Of all the ways over the years that CHS news reporting has been confirmed, this might be our favorite. Mixed into the motley mix of wifi signals bouncing around Pike/Pine, a CHS reader noticed a new network recently joining the mix.

Glossier

The signal was true and now construction and wireless infrastructure confirm that the plan for a new Glossier showroom in the core of Pike/Pine is out of pandemic limbo and moving ahead toward a summer opening.

CHS reported in February on the plans backburnered during the COVID-19 crisis for a new 7,000-square-foot store on 10th Ave between Pine and Pike from the makeup and skincare company.

The project represents optimism for Capitol Hill’s economic reopening but also improved prospects for Glossier after the popular chain shuttered its few stores around the globe last summer and furloughed employees to wait out the COVID-19 crisis.

The secretitive cosmetics and beauty brand has yet to confirm details of the Seattle project and has not responded to CHS’s inquiries about the coming soon showroom. In June, CEO Emily Weiss said the Seattle location would be one of a trio of “all-new, permanent stores” opened by Glossier this year along with locations in Los Angeles and, later, London. The 10th Ave shop will open in August.

“This is just the beginning: we have an exciting retail roadmap to bring Glossier to many more places, including our home base of New York City, in 2022,” Weiss said.

Glossier says the new stores “are the culmination of everything we’ve learned from our prior offline experiences.”

Glossier got a taste for the Seattle market in the summer of 2019 with a much-hyped pop-up store on Broadway that drew long lines to the shop filled with Millennial pink, live plants and rolling turf hills. “In Seattle, a city of forests and lakes, our store design plays with the juxtaposition of nature and technology,” Weiss said about the planned Capitol Hill look and feel of the retail space.

The new store will fill the Pike/Pine space left empty in the summer of 2019 when the Gary Manuel Aveda Institute moved two blocks west. Capitol Hill real estate and development company Hunters Capital owns the building and temporarily filled the space with a delivery center for startup Shef, the “Airbnb of home cooked meals.”

Capitol Hill and Pike/Pine, meanwhile, continue to attract national retail and entertainment concepts looking to be part of the area’s arts venues, clubs, bars, restaurants, and nightlife. A block east on 11th Ave, virtual golf bar Five Iron Golf will join the eclectic mix. Not every new tenant is a dot com or startup. Across the street on 11th, the new home for live music hangout Cafe Racer is also being readied this summer.

The Glossier Seattle Showroom is planned to open in August at 1514 10th Ave. You can keep track of updates at glossier.com/blog/.

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