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.
Acquired for less than $1 million in 1993 according to King County records, the 15th and John Safeway land is nearly 100,000 square feet of property dominated by the large grocery store and the larger surface parking lot. Competing with three QFCs within walking distance, Safeway #1551 has mostly stuck to the basics with few changes over the years.
There used to be two Safeways on the Hill. In the summer of 2006, its Broadway store was torn down to make way for the Brix condos.
More details were revealed last summer as early permitting showed plans that would shift the store’s footprint into the corner of the parcel at 14th and John currently home to the store’s large surface parking lot. Parking in the new development is planned to triple the surface lot’s capacity. It’s planned as a two-level underground garage with room for about 300. The new Safeway space, meanwhile, would also be two levels with an underground first floor.
Plans show 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 pedestrian plaza.” However, the plaza labeling seen in plans posted last summer has disappeared in the latest site plans.
The redevelopment will bring changes for the area’s streetscape. One issue for the coming public design process will be the bus stop location outside the current store on John at 15th. The busy Metro stop is typically crowded with riders and people hanging out. How the project’s design will incorporate the stop will bear watching. Meanwhile, 14th and John would become the store’s main entrance at street-level.
With the nearby neighborhood already down one grocery store, don’t worry too much about the Safeway closing anytime soon for demolition and the new construction. The project isn’t yet scheduled for design review and, once it is, the review process typically takes a year or two to play out.
The 15th Ave E QFC space remains empty as the search for a new tenant continues. Meanwhile, it, too, will eventually be due for mixed-use redevelopment.
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The U district is now down to just a Trader Joe’s within walking distance.
Target on the Ave has some grocery items.
Great news this is moving forward. I hope the design review process goes quickly. I heard it’s been a mess of NIMBYs on the Queen Anne Safeway surface lot redevelopment.
Oh the horror!!! People who own homes, have kids in the schools, and have lived in these neighborhoods for 20, 30, 50 years actually want to have a say in how the neighborhood is changing. The nerves on them.
Instead let’s demagogue the shit out of everyone who doesn’t agree with you based on…. ‘what you heard’? Can you not find specific examples of how it’s been a mess? Is there not a single article anywhere you could read to find out if what ‘you heard’ is true or link to here to back up your claim? Naw, it’s way more fun to act like a woke hipster and call people names and throw out meaningless terms like NIMBY right? God this city is going to shit and new breed moving in are some of the least tolerant, least informed ever to have migrated to this city.
Specifically in the case of the Queen Anne Safeway development–the project development process started during the Obama administration and went through two developers due to delays primarily due to feedback from the West Design Review Board.
There was a coalition of neighbors that had worked extensively with the developer over the last few years to address a number of neighborhood concerns and there were still delays introduced by the Design Review Board over small details like the exact color of bricks used on the project. We should all be concerned about the amount of delay that the unelected Design Review Boards can introduce into projects–which can often increase overall project cost, and ultimately housing cost. Here’s an article from the Urbanist from last year: https://www.theurbanist.org/2020/12/03/west-design-review-board-withholds-approval-for-323-homes-atop-queen-anne-safeway/
The project was ultimately approved this spring I believe–though records from the Design Review meetings show it was reluctantly on the part of the board.
Yes, it’s important to have a process to hear and respond to community feedback for new development. As neighbors we should all be invested in our neighborhood, and as a renter on Capitol Hill since the late 90s, I guarantee that I am just as invested as someone who owns their home or has children in schools here. I want to see this continue to be a neighborhood that continues to welcome new neighbors and is affordable for the kind of creative and diverse community that has always thrived here. Unnecessary delay on needed projects while people quibble over minor architectural details for nearly a decade is the opposite of that.
This is the worse part about seattle. Way too many development groups ready to cause road hazards for drivers. Always ready to create traffic in one zone after tha next. There’s so much construction going on at tha same time that it diminishes tha quality of life. Construction work is just never a good excuse to waste my time in traffic over a project that benefits me none!
Looks great. Excited to have more housing in such a retail- and transit-rich location. And the new retail along 15th will be a big improvement over the current dead space along that block.