(Image: Wax On)

(Image: Hunters Capital)

When the Capitol Hilltop Apartments open to new residents on 15th Ave E this summer, the ground floor mix of commercial tenants will feel very familiar to the neighborhood.

CHS already reported on the plan for Rudy’s to jump across the street and be part of the development. Now another longtime part of 15th Ave E is signed up to be part of the mixed-use building completing construction on the site where the neighborhood’s service station once stood.

The Wax On waxing spa is making plans for a new home beneath the new Hilltop apartments, CHS has learned.

In its 25th year of business around the city, Anne Uhlir’s Wax On is the mother of the Brazilian in Seattle. Its 15th Ave E shop has been resident in the block’s 95-year-old commercial building for decades. These days, it neighbors Museum Quality Framing. The same family trust that holds the building also owns the structure home to businesses including Liberty next door.

Now Wax On is preparing for a move down the block into a newer, larger space where it will neighbor Rudy’s in a familiar neighborhood beauty mix.

“The businesses want to stay on 15th, we do, too, and are happy to help make that happen,” Jill Cronauer of Hunters Capital said about the planned tenant mix at Hilltop.

The building will also add more than 60 new apartment homes to the neighborhood

Hunters Capital broke ground on the development in late 2022 with a design inspired by the neighborhood’s auto row-era preservation projects that was reshaped by the city’s design review process and a push for a more modern approach to the structure. The construction followed months of federally required soil remediation to clean up the decades of contamination left behind by the old service station.

The building is planned to open in July.

The mix of businesses on the street level of the building will extend beyond body beauty. An interior design business from Cornish grad Jim MacLean called Hummingbird and Company is also lined up for one of the building’s commercial spaces.

While the new spaces for Hummingbird, Wax On and Rudy’s are good news for the development’s plans, its key tenant is still a work in progress. The Rudy’s and Wax On spaces are half of the four retail suites planned for the project including the centerpiece 15th and Mercer corner that stretches to 1,900 square feet and is being prepared to host a full restaurant set up. That space lists at $5,550 a month and the selection of a successful tenant will be a key component to the building’s commercial success and a boost to the neighborhood’s growth.

While Wax On’s move is simply an upgrade, Rudy’s had to find a new home. The current Rudy’s 15th Ave E location is set to be demolished to make way for a coming mixed-use project from Hunters Capital that will also replace the street’s shuttered QFC grocery.

The QFC project is still a long time from breaking ground. In the meantime, the building is being prepared to host a short-term addition to 15th Ave E as the Punk Rock Flea Market temporarily moves in.

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