(Image: Olmstead)
A bittersweet goodbye (Image: Olmstead)
Olmstead, a restaurant, bar, and events venue that kept the spirit of the Broadway Grill alive on Capitol Hill, has announced it will close on September 1st.
“We fought like hell to stay open for our amazing customers, our incredible staff, and the beautiful artists and entertainers who graced the Olmste(a)d stage,” the restaurant’s ownership said in the announcement posted to social media. “Unfortunately, our story is ending. Like many other restaurant owners, we could not have foreseen some of the challenges presented by the past, five years, and we have not been able to generate enough momentum in a positive direction.”
CHS reported here in late 2019 as Olmstead — stylized as Olmste(a)d as both a nod and a zig zag from Seattle history and the city’s great Olmsted Brothers-designed parks — opened in the space previously home to the Broadway Grill and its decades of brunch the helped fuel the growth of the neighborhood’s queer communities.
Olmstead and owners Jesse Elliott and Lisa Tomlinson and Alison and Gregg Holcomb took over and overhauled the space that had been left empty since the Grill’s 2013 closure, patching a literal hole in the heart of Broadway.
The early hope around the project quickly faded as the COVID-19 crisis quickly grew in the following months.
(Image: Olmstead)
Emerging from the heights of the pandemic, Olmstead continued to struggle, the owners said in a statement sent to CHS.
“Restaurants shifted focus from customer service to food prep for delivery and pickup, and customers grew accustomed to ordering in at home while they binged Netflix,” they said. “Nothing wrong with that, we just hadn’t anticipated the loss of revenue and weren’t positioned to absorb it.”
Five years later, the ownership is throwing in the towel. An upgraded kitchen and overhauled Broadway restaurant space will soon await a new tenant. In the meantime, the Olmstead crew says they hope you will stop in to say hi — “and bye.”
Prolific Capitol Hill real estate investor Ron Amundson purchased the property from its longtime family owners in 2019 with plans to maintain the building as a restaurant. The Olmstead investments will go a long way toward making that plan viable.
The restaurant’s exit will mark the full severance of the Holcombs’s business connections on the street. In May, CHS reported on the opening of Guillotine, a new cocktail bar that took over the space formerly home to Witness. Gregg and Alison shuttered the Southern-flavored cocktail bar after 10 years of business in 2023.
The transition to Guillotine is hopefully a good sign for the future of the Olmstead space.
Other recently shuttered Broadway bars and restaurants already lined up with new tenants include the Hong Kong-flavored Cheers! bar and restaurant setting up in the former Lionhead space and the Chandelier Lounge in the former Boca Restobar and Grill. Meanwhile, the nearby former Boca Pizzeria and Bakery is set to become the new Capitale Pizzeria, a pizza cousin to Belltown’s La Fontana Siciliana.
At Olmstead, the final day of business is planned for Sunday, September 1st. Learn more at olmsteadseattle.com.
The full goodbye message from Olmstead is below:
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
🌈🐣🌼🌷🌱🌳🌾🍀🍃🦔🐇🐝🐑🌞🌻
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Hilariously enough, Olmstead suffered from a Top Abundance.
this could have been avoided if they had just given you jam with your toast instead of making you ask for it
OH man this is sad :/
I’m tired of places closing – we need more businesses, not less.
Clean the streets from the homeless + gang violence, and let the hill be once again the place where people go out to eat, drink and be merry.
That place is suffered more from being ginormous and had a lease priced to pack it. Call me wild but that spot should be a food court.
We have The Garage that’s enormous. Redhook