The current Raised along 23rd Ave
Kinako mochi: roasted soy bean powder glaze on a mochi doughnut (Image: Raised Doughnuts)
The Central District’s Raised Doughnuts is already two years old and making big plans for a new home by the time it turns three.
Raised owner Mi Kim confirmed her plans to move the artisan doughnut shop across the street as part of the mix of businesses planned to be part of the new Midtown Square development when it completes construction and opens in late 2021.
“This new space is actually what I had originally wanted from day one,” Kim writes. “I showed I Miun (business partner) stock photos of the vision before I even had a recipe. And this new space has all the elements! Our current space was exactly what we needed at that time, and we are going to miss it!”
In 2018, Kim and food and drink entrepreneur I-Miun Liu opened Raised in the former Collins Gold Exchange and minimart that was once lined up to become a new Central District burger mart.
Their investment in the area has been part of an influx of new businesses and restaurants around 23rd and Union centered around the coming Midtown development and the equitable and affordable development Liberty Bank Building that opened in March 2019 with an emphasis on hiring minority construction contractors, and attracting Black residents and Black-owned businesses. That project’s restaurant centerpiece Communion from Kristi Brown is nearing an opening after delays this summer.
Across the street, Midtown Square will fill the site of the former Midtown Center shopping strip with a three-piece, seven-story mixed-use apartment development with 428 market-rate and affordable apartment units, a quasi-public central plaza, and a huge underground parking garage. Regional pharmacy chain Bartell Drugs is planned to occupy the large retail space on the corner of 23rd and Union with a mix of smaller, more neighborhood focused retail and restaurant spaces surrounding the inner square, — “with a goal of renting to local, minority-owned businesses,” developer Lake Union Partners has said.
Displaced neighborhood bar the Neighbor Lady is also planning on becoming part of the new development.
Some of the small businesses part of the old shopping center were left in the dust by the changes including Saad Ali’s 99 Cents Plus store. The neighborhood’s post office was also displaced by the development but replaced by a smaller facility reopening nearby on E Union.
Meanwhile, plans are moving forward on the rest of the Midtown block where Africatown and Community Roots Housing are collaborating on the affordable Africatown Plaza mixed-use project.
The new Raised will rise on the other end of the block at the corner of 24th and Union. Kim says there will be more seating and a different look than the current shop.
“We will be able to make more cakes and doughnuts and who knows what else we’ll get into with more space,” she writes. “We like to do things organically so any changes or additions we make are phased in slowly to make sure it all makes sense and works. We’re excited to see what those things are moving forward.”
Kim said there will also be space for classes when they can resume — including cake and doughnut sessions and seasonal cookie classes, too.
For a more near-term sweet treat, Temple Pastries is set to open this month on S. Jackson.
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No offense to this place but it’s another early marker of gentrification in the CD. This was Collins Gold forever and will always be remembered as such. Shame that black businesses were pushed out of the area.
Collins Gold was closed for a long time before the donut shop moved in. Not sure how leasing an empty space is ‘pushing out’ a black business. 10 years ago people were scared to walk around in that area at night. Were those the good old days?
You may have been scared. That was where I grew up and all my friends lived… it was never dangerous. Prob more dangerous today because gentrifying makes gang matters intensify. People really don’t know what they’re talking about…I grew up here.
Got it – so no one should ever move to the CD and somehow it should have been an area where taxes never go up like they do for everyone else, so it can stay just like it was when you were a kid because it was perfect then.
Grow up and welcome to what the rest of the world experiences Jim. Shit changes, we have to adapt – all of us.
There have been multiple shootings within blocks of this location just this year. How many times has Ike’s been held up? I was mugged at gunpoint just two years ago half a block away walking home on a weekday evening.
It’s definitely still a dangerous area, folks. I’m grateful to businesses that open here and increase general foot traffic in the neighborhood.
Jim when you say ‘pushed out’, were those black business owners unable to sell their property at a profit?
Musta never heard of property taxes Sam
The individual business owners can be “pushed out” and still benefit financially.
Gentrification is not about the specific commodities sold by the new business, but how those commodities are received by the surrounding community.
If the rest of the surrounding community decidedly views it as a black business being pushed out of the area, I don’t know why anyone would feel the need to challenge that view. Especially if they aren’t even from said community.
I’m part of the surrounding community, and my belly receives those commodities every week. I never knew gentrification can be so delicious.
Property taxes, eh?
Looks like they were minimal and even flat for a 9year period at about $1800/yr. A hell of a lot less than most people pay for a tiny house here. https://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Dashboard.aspx?ParcelNbr=7228500321
The Uncle Ike’s of donuts!
Actually, together, the product synergy will be quite excellent.
Sure, their donuts are overpriced, but I don’t think comparing an Asian woman-owned bakery to a white-owned pot shop is all that fair, particularly when black people were jailed for selling pot years ago and now face disproportionate barriers to running the exact same business compared to white people.
And I won’t even go into all the racial tensions/problems surrounding Uncle Ike’s and its owner…
Collins sold more crack paraphernalia than gold. Just because it was black owned doesn’t mean it was a good business.
I’m always interested in the anti-gentrification arguments.
They’re always so stilted. So intellectually bankrupt.
First, neighborhoods change.
Second, like the 99 cent store, businesses lose their appropriateness for the area. Restaurants/entertainment/grocery/drug stores like Bartell’s are FAR more appropriate than what was there: a post office and liquor store.
Third, did I mention neighborhoods change?
More, the 23rd & Union neighborhood was, before WWII, a largely Asian and Japanese neighborhood. The concentration of Black business and homeowners in the area is a byproduct of the fact that the US government put Japanese citizens in concentration camps, and thus they were forced to sell their homes and businesses.
So…the gestation of this neighborhood as some sort of cornerstone of the Black community in Seattle is…problematic to say the least.
But, by all means, let’s ignore that inconvenient history and just complain about new businesses (which are minority owned!) moving into the area.
Because, naturally, the new Midtown development is such a blight on the area! After all, the rundown 50s strip mall and acres of asphalt that was there previously was SO PREFERABLE to what is coming.
Anti gentrifiers also ignore the role that immigration plays as well. The black neighborhoods more prone gentrification are those that begin to see more Asian and Latin American immigrants moving in.
Anti-gentrifiers are, when it comes down to it, more often than not simply “anti-change.”
They want zero change, whatsoever.
And they’ve found it convenient to cloak their resistance to any and all change in a disingenuous anti gentrification rhetoric.
It’s frankly awful.
Thankfully the resistance to redeveloping this block was overcome long ago and now it’s a done deal.
One thing that is good about Seattle is how these anti-development groups are listened to during design review, and their (garbage) objections are quietly sidelined and the project moves through to completion.
It’s a great way of making these people feel a part of the process, while functionally acknowledging that their complaints lack any an all validity and, well, making sure that they are impotent and can’t derail things.
Much better than SF, where even the slightest, most ridiculous objection will end a project before it starts.
Now next up if we could just get rid of the creepy church and car wash….
Hopefully with Africatown gaining even more CD land this month, there will be a black return to the CD. I’m hopeful but not terribly optimistic
Why is that good? Wouldn’t it be better to see true integration throughout our city rather than neighborhoods that are ok for some ethnic groups and not others?