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Starbucks isn’t responding about the latest changes around the 1600 E Olive Way shop it has left empty on Capitol Hill.
The shuttered cafe is now a plywood monument to the coffee giant’s exit at the location. The company closed the shop, one of its largest, most expensive to maintain cafes in the city, this summer amid a swirl of controversy over its politics and labor tactics.
The move comes as the cafe and its surface parking lot has been empty and unused for months, leaving the property as a target for taggers and vandalism. Before the plywood, the setting made an opportunistic — and special effects enhanced — backdrop for a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate to take a few cheap shots at Seattle and Capitol Hill.
It looks worse, now.
A company spokesperson did not respond to CHS this week after they said they would look into whether Starbucks would have more to say than its initial press release about the shuttering in which it said concerns over public safety led it to shut down five shops in Seattle and more across the country. Employees embroiled in a labor fight with the company said the move was retaliation for unionization efforts.
CHS reported here on the political, real estate, and labor factors behind the closure of the E Olive Way shop and a handful of other locations around the city that Starbucks claimed to be closing over crime fears.
It’s not May Day
The E Olive Way plywood panel installation covering the store from head to toe and the large installation of chain-link fence do not apparently require permits from the city to provide more information about the work.
Representatives for the Hiram family trust that has been longtime owners of the property have not responded to any inquiries about the Starbucks exit.
The new eyesore joins a plywood tradition for Starbucks on Capitol Hill which typically wraps its $30 million-plus Roastery at Melrose and Pike every May Day.
E Olive Way is also carrying another stretch of challenged space with the continued emptying of businesses from the former dog lounge building at Denny that was heavily damaged in this 2017 fire.
Meanwhile, Starbucks isn’t the only large company holding a lease on a large and empty property on Capitol Hill and making things more difficult for life to move on in the surrounding neighborhood. On 15th Ave E, the longtime grocery building QFC exited in the spring of 2021 in a tiff with the Seattle City Council over Seattle’s $4 per hour COVID-19 hazard pay requirements remains shuttered, fenced-off, and empty. The 15th Ave E location had been an active grocery store for 77 years. QFC parent Kroger reportedly had two more years on its lease at the time of the 2021 exit.
We don’t know the specifics of the Starbucks real estate entanglements on E Olive Way. The other cafes it closed also remain shuttered and emptied including the once bustling location at 23rd and Jackson in the Central District. Meanwhile, the property has a long history of Capitol Hill food and drink that has been dominated by some major chains in recent years.
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In Portland this would become a hip new restaurant and some food carts in the parking lot with outdoor seating in a beer garden. In Seattle it will be 5-10 years of blight. Why can’t we have nice things?
In Portland there would already be tents onsite and the commensurate trash and drug dealing and human misery. We’re certainly on our way to Portland levels but not there yet.
Baby steps… baby steps. Remember we must use the Seattle Process for everything, including that.
I really struggle to link “Portland” and “nice things” together. As terrible as Seattle has become, let’s pray it doesn’t reach the depth of despair of San Francisco and Portland.
Portland has much, much better Chinese and Japanese gardens than Seattle. No comparison really.
Hopefully a local non-Starbucks place can move in. Or low income housing would be welcomed too!
I would give it a few days before it becomes no-income housing.
did you really blame starbacks for anarchist dorks breaking their windows every may? Come on now.
No. I blame starbacks (sp), et al. for the tone deaf blight they represent.
This is what the neighborhood wanted. They wanted to break the place down while using the restrooms. Same with Broadway and Pike. They ruined it and now it’s gone. No local place can afford that building. It will get demolished for expensive apartments. Just what the protesters wanted.
How does that make any sense? Lamenting an elitist coffee joint? You’re lost now? You speak of affordability as one aspect. Who’s fault do you think that is, the protesters? (Who incidentally haven’t passed by in quite a while. My neighborhood.)
Elitist? Local shops now cost more than Starbucks without offering any benefits; health insurance or college. Enjoy staring at this dump for years to come.
