(Image: Coastal Kitchen)
Its diner-y days are gone. It’s a “fish house” now. But Capitol Hill’s Coastal Kitchen is back in the daily brunch, lunch, and dinner business.
The 15th Ave E stalwart launched new weekday brunch/lunch hours last week joining its dinner and weekend brunch service.
Returning to weekday daytime service marks a milestone for the restaurant which reopened after a lengthy closure with a full overhaul and refreshed concept late last year. Continue reading
With the city’s design review process in a drawn out transition period, the developers behind a project that will truly reset the commercial core of Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave E with new retail space and five stories of mixed-use housing held a neighborhood meeting last week to gather some of the feedback normally channeled through formal civic processes — or pushed aside altogether.
Capitol Hill-based Hunters Capital hosted the Friday afternoon session billed as “drop-in hours” to discuss the planned 15th Ave E development of the former QFC block with around 25 residents who came to express their hopes over pedestrian safety, community building, traffic mitigation, and neighborhood perennials like parking and, yes, public bathrooms.
“There are no public restrooms in Capitol Hill,” one resident said. With a potential increase in visitors to the neighborhood, the attendee expressed the need for public restrooms. Other attendees agreed. While some acknowledged there could be potential issues with public restrooms, being able to pee is an equity issue that should be raised.
Will the city’s pee equity issue be addressed in the project’s design? That seems unlikely but the discussion is the kind of thing that wasn’t typically supposed to be part of the city’s formal design review process. For a few minutes on 15th Ave E, it was on the table.
Longtime residents of the few existing apartment units above the QFC-block property that will make way for the new project also attended Friday’s session. Long-term tenants living in the building expressed to Hunters Capital that there has been a lack of upkeep on the current building and property management has not been responding to their concerns and not informing them about the dates of developing meetings.
Attendees said they hoped for better communication as they prepare for the changes.
Hunters Capital is planning a five-story mixed-use building with around 150 apartment units and underground parking for around 100 vehicles on the site. With around 10,000-square-feet of street-level commercial space, Hunters says it is hoping to connect with 15th Ave E by designing a wrap-around plaza and creating a pedestrian thoroughfare that’s open for pedestrians. Along 15th, they’re hoping to pull back the building at least four feet to widen the sidewalk.
Large in the minds of attendees — and the developer — is the future of retail and grocery shopping on the block. Continue reading
Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave E is known for its sense of community and vibrant local businesses but one store owner is facing an uncertain future. Mohammad Abid knows his building is going to be torn down.
What will come next for ShopRite and Abid’s passion for his store and the community it serves?
CHS reported here on early plans for a five-story, mixed-use development that will replace the the 1904-built Moore Family building and the former QFC grocery store on the block.
“Yeah, maybe four or six months, after finishing the project down the street, they will start here,” Abid expects. “Same contractor, same owner, same everything,” as the work up the street where Capitol Hill developer Hunters Capital’s project replacing the old Hilltop Service Station is rising.
ShopRite means a lot to Abid who has run the shop for more than 20 of its nearly 30 years of business.
Coming to the United States from Pakistan in 1984, Abid says he moved to the US for an educational opportunity. After attending Edmonds Community College and working a few small jobs, he found ShopRite. “Before this, I was not married. Then I opened a store, I got married, I bought a house, I had children. I did all this to put my children through school and I have.”
ShopRite and the busy owner have been fixtures in the community. Neighbors know him, and he knows them, serving the same people for years, learning their needs, and ordering the obscure items requested.
But the city and the neighborhood needs more housing and waves of development continue to pass through the city — especially in areas like 15th Ave E on the edges of the most densely populated areas of Seattle. Abid has seen the neighborhood grow, and now the change has arrived for ShopRite. Continue reading
In 1937, the building was home to Mrs. B’s Electric Bakery — Seattle Before and After
When Coastal Kitchen finally reopens after having been shuttered since its abrupt closure after a driver smashed his car through the entrance in May, much more will have changed than the front door at the nearly 30-year-old restaurant.
