CHS Pics | ‘Capitol Loans is now across the street’ — Changes at Boylston and Pine

There is a corner of Capitol Hill that pretty much encapsulates this moment in the pandemic for the neighborhood’s businesses. You’ll find lots of shuttered spaces around Pine and Boylston. Inside, there is a plan for each of them. And in the middle of all that, there is a glossy new shoe store.

The biggest of the empty spaces might take the longest to fill. Continue reading

Early design for Capitol Hill Safeway development gets review board OK

A view of the basic massing proposal for the project. With Wednesday’s approval, the development is on track for a review of its final design plan later this year (Image: Weber Thompson)

It probably won’t take three years of design review to approve the redevelopment of the Capitol Hill Safeway. Wednesday night, the East Design Review Board agreed the project to create two new five-story buildings including a 50,000-square-foot grocery, about market rate 400 apartment units, some new, smaller retail spaces, and an underground parking lot for about 350 cars should move forward in the city’s public development process, signing off on the early design proposal in a more than three hour meeting.

CHS reported here on the design proposal from developer Greystar and architect Weber Thompson for the project that will replace the single story grocery and large surface parking lot currently resident on the 15th and John site. The early plans showed two residential buildings rising along the 15th Ave E side of the project mixed with first-floor commercial spaces separated from the grocery by an internal plaza. Continue reading

What will the Capitol Hill Safeway redevelopment look like? Public design review process begins this week

UPDATE: The developers say the look and feel of planned retail along 15th Ave E could echo this facade from the Hawkins building in Portland (Image: Weber Thompson)

The developer’s preferred massing proposal for the project — UPDATE: Yes, they’ve incorrectly labeled E Thomas as E John (Image: Weber Thompson)

In keeping with Capitol Hill development, an old, single-story building will be torn down and replaced with a five-story building of residential over retail.

This time around, the Safeway at 15th Ave E and E John is up, and early plans for what will replace the store will come before the East Design Review Board this week.

The new project will replace the existing 44,000-square-foot Safeway and its adjacent surface parking lot. The Safeway was built in 1998 and as of 2021, had an appraised value of $39.48 million, according to county tax records.

In its place, developer Greystar and architect Weber Thompson propose a new, 50,000-square-foot Safeway, about market rate 400 apartment units, some new, smaller retail locations and an underground parking lot for about 350 cars, according to the design review proposal.


1410 E John St

Design Review Early Design Guidance for 2, 5-story buildings, with a total of 400 apartment units and retail. Parking for 350 vehicles proposed. View Design Proposal  (55 MB)    

Review Meeting
February 9, 2022 5:00 pm

Meeting: https://bit.ly/Mtg3038145

Listen Line: 206-207-1700 Passcode: 2480 613 8372
Comment Sign Up: https://bit.ly/Comment3038145
Review Phase
EDG–Early Design Guidance  

Project Number

Planner
Abby Weber — Learn more about commenting — add your comments here.

The project is coming to a neighborhood suffering a bit of big grocery anxiety. Kroger chose to shut down the nearby 15th Ave E QFC last April in a tiff over the city’s hazard pay requirements and the company continues to hold a lease on that property. With the Ohio-based Kroger apparently uninterested in striking a deal to allow a competitor to use the building, efforts continue to find a Kroger-friendly tenant capable of filling the large space.

By the time the 15th and John Safeway needs to be demolished, hopefully the nearby QFC space will be back in motion with a new grocery store.

The 98,700-square-foot lot is a sort of lopsided square, with a stem sticking up where it touches E Thomas. The existing buildings including the Aquarian Foundation church on the block that are not Safeway will remain as they are.

The design
The developer has proposed three different options, and all three propose activating what is now a long, boring blank wall – that mirrored glass isn’t fooling anybody – along 15th. Continue reading

Seattle maintains grocery worker COVID-19 hazard pay requirement

A year after adding pandemic hazard pay for Seattle’s grocery workers, the City Council voted Tuesday to allow a mayoral veto of legislation passed before the rise of the omicron variant that would have lifted the $4 an hour requirement this month.

In Tuesday’s 5-2 vote, only newly seated citywide representative Sara Nelson and Northeast Seattle’s Alex Pedersen supported overriding former Mayor Jenny Durkan’s veto of the bill. Continue reading

Eat Local — Broadway closure part of ‘prepared meal’ chain’s store shutdown

(Image: Eat Local)

A part of the thousands of square feet of retail added to Broadway as part of new, seven-story mixed-use development up and down Capitol Hill’s main commercial core during the start of the 2010s has shuttered.

