Tag Archives: 15th ave e

Capitol Hill is getting a club dedicated to laughs — Club Comedy Seattle coming to 15th Ave E

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(Image: Club Comedy Seattle)

After years of helping to keep the city’s scene alive with shows at bars and restaurants, Club Comedy Seattle is bringing a new stage to Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave E in a dedicated, comedy-first venue.

When you are starting a fully dedicated club — even after months of pandemic and uncertainty for area performers — people ready to tell jokes will find you, Club Comedy’s Rick Taylor tells CHS.

“We really don’t know what we’ll find,” Taylor says of the city’s performers and appetite for shows. “But when you open a club, people start to show up.”

For now, Taylor is keeping the soon to open club under wraps, trying to build a bit of anticipation toward a hoped-for opening at some point this month.

But, when it opens, he’s promising the “nicest, most well-appointment comedy club in Seattle.” Continue reading →

Kobuta and Ookami Katsu and Sake House — the first new Capitol Hill restaurant in a new Capitol Hill space of 2021 — now open

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(Image: CHS)

Rosu katsu (Image: Kobuta & Ookami)

Recent Capitol Hill food and drink news has featured plenty of new openings but many of the new ventures have involved overhauls and replacements. On 15th Ave E, something truly new has taken place.

Kobuta and Ookami Katsu and Sake House is now open. The restaurant is new in every sense — a first time concept in a brand new restaurant space in a newly constructed mixed-use development.

The new project does, however, come with plenty of Seattle food and drink experience. CHS reported here late last year on city restaurant veteran  Sue Phuksopha’s project dedicated to chicken katsu, tonkatsu, cheese katsu, curry katsu and rice burger katsu, and premium sake.

“Katsu is [a] very common meal in Japan,” Phuksopha told CHS. “We would love to create our place to be a casual street dining style and casual hang out spot with Japanese vibes like those restaurants in the small alley in Japan.” Continue reading →

15th Ave E Business Improvement Area proposal cruises through committee vote

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By Ryan Packer

Approval of a Business Improvement Area on 15th Ave E is all but assured after the members of the Seattle City Council’s Community Economic Development Committee voted unanimously to approve the proposal Tuesday afternoon.

15th Avenue’s BIA is on track to becoming the eleventh in Seattle and would be the second-smallest in the city in terms of assessment, with 37 properties along the street between E Denny Way and E Mercer Street, including large property owners like Kaiser Permanente and Safeway, taxed to pay for community benefits like graffiti removal and neighborhood beautification.

Neither District 3’s Kshama Sawant nor any other committee members made remarks about the proposal before voting to approve it. Continue reading →

While some small businesses still oppose levy, 15th Ave E Business Improvement Area set for approval by Seattle City Council

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Seattle’s existing BIAs

By Ryan Packer

City councilmembers outnumbered voices calling in, in support or disapproval, as part of the required public hearing held Wednesday afternoon on a proposed 15th Ave E business district in the city council’s Community Economic Development Committee Wednesday afternoon. Most of the people the council heard from during the meeting were among the group of neighborhood advocates who have gotten the BIA to this point.

Jeffrey Pelletier of Board and Vellum and Danielle Hulton of Ada’s Technical Books and Cafe presented to the five council members present, including District 3’s Kshama Sawant.

They presented the BIA as a long time coming, a byproduct of the 15th Avenue East Merchant’s Association, first discussed three years ago, with three formal meetings and several informal ones that led business owners like Ross King of Rainbow Natural Remedies to move forward with the BIA.

Christopher Forcyzk, owner of Smith, was one of three commenters but the only one speaking against the proposed tax assessment that would be levied on property owners along 15th Avenue between E Denny Way and E Mercer Street. Continue reading →

City Council to hold hearing on proposed 15th Ave E Business Improvement Area

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The Seattle City Council goes back into action this week after its brief summer recess with a slate of committee meetings and hearings including a Wednesday afternoon session expected to set the course for the planned creation of a new levy organization to fund improvements around the 15th Ave E business community.

