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For sale: New Capitol Hill developer sought for mixed-use City Market redevelopment

Speaking of neighborhood groceries, it has been 111 days since the “MUP-ready development site” also known as Capitol Hill’s much-loved City Market hit the Seattle real estate market.

November’s unpriced listing — if you have to ask, you probably can’t afford it — was the surest sign that much-hyped San Francisco-based property developer Juno is now out of the picture after shepherding the property through several rounds of Seattle process on the way to plans for a mass timber mixed-use building topped with 98-residential units, including 58 studios, 21 “deep” one-bedrooms, 13 one-bedrooms and 5 two-bedrooms, above a future home for the popular Bellevue Ave grocery and new underground parking.

To make way, the existing City Market building and the laundromat next door as well as a small surface parking lot were planned to be demolished.

CHS reported on the design review process around the project here in February, 2022.

A rendering of the design Juno is apparently leaving on the table in Seattle

Little has happened since though the summer 2022 closure of Crystal Clean brought a deep round of nostalgia to the neighborhood as readers mourned the passing of the last laundromat on Capitol Hill. City Market’s owner Kurt Vold also operated Crystal Clean.

In January 2023, Juno’s permits for the demolitions were quietly trashed. The reason? “Project canceled.”

Meanwhile, the City Market property remains in the hands of its longtime Gietzen family ownership. Any deal for Juno to acquire the land is gone. The company, which was busy last week hyping its new development in East Austin to media in town for South by Southwest, did not respond to our inquiry about the Seattle project.

The search for a new buyer began last fall with the listing promising “an incredible investment opportunity in the heart of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood” and touting the property’s status with a nearly fully planned mixed-use development. The listing also promises “alternative development options” if a buyer isn’t up for pursuing the mass-timber plan.

So far, there are no indications of a new developer ready to take the plunge and push the City Market project over the master use permit hump to demolition and construction.

In the meantime, City Market continues to serve the neighborhood along Bellevue Ave.

Included in the listing are details about City Market as a tenant asset for any investor. According to the listing, City Market pays “$272,000/annually” plus triple net expenses around real estate taxes, building insurance, and maintenance. The listing says the current City Market lease expires in fall 2025 with an option for a five-year extension.

Hopefully, by then, the development future for its stretch of Capitol Hill will be more clear.

 

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Jason
Jason
10 days ago

Keep that cool sign and don’t make the building ugly, I bet of you

City Market fan
City Market fan
10 days ago

What a bummer that this handsome building won’t likely be built. This is a great project that planned to retain City Market, apply a new efficient construction technique, and clad the building in high quality materials. Now we will probably end up with a cheap hardboard box with vacant retail designed by one of the usual commodity architects with an eye for maximizing shareholder profit.

E15 resitdent
E15 resitdent
9 days ago

Just build ANYTHING there. Density helps with safety.

City Market fan
City Market fan
9 days ago
Reply to  E15 resitdent

This simplistic thinking is music to the ears of corporate developers. We should be setting a higher bar like Portland. A city is more than buildings but it is also more than just density. It is frustrating that so many young urbanists seem to have forgotten the full picture of what makes a successful city and a great neighborhood. People also don’t seem to understand that these new building actually increase rent in the neighborhood because the corporate landlords will squeeze out every dime they can get from renters. The higher cost per square foot values set in these new buildings then spreads to the older buildings. If Seattle wants to lower rents then they should expand urban zones and increase density in single family neighborhoods rather than force all the new development into Seattle’s highest density neighborhoods.

d.c.
d.c.
9 days ago

can’t express you how completely in agreement with you I am. density is fine but seattle’s urban core needs to be expanded. rezoning in low-density neighborhoods is WAY more important. they’ve been building nonstop on the hill for a decade and the prices keep rising fast as hell.

James
James
9 days ago
Reply to  E15 resitdent

Ok.

Below Broadway
Below Broadway
9 days ago

Whatever they decide to build, it will be useless towards keeping rents down if the City of Seattle swoops in and buys the property, then gives it over to LIHI to manage. We’ll get 100 more units of low-barrier drug-user housing, and all the crime and OD that brings. LIHI is adept at telling the City what it wants to hear regarding supervision and on-sight counseling, but in the real world these properties become drug-use-crime (theft, gang sales, occasional shootings) as well as OD zones the minute they open up.

The City seems bent on converting as much of Capitol Hill into this kind of usage. The area has seen at least 4 of these LIHI buildings installed since 2020 in a triangle around Broadway and Republican. All have become crime and drug use problem zones.

ConfusedGay
ConfusedGay
9 days ago
Reply to  Below Broadway

Has anyone ever asked LIHI about outcomes? Do they report (anonymously) on how many people they house have substance abuse and/or psychiatric issues and how many people are accessing the services that would help alleviate those problems?

Cdresident
Cdresident
8 days ago
Reply to  ConfusedGay

I emailed the CEO once when I was almost hit with a fire extinguisher one if their tenants threw through their building on Rainier. I got a response saying “oopsy they were homeless so expect things like this.”

I walk on the other side of the street now.

Eugene
Eugene
9 days ago

The rendering is beautiful, I hope something similar does get built

Pete
Pete
8 days ago

Well, whatever gets built will have to have washers and dryers in it since they closed that laundromat that I used to go to. Damn. What a loss to the community that lives on the hill that didn’t have personal machines available in their own apartment unit. Not all of us up here are in tech and get paid tech-level paychecks for rents in newly constructed high-rise apartments.