A longtime Capitol Hill retailer is consolidating after what management says is a 40% jump in rent for its Broadway storefront in an area of the street gearing up for significant changes.
Broadway Boutique, a purveyor of club fashions and more for two decades, will be combined with owner Lisa Chang’s other Broadway-based outlet, Trendy Wendy, according to a plastering of signs in the business’s windows.
The building neighboring Dick’s Drive-In is owned by real estate investor David Eskenazi according to county records. Nancy Sandbloom continues to hold the drive-in property and its parking lot. We have not yet reached Eskenazi for comment.
This stretch of Broadway is undergoing an increase in investment and planning as the development plans for the light rail station across the street begin to take shape. Last year, the building home to the post office was acquired by investors who told CHS they planned to improve the building but planned no immediate major development for the property. Meanwhile, investor Ron Amundson is planning to develop his two holdings in the area including this plan for lofts in the former Hollywood Video building.
We also have messages out to Chang to learn more. We talked to her about her retail efforts on Broadway in 2011.
Chang has put signs to use to spread the word about her displeasure with events in the past including protests of changes to parking and burdens to local businesses during demolition and construction for the light rail project. No word yet on any changes for neighboring printer Perfect Copy — presumably where those very signs were created and under the same landlord as Chang. Same goes for Happy Mart which also call the building home. Currently, county records show no records of transactions indicating any consolidation of ownership across the parcels.
At this rate Broadway should be renamed Bankway, because apparently banks will soon be the only entities that can afford rent here. Sad :-(
It’s actually good news that rents are going up in those blocks – it means that the density needed for light rail to succeed is on the way.
I hope the funeral home moves soon. It’s a waste to have that kind of business adjacent to the light rail station. There should be an effort to get density of housing units and retail on those blocks.
I don’t see how increased rents are going to increase density if no one can afford the rent…
Other people can afford the rent. Maybe not you.
So what happens to the dead Fred? Families on the hill and surrounding shouldn’t have a convenient place to hold memorials and end of life rituals? I would hardly call Bonney Watson a decades long service to this community a waste of space.
Katy: The landlord will target his neighborhood demographic profile and build accordingly. If he misses the mark, and he’s left with a partially vacant building, he fails.
He has a powerful $$ incentive to “get it right”. Converting that building into livable spaces will be expensive, and until he has a mostly full building, his only flow will be “out”….in a big way.
Density and light rail success are essentially a chicken/egg argument. Light rail construction will lead to increased density, and increased density leads to a need for light rail, the presence of which leads to increased density, and on and on.
It seems the writing is on the wall for the property at the NW corner of Broadway and Denny. It will be razed and redeveloped, and this is a good thing as now the building is old and very unattractive. The post office badly needs a new facility there, and hopefully they will be in the new building or perhaps across the street above the light rail station…..that is, if the USPS stays in business!
But Dick’s must survive! It is a part of Seattle history and a great place for a quick/cheap meal.
CAPITOLISM
Rents don’t go up unless someone can afford them – nobody wants an empty building.
And the dead? I think they will manage. There are many properties within a few miles better suited to a funeral home. It is truly wasteful to use two blocks adjacent to light rail for it – they can sell that land and develop a new one two miles south with a better building and parking.
And, calhoun, Dicks is great, but if it survives where it is, it should be as a storefront in a multilevel building. Why waste 2/3 of the property on parking when a transit station provides all the foot traffic you could want?
Wow – a one word post and you couldn’t manage the spelling.
There’s always one grammar king on every blog, please stay on topic Paul, I am sure no one is getting tired (yet) of your density expertise!
@ Paul
I think you missed the pun there….
Well, we are Capitol Hill. Maybe Capitolism is the art of bitching about change that isn’t hipster approved?
Density for light rail needs to walk down Broadway and see the empty storefronts available for rent and how many apartments/condos are sitting empty. What landlords think they can get in anticipation of light rail 4 years from now, and what people can actually afford are different stories.
I shopped the sale last week and spoke to the owner and her circumstances are different from any speculation above. As the age of the building, the landlord died leaving it to his sons who do not care about the tenants, construction, community, and are in collusion with a new property management company who just care about money, signing a new tenant into the space who will pay a raise and their management fees they refuse to explain. She said since she has Trendy Wendy a block away, there was no need to deal with being harassed by these people who only want money yet refuse to update anything.
Like Bako, Saizen, Five Burgers who moved in and out, you can’t just move into the neighborhood and expect to do well without knowing the community so I respect a business that’s catered to the needs of customers on the Hill for this long.
People who think light rail is going to be the saving grace of Capitol Hill, how much detriment to small business, parking spaces, upheaval of residents is it going to take before you wake up and realize there are dozens of great storefronts gone like Piroski, Septieme, now Broadway Boutique that is ruining the character of Broadway? LR is already completed in areas and goes to the airport- can you even find the station at SEATAC?
How is it density to force out long term tenants? If anything, “density” means more demand for more diverse types of businesses.
At the rate we’re going its going to be nothing but banks and UPS and upscale dining.
As an over 20 year Broadway neighborhood resident, I really hate how the area is going beyond the reach of more independent merchants. Those businesses were what made the region what it was. All these new buildings are not designed for the independent merchant. They’re designed for the upscale chain.
Look at the famous neighborhoods of the world — Amsterdam, New Orleans, San Francisco … they don’t tear down a majority of their buildings in the name of “density.” They retrofit classic old buildings that have class and charm.
Broadway will look like a pleasing appealing drive through Lynnwood once its done.
Well said. Thank you.
There is the additional concern of losing a lot of the diversity and the artists who have made our area and neighborhood so well-known. Wasn’t the Pike/Pine corridor recently recognized as a nationally recognized art area? That is an accolade that will go by the wayside in a heartbeat.
I do not want to see the small businesses and the very personality of our neighborhood disappear in the race for a buck under the guise of Light Rail or supposedly “affordable housing” or someone’s greedy concept of “improvements.” I LIKE the personality of different and oft-times older buildings that allow small businesses and artists to survive economically.
I’ve never been in either of trendy Wendy’s stores and asked a ton of my friends who didn’t even know what I was talking about. I’ve lived on broadway-ish for 19 years now and love all of the new construction and food choices. Most of which are local businesses. In fact in 19 years this is the least amount of national chains on broadway. Love the density and getting rid of some serious eye sores!