“The car was an opportunity,” restaurant spokesperson Robyn Nielsen tells CHS. “The car allowed us to stop, revalue, and see the potential of what we can do and plan for the next 10, 15, 20 years. I don’t think we could have continued with the same.”
The May crash followed on the heels of the pandemic in both revealing the challenges of business for the 15th Ave E restaurant and providing the opportunity to change.
“There will be no more diner-y vibes of the past,” Nielsen said.
Nielsen said a “rebrand” of the 1993-born restaurant will keep the name and the core spirit of fresh seafood but hone in on the strongest aspects of Coastal Kitchen’s future — an “elevated” dinner experience with weekend brunch on Saturdays and Sundays. Continue reading
(Image: SDOT)
There is a new transit friendly feature on 15th Ave E that has added a year-round celebration of Pride to the neighborhood.
As Pride weekend arrived, crews were putting the finishing touches on an enhanced bus stop serving the northbound Route 10 on the street. Moved about 100 feet north, the new stop includes a bus bulb designed to “expand and separate the passenger waiting area from the sidewalk.”
“This provides more room for people moving through the area, and the raised bulb makes boarding the bus a bit easier,” Stephen Cuplin, a planning intern for the Seattle Department of Transportation tells CHS. Continue reading
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After 46 years as a neighborhood tavern, the Canterbury is making plans to close in a deal that will transform the longtime dive turned alehouse into a new restaurant with new owners.
No date has been announced for last service at the 15th and Mercer pub but staff have begun informing patrons. Owner Ryan Lewis said earlier this year that a deal was in the works and the new ownership has declined to comment until the transaction is closed in coming weeks. Continue reading
(Image: Oh Hello Again)
Amazon is getting out of the meat space bookstore business. Here is your chance to get into it.
Born 15 months ago at the start of the first winter of the pandemic, 15th Ave E bibliotherapeutic bookshop Oh Hello Again is searching for a new owner:
This neighborhood bookstore has received a great deal of local, national, and global hype and needs a new owner! Located near Kaiser Permanente on Capitol Hill, the shop receives a ton of foot traffic. We have loyal neighborhood customers and the option to take over an online store selling books and monthly subscription boxes. All store fixtures, technology (point of sale system, speaker, etc.), shipping materials, and inventory is included with the sale.
(Image: SPU)
The city is adding 34 artful trash and recycling cans to Capitol Hill streets as part of a citywide test hoped to address complaints about garbage along Seattle’s key neighborhood business strips.
The cans are also intended to be a celebration of “the most scenic and beautiful places” in the region with each displaying work from teen photography nonprofit Youth in Focus.
Seattle Public Utilities says the $1,400 a can pilot will “reduce litter in neighborhood business districts, reduce vandalism of cans, and discourage illegal dumping.” The cans will replace the city’s standard barred blue recycling and forest green trash receptacles already in place at the pilot locations.
Each new can will display a QR code you can use to report any issues with the specific receptacle. Continue reading
The Bagel Deli may be long gone but you are living in the gold age of Capitol Hill bagels.
The October opening of Rubinstein Bagels brought a nice little burst of new energy to 15th Ave E’s commercial offerings while also elevating the neighborhood’s chewy bagel offerings to a new epic level. Here are a few scenes CHS captured on a recent visit to check out the new shop.
Capitol Hill currently is home to five outstanding bagel bakers each offering its own special take on the Jewish baked goods: Continue reading
(Image: City of Seattle)
The development team planning a new two-level grocery store and at least five stories of new apartments on the property currently home to Safeway and a huge surface parking lot at 15th and John discussed early concepts and fielded ideas and feedback from community members in a meeting earlier this month with the Pike/Pine Urban Neighborhood Council.
The good news, if you live in the neighborhood and depend on the grocery store — construction likely won’t start for two years. In the meantime, the project team is sorting out major design issues like what to do with all those utility wires, how to make the nearby bus stop and street crossings safer, how best to connect to nearby Williams Place Park, and which “Capitol Hill” a project at the busiest intersection of 15th Ave E should most relate to — leafy and relatively quiet 19th Ave E or bustling Broadway. Continue reading