The stretch of Olive Way is quickly becoming the sketchiest most desolate part of the hill.
If you’re so intimidated by my ‘hood, get in shape and run through it. What a grotesque over exaggeration. I’m 74 with degenerative bone disease. I’m out every day among my neighbors in all those places you’re terror stricken by. You can’t possibly be an urban kid. Go back to Snowsqeamish or wherever you’re from.
Good for you for getting out in your neighborhood. But that area hasn’t recovered visually from the period when it was a main route for protesters and suffered regular vandalism and tagging. Right now it looks like a dump with this lot and the ones across the street providing a hideous introduction to Capitol Hill for those entering via this route. And just because a building is vacant shouldn’t provide vandals with permission to graffiti and destroy it, which some seem to think they have every right to do.
Ah yes, those protests that drove all the local businesses out from that strip, starting with The Bus Stop who shuttered in April of 2013 after a telephone psychic foretold the beginning of the BLM movement just a few months in the future.
That strip has been slowly shuttering for almost a decade, I assume b/c the owner wanted to wait out their tenants’ leases before selling or developing the site.
It’s my ‘hood too, gatekeeper, and I walk through there almost every day.
It isn’t degenerating fast enough, it seems
Bring back the Boston Market!
Maybe a local shop will open there so the whole neighborhood will have a place to pee.
Naah, bring back the Red Robin.
Red Robin and Boston Market offer worse benefits than Starbucks…make it make sense.
How about bringing Capons back? Now that was some good chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy with a Caesar Salad!
Bring back Bill’s or Mia’s
Why do you all want these gross franchises! Local owned place please! And not Starbucks!
The city’s policies favor large chains
Bring back the Red Robin!
Come on Joe Bar 2.0!
As a side note, what’s with the overflowing garbage and recycling carts that have suddenly surrounded the east end of the bus shelter across the street? This morning there were a half-dozen or so carts plus trash on the sidewalk. Pretty miserable for the transit users.
If it’s going to be covered in plywood, at least get some good artists to spray up some murals while Starbucks (or property owners) figure out some way to not be a visual blight. During peak pandemic times the art on plywood made a big difference. This will be tagged soon enough anyway, so why not get some good art up on those blank panels.
That would be an excellent addition to our 1% for Art development rule!
The entire property including parking lot almost certainly will be redeveloped. The ground floor will have some commercial presence, the building will be at least 8 stories tall. Starting construction like this is tough in a recession… and complicated by the persistence of Seattle’s camping residents, the plywood shell is for liability issues. I can see them turning the parking lot into paid parking for a year or two because of reasonably expected delays. I like the food at Carmelo’s.
Remember that time some guy shot someone and then went into the Sbux on Broadway and Republican? In the before times?
There has always been crime proximate to Sbux. Most urban Sbux stores look dingy, dated, and like the least appealing option if there are other coffee shops nearby, regardless of proximity to crime. Sbux has also always closed stores they see as underperforming by the hundreds (to say nothing of the Union busting efforts). Howard Shultz has frequently referred to Sbux as being “overstored” even with plans in the works for new stores, suggesting that the company is probably simultaneously always looking for stores to close even while opening new locations.
Specifically they have plans that have been years in the making close “underperforming” urban locations and to grow their suburban, exurban and rural businesses that are more drive-thu oriented. They had also slowed down the expansion of the fancy Rosteries even before the pandemic.
Sorry if you liked that particular outlet of that particular fast food/drink establishment, but there is nothing out of the ordinary going on there.
I lived in Seattle most of my life. Well, I was based out of there anyway. I would leave and come back and see the decay. You don’t notice if you never leave. I left permanently in 2018 and don’t regret it a bit. I live in a place where I don’t lock my doors, people drop by unannounced to talk and have a glass of wine. Seattle was a great place decades ago but no longer. I doubt it will recover anytime soon.
Where’s that, Jim? I’d like to leave, but can’t figure out where to go.
I hope you left any liberal political beliefs behind.
I want that old QFC on 15th to reopen as a Metropolitan Market. That’d be great