A representative for Vancouver, B.C.-based Performance Kitchens tells CHS it is shutting down its remaining stores as it moves fully to “an ecommerce model” and partners with grocery chains on its lines of ready to eat meals and “nutrition-focused” frozen foods.

Acquired by Performance Kitchens in a merger in 2019, the Broadway store opened as an Eat Local in 2012 in the newly opened Joule development. Continue reading

Safeway retail and housing development’s four-year plan: Two years of planning, two years of construction, and sorting out how best to fit in with 15th Ave E’s complicated relationship with Capitol Hill

(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

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

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

Central District Amazon Fresh to open next week — UPDATE

(Image: Amazon Fresh)

Amazon Fresh has announced it will open its 25,000 35,000-square-foot Central District store next week.

In its grand opening announcement, the Amazon grocery store chain promised “consistently low prices on a wide assortment of top brands plus high-quality produce, meat, and seafood. Enjoy delicious prepared foods made in our kitchen” plus “new ways to make grocery shopping more convenient” while announcing a roster of promotions to accompany a ribbon cutting at the 23rd and Jackson location:

Ribbon-cutting ceremony will begin shortly before we open our doors at 7:00 AM on August 12
• First 100 customers will receive an Amazon Card ranging from $5 to $100 each
• First 300 customers will receive an exclusive 23rd & Jackson tote
• Product giveaways and food sampling
• Music provided by a local DJ
• Enter for a chance to win a $250 e-gift card

“We can’t wait to meet you at the new Seattle 23rd & Jackson location,” the announcement reads.

UPDATE: In a statement sent to CHS late Thursday night, the company said the new store will bring “hundreds of high-quality jobs to the community, which offer industry-leading pay starting at $17/hr. and a variety of benefits packages that start on the employee’s first day on the job.”

“We’re thrilled to bring the first Amazon Fresh grocery store in Seattle to the Central District, providing customers with a wide selection of low-priced, high-quality fresh foods and a convenient in-store shopping experience,” David Nielson, regional manager of Amazon Fresh grocery stores, said in the statement. “We’re proud that this store has brought hundreds of great jobs to the area, and we are committed to continuing to contribute positively to the community.”

Continue reading

The Naked Grocer bringing ‘packaging free’ grocery shopping to Pike/Pine

The Naked Grocer concept signage (Image: Design by Parker)

A new experiment in grocery shopping is coming to Capitol Hill but the new venture is not backed by a retail giant . “Waste-less grocery store” The Naked Grocer is making plans to open its “packaging free” shopping concept on E Pine at the corner of Boylston, joining the block home to Rudy’s Barbershop, Realfine Coffee, and Fogon. The new business on the block will also mean a new start for neighborhood pawn shop Capitol Loans.

Jayne Truesdell, who cut her entrepreneurial teeth working with Autumn Martin to grow Seattle’s Hot Cakes, tells CHS the Naked Grocer is born out of the recent loss of her father and the realization that our time on the planet is dear.

“It brought home to me my time on this planet is incredibly finite,” Truesdell says. “I’m going to start spending my energy on something that holds value for me.”

When it opens late this year in the transformed former pawn shop space, Truesdell says Naked Grocer will be “nearly a one-stop shop” for grocery needs for those seeking retail that cuts down on the environmental impact of modern food shopping as much as possible. Continue reading

Through pandemic and 15th Ave E QFC closure, Safeway Capitol Hill redevelopment plans for new apartments and grocery store are still on

Neither the pandemic nor the closure of a major competitor only blocks away have shifted plans to redevelop the property currently home to Capitol Hill’s Safeway into a new multi-building project including a new two-level grocery store and at least five stories of new apartments.

Permit applications from late June show a team lead by national developer Greystar is preparing to begin the city’s design review process for the 15th and John project. The developers are also working on a similar plan for the U District Safeway.

A year of pandemic challenges and Seatte’s required $4 an hour COVID-19 hazard pay for grocery workers apparently haven’t discouraged Safeway and its development partners from pursuing the Capitol Hill project. Neither has the closure of a competitor only blocks away after Kroger chose to shut down its 15th Ave E QFC in April in a tiff over the city’s hazard pay requirements.

Instead, Safeway appears to be ready to more than double down on its Capitol Hill location. Continue reading