CHS reported on the proposed 15th Ave E Business Improvement Area here last month that would create a levy on property owners along the corridor to fund street cleaning and upkeep plus graffiti removal, neighborhood beautification efforts,  and staff time to advocate on behalf of the neighborhood. A yearly 15th Ave street festival would also receive funds from the BIA. The BIA is expected to raise around $116,839 in 2022. Continue reading →

After closing Capitol Hill grocery, QFC adding pub to U Village store

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Today in false equivalencies, grocery giant Kroger could not keep its 15th Ave E store open but is adding a pub to its University Village QFC.

The company has filed for a liquor license for the new Q20 Public House inside the busy U Village mall grocery.

The pub concept isn’t a first for the parent company to the QFC and Fred Meyer chains.


Continue reading →

The Canterbury adds The Apothecary, another bar inside a bar on Capitol Hill

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(Image: The Canterbury)

There’s a new bar in the space The Canterbury has called home for 45 years on Capitol Hill.

But the old ale house isn’t going anywhere.

The new bar? It’s inside, secreted away behind a hidden wall.

Planned to open this weekend, The Apothecary is hoped to be a quieter, darker, more intimate companion to the sports bar and pool table scene with a new space carved out of the old pub’s north end. Continue reading →

L’Avant Collective and its plant-based cleaning retail ‘experiment’ make home on Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave E

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Kristi Lord and Lindsay Droz (Image: L’Avant Collective)

Not even a full year old, Seattle plant-based cleaning product start-up L’Avant Collective has been growing faster than a well-loved, deeply but infrequently watered aloe plant. It probably didn’t need a 15th Ave E storefront. But sometimes launching a small business on Capitol Hill gives you an opportunity to try something new and unexpected.

Lindsay Droz and Kristi Lord agree that the new L’Avant shop and company office headquarters now open in the space formerly home to a longtime 15th Ave E consignment shop is an “experiment” and “added bonus” as they try to grow their new company.

And it has already come with an unexpected gift as neighbors and regulars to the Capitol Hill commercial strip have poked their heads in to say hello as the shop takes shape and elements like display windows are filled in.

L’Avant Collective was launched last year by the two friends, mothers, and business veterans, “born out of the near constant demand for cleaning up after our kids and pets but wanting the products we used to be non-toxic, highly effective, and conveniently located.” Continue reading →

CHS Q&A: What’s going on at the 15th Ave E QFC, why did the power go out, and what happened to the Broadway Tacos Guaymas?

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Graffiti, now erased, on the side of the 15th Ave E QFC (Image: CHS)

CHS readers asked, we answered. Here are answers to a Capitol Hill question or three from recent days:

  • What’s going on at the 15th Ave E QFC? Nothing. Or, at least, not what you might want to see if you’re hoping for a new tenant in the big, empty grocery. CHS is told that activity around the store this week is related to Kroger auctioning off equipment from the site and completing an internal demolition of the store. The company closed the grocery in April over the city’s COVID-19 $4/hour hazard pay ordinance. The space has been home to a grocery for 77 years.
  • Why did the power go out? Capitol Hill has become accustomed to avoiding power outages thanks in part to waves of redevelopment overhauling its infrastructure and major investments in public transit upgrading its electrical grid. So, a relatively brief power outage across parts of the Hill and the Central District Monday evening on a not that stormy, not super hot day was a bit of a surprise. Continue reading →

‘Temporarily Closed’ no more, Coastal Kitchen ready to join Capitol Hill’s reopening

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Coastal Kitchen has been shuttered since the start of the pandemic (Image: King County)

Coastal Kitchen is getting ready to welcome customers again on a Capitol Hill business strip that could use some good news after its retail core was washed away during the COVID-19 crisis.

The restaurant, serving 15th Ave E for nearly 30 years, has taken a different path to reopening with no rush to reinvent itself as a mercantile, or surviving on takeout alone.

Coastal Kitchen sat the pandemic out. Now, it is one of the first Capitol Hill food and drink venues to go completely dark for the past year to make a comeback. The planned reopening is Wednesday.

“We’re lucky in our ability to do that,” Coastal’s Jonathan Tweten tells CHS. “For us, it was about trying to be safe.” Continue reading →