(Image: The Last Drop)

The Maple Leaf original (Image: The Last Drop)

With plans for a preservation minded redevelopment of the block now fully paused, Seattle bottle shop and beer hall The Last Drop is growing onto Capitol Hill after years serving the Roosevelt, Ravenna, and Maple Leaf neighborhoods.

The new Last Drop expansion from Seattle beer and pub entrepreneur Seth Howard is set to open soon in the 500 block of E Pike taking over the two-level cafe space left empty by Kaladi Brothers Coffee’s 2023 exit.

The Last Drop opened in the Maple Leaf neighborhood in 2011 and features beer on tap as well as a bottle shop featuring local craft brewers and imports. Howard is also part of ownership behind 2nd Ave’s Collins Pub and the College Inn Pub in the U District.

Drink a pint — or grab some bottles for home (Image: The Last Drop)

The new shop and pub will join a Capitol Hill beer scene that still includes a few neighborhood breweries despite a busy 2023 for changes.

Last summer, beer giant Anheuser-Busch parted way with Redhook and its Capitol Hill BrewLab just in a $85 million deal with “global cannabis-lifestyle” company Tilray. In a much smaller transaction, Ballard’s Stoup took over Capitol Hill’s Optimism Brewing and its Broadway and Union brewery and beer hall. Meanwhile, beer focused Capitol Hill players like The Pine Box — which celebrated a decade of business in 2022 — and The Stumbling Monk continue to pour.

By the way, oldtimers might remember another bottle shop from the other side of the street — Pike Street Beer and Wine closed across Pike in 2011.

The Last Drop joins a Capitol Hill block that has been filling in with new businesses despite a looming redevelopment plan.

The 517 E Pike building has been owned by the Ragen family, owners of the Ragen and Associates landscaping business that has called the top floor of the building home. CHS talked with owner Chip Ragen in 2012 about the building’s odd history. The 1910-built, two-story commercial structure was very nearly the tallest building on Pike before the neighborhood’s booming auto row claimed it from residential development more than 100 years ago.

Developer Hunters Capital and architects Meng Strazza have plans to maintain the existing façade along Pike and Boylston. Above will eventually rise a 9-story, preservation bonus-boosted building with 92 residential units atop 7,500 square feet of commercial space. The building will have 53 parking spaces for cars and 89 for bikes. There will also be 750 square feet of office space. The new building would eventually rise adjacent to Hunters Capital’s Dunn Motor Building, which opened in 2016, after engaging in a similar façade preservation.

For now, all of that is on hold.

The space in its Kaladi days (Image: CHS)

At the corner with Belmont, after neighborhood nonprofit Gay City moved out and settled into new offices on E Pine, the sprawling, two-level space and its auto row-era dimensions were  filled with vintage offerings as super thrift shop the Late Night Vintage Market moved in.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the coming soon bottle shop and beer joint, fashion retailer Standard Goods has made the block its home after a short 2021 move.

Now, the middle will be put back into motion as the onetime Kaladi Brothers — and, before that, for a brief time, a Sun Liquor bottling facility — will make a new location for the growing Last Drop beer family.

The Last Drop Capitol Hill will open soon at 517 E Pike. Learn more at thelastdropseattle.com.

$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻 
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.

Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month -- or choose your level of support 👍