The design proposal for the Safeway project approved earlier this year showed how the new development would wrap around the Aquarian Foundation (Image: Weber Thompson)
The Aquarian Foundation’s Keith Milton Rhinehart in a video demonstrating his spiritual ability to produce gems from his body
A secretive and reclusive Capitol Hill religious organization is speaking out against plans to redevelop its block of 15th Ave E with a new 50,000-square-foot grocery store, new apartments, and a massive underground parking lot on the site of the neighborhood Safeway.
The Aquarian Foundation has filed an appeal with the Seattle Hearing Examiner hoping to bring the major new retail and housing development to a stop as it demands changes including preservation of trees and street parking and a design for the planned “monolithic structure” to better match the neighborhood’s “look and feel.”
“The sheer size and the aesthetics of the monolithic structure does not consider the surrounding topography, adjacent properties and structures, and the look the feel and ambience of Capitol Hill and the 15th Ave E corridor,” the Aquarian Foundation’s appeal filed last week reads.
CHS reported here in February as the project from property owner Safeway and developer Greystar with a design from Weber Thompson passed through the city’s public review process opening the way to start final planning for demolition of the old store and construction of two new five-story buildings including the new grocery, around 330 market rate apartment units, some new, smaller retail spaces, and an underground parking lot for more than 300 cars on the Safeway property at 15th and John.
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(Image: Weber Thompson)
The Aquarian Foundation would be surrounded by the new project. The converted two-story, 5,500-square-foot house sits on property assessed at around $2.5 million and has been home to the “New Age” religious organization for decades. The group is one of the oldest corporations on Capitol Hill, formed as a church in the 1950s by a group including founder Keith Milton Rhinehart.
You will have to ask a member how the Seattle offshoot relates to Brother XII and the British Columbia spiritual community of the same name in the early 20th century. The Nanaimo Aquarian group ended with the founder claiming to be an Egyptian god in a cult-like meltdown. The Seattle group has focused on spiritual exploration and, reportedly, “an eclectic occult perspective that combined elements of Theosophy and Eastern religion with more traditional Spiritualism.” Rhinehart became renowned for his “materialization” abilities including the power to produce valuable jewels from his bodily orifices.
Today, the Aquarian Foundation governors include church president Jannifer Werner, director Ted Bickerstaff, secretary Celeste Momberg, and treasurer Cathryn Reid, according to state corporation and court filings from recent lawsuit over copyright allegations against another spiritual organization.
CHS has been reaching out to the organization to talk about the planned development next door since we first broke the news on the plans in 2019. The Aquarian Foundation has not returned our messages and wasn’t receptive to CHS visits. The foundation advertises a Sunday service and the front hall is filled with new age paraphernalia including a massive crystal leading to a red-carpeted lobby and the chapel space lined with rows of folding chairs.
Safeway and the foundation have been neighbors for a long time. 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 the two Broadway QFCs within walking distance, Safeway #1551 has mostly stuck to the basics with few changes over the years.
Under the appeal, the foundation is demanding the Hearing Examiner reconsider the Safeway development project’s approval in the same process a neighborhood group delayed for years the PCC grocery-centered apartment development that is replacing City People’s in Madison Valley.
While the Aquarian Foundation has been litigative, it’s not clear what kind of community and legal firepower the organization will put behind the $75 filing fee required to appeal these decisions. The elimination of State Environmental Policy Act for most housing development also makes a Madison Valley PCC repeat unlikely after years of unnecessary delays in the city.
In their arguments, the foundation’s representation cites loss of tree canopy, and loss of property rights in its argument calling for changes to restrictions placed on the development to help guarantee the foundation’s “right of quiet enjoyment of its property and its right to have peaceful and uninterrupted Worship services.” The appeal also says there are “party walls and boundary walls” on the foundation property that would be impacted by the new project.
The potentially most costly threat is delay and new process around changing the design of the development to meet the foundation’s demands for “consideration to protect the adjoining property at 315 151h Ave E.” The foundation says the project does not include adequate “screening and buffers in the design to help blend the old with the new” and needs to be redesigned.
In the design proposal for the Safeway project approved earlier this year, Weber Thompson described its scheme as “a collection of complementary facades” as it showed how the concept would look from the northeast corner where the Aquarian Foundation house stands.
“The design aims to bridge the neighborhood’s historic past, while acknowledging the likely change that the future might bring,” the architects wrote.
The Aquarian Foundation’s appeal also includes some easily dismissed elements including an alleged loss of street parking rights in the public right of way.
The church also takes the city to task for allowing a project like the Safeway redevelopment to go forward without more affordable housing. “The spirit and function of rezoning of the subject property and the adjacent properties by allowing for a height variance is defeated if developers can buy their way out of providing low-income housing for Capitol Hill, and then still be allowed to build a 55 ft monolithic structure that does not preserve Capitol Hill’s style and beauty and does not blend the old with the new and does not purpose of the preserving the unique architectural integrity and topography of the neighborhood,” the appeal reads.
Prior to the appeal, the Safeway redevelopment was moving forward through permitting and land use approval that could mean groundbreaking in 2024 with the new building expected to open in 2026.
The construction could also mean a 15th Ave without a major grocery store for a few years. The shuttered 15th Ave QFC property is just beginning a redevelopment process from Capitol Hill-based developer Hunters Capital to create a new five-story mixed building with around 150 apartment units, 10,000 square feet of commercial space, and underground parking for around 116 vehicles on the site running from the middle of the 400 block of 15th Ave E to E Republican. The QFC project doesn’t neighbor any churches — but it will likely mark the end of the beloved ShopRite as owner Mohammad Abid contemplates retirement after more than 20 years running the store.
Hovering above all of this is also the massive proposed grocery merger that would combine the companies behind Safeway, Albertsons, QFC and Fred Meyer.
