation

Prev: (04/18/18) | Next: (04/18/18)

Joining big brands experimenting on Capitol Hill, AT&T plans new ‘retail/cafe’

A North Texas AT&T store. Just add coffee on E Thomas? (Image: AT&T)

With an increasingly affluent, happy to spend, and culturally sophisticated population (not to mention good looking, generous supporters of local journalism!), Capitol Hill’s residents are a coveted core to Seattle’s population.

Big brands like to try new things here.

AT&T has been busy opening up its new “entertainment store” concept around the country — but this one lined up for Capitol Hill appears to be different.

According to documents filed with the city, the telecommunications giant’s wireless subsidiary is planning a new store for E Thomas in new construction just off Broadway that will be part retail, part cafe. There aren’t much more details in the early permitting process but the new AT&T project is being lined up for the corner of Thomas and Harvard in the Vertex off Broadway project that has risen to seven stories behind the Chase bank’s parking lot.

AT&T has not responded to our inquiry about the project. The company already has a presence on Capitol Hill with its E Pike AT&T Store in the Harvard Market shopping complex. The company’s latest experiments in retail have produced stores more like the Apple Store experience with AT&T “emphasizing content.” “Our newest location showcases wireless, video and broadband working together to deliver the ultimate experience for our customers,” a company rep said about the concept.

But the E Thomas project is lined up to take a different direction with the official permitted use for the new space being a “cafe/lounge.”

The Vertex building was designed with about 2,000 square feet total commercial space on its street level.

For now, we can add the project to the Hill’s roster of big brand mystery ventures along with E Pike’s Amazon grocery.

 

PLEASE HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE!
Subscribe to CHS to help us pay writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.

 

 
Subscribe and support CHS Contributors -- $1/$5/$10 per month

6 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Pat
Pat
5 years ago

Woo-hoo! Gonna tell all my homeless friends about the new cafe to lounge around in where we can have fun with the “culturally sophisticated” normals.

JerSeattle
JerSeattle
5 years ago

This is a dumb idea. Pass.

Max
Max
5 years ago

Blame the internet. They can’t reach us through TV commercials nobody could fast forward through so they mask marketing through this cooption of a cafe concept. Disgusting and predictable. I can only hope there is some privacy violation that happens to all who visit, their faces biometrically captured, so there can be a direct of who is foolish enough to go to this place, spending their money to be marketed to. Now excuse me while I go hang out at the hyperlocal, small business called anywhere but an AT&T store.

CPA Man
CPA Man
5 years ago

Dumb dumb dumb

Phil Mocek
5 years ago

“Big brands”? A brand is an image, not an entity.

KD
KD
5 years ago

Good luck with that!

Looking forward to using their bathroom and directing the neighborhood transients to do the same.