Back at 15th and John, the development team must now respond to the appeal. A hearing on the matter has not yet been scheduled. Keep track of updates here.
> shuttered 15th Ave QFC property is just beginning a redevelopment process from Capitol Hill-based developer Hunters Capital to create a new five-story mixed building with around 150 apartment units
This is incorrect they’re trying to force in a six story building where zoning only allows for 5.
Hopefully this is challenged as well and we can preserve the beauty of 15th a bit longer.
The “beauty of 15th ave”?
Wut?
I know I was just arguing against density in general on the Hill in the other thread but there is nothing particularly beautiful about that stretch of 15th.
Agreed, zero people would argue the hospital buildings across the street(s) from Safeway are beautiful…nor is the little pocket park when it is periodically home to an encampment.
Au contraire vis-á-vis the park; its trees are quite beautiful and they shade the pavement of the street, partially compensating for the lack of shade at the Safeway bus stop.
The trees and absence–they are right–of monoliths.
What beauty will be preserved if this is challenged? More delays for this development mean more time with a boarded up QFC. Maybe with the additional density from an additional story it will pencil out to have a grocery store on the property again.
Jonathan here is absolutely right: what is beautiful about this area of 15th Ave? The now-vacant QFC building is an ugly mid-20th century eyesore.
At least six stories of new development will bring in new housing + streetfront retail which isn’t at all possible currently.
And the Rudy’s/Rite Mart (or whatever it’s called) are in structures that have reached the end of their life and are deserving of replacement.
I get it in a way though: these are the typical non-complaints drummed up by those simply interested in opposing any and all development, but too ashamed to plainly state that that is their preference.
15th Ave is in need of serious redevelopment, and will do well with the new Hilltop building (a design I hate as the firm from Bellevue has a general esthetic of “suburban strip mall, and it shows in the new structure), the new Safeway (a good design, despite what those only interested in backward-looking nostalgic architecture would say), and the coming replacement to the former QFC.
15th Ave would also do well with some new businesses, and the shuttering of some of the old timers that just seem to take up space and eek out a living. I’m looking at the dated, useless,”natural medicine,” or whatever you’d like to call that particular grift, store, with its gross fountain and scraggly potted plants. I’m also looking at the eyesore in question in the above post: the weird “Aquarian” cult and its poorly-maintained building with painted over windows. Would be nice if the Walgreens left too — that building is such an out-of-place suburban design.
15th Ave. is in definite need of an upgrade. Let’s hope the cult doesn’t succeed in sidelining the project.
And also: this project was announced ages ago, and has gone all the through design review to approval. Why wait until now to file a complaint?
I shop at Remedy all the time for tea, spices, vitamins and skin care products.
A little bitter about something? It’s great to have diverse neighborhood small businesses, even if they are not all about you.
Because the Director’s Decision was just published, so now’s the time to file an appeal. Try to keep up.
The current streetscape is highly popular with local residents because it has a granularity that’s missing from new development across the city. It’s a really basic concept of urban design that is generally ignored by Seattle planners and developers and their fans.
“the beauty of 15th”? The existing safeway is arguably the ugliest part of the neighborhood. which is saying something since 15th is a dissonant miscellany of uninspiring architecture.
I’m really glad that more housing is being built, and I think the proposed design is more appropriate for the location than the current suburban-style building.
They are correct that this giant, 2+ ac project is poorly designed. What a missed opportunity. Greystar should be required to put the power lines along 15th and John underground so that large street trees can be planted to mitigate the loss of tree canopy. I also propose a mural of crystals instead of the stark white hardiboard wall facing the Aquarian Society.
Street trees? There isn’t some mature grove of oaks that Safeway is cutting down. The street trees along 15th and John are tiny and easily replaced. Are you concerned about the landscaping in the surface parking lot — and the existence of a surface parking lot in central Seattle is a crime in and of itself — because I can tell you I am **not** concerned with the parking lot landscaping being removed. Not at all.
There are more than 30 mature cypresses on the northern boundaries of the parcel that will be cut down.
Surface parking lots on Capitol Hill actually have considerably more tree canopy than the Hill’s townhouse developments. What a success story for Seattle’s architects, developers, the EcoDistrict and the city planners who serve them!
A mural of crystals and a kiosk where the Society can sell overpriced polarized sunglasses for the light pollution.
Yay! A new safe way. Not like there is gonna be any deals there. It’s just as expensive as Whole Foods these days. But at least people won’t feels so embarrassed to use food stamps there compared to Whole Foods.
Safeway is the cheapest place to shop if you are a smart shopper.
It kind of depends. IMO the cheapest way to get groceries is using a mix of four stores:
Safeway for cleaning supplies and such
QFC for pantry items
TJ for things like egg’s, bread (just make sure you freeze it) and such
Grocery Outlet for meat and some things here and there
I would best describe this appeal as one more thing the Society has managed to produce from it’s orifices.
If they can produce gems from their orifices, they should just buy the Safeway parcel and turn it into a park.
The inclusion of the back-history video is very appreciated
This sounds like when people cried about the developments on Broadway like the Capitol Hill station being too big but there she is.
15th Avenue East needs a grocery store.
Thanks for the background. That building always gives me the creeps. There’s also a shitton of rats hanging out there cuz of the safeway. Little haunted corner of the city.
The weird and secretive Aquarian Foundation is being very hypocritical. They pretend to care about issues like tree canopy when all they really care about is their own self-interest.
The architect is offering a “bridge to the past”? Horsesh**.
Weber Thompson described its scheme as “a collection of complementary facades”
Whyyyyyyy?? The ‘we threw eight different materials on the facade, so the building looks smaller in design review’ needs to die. It looks so bad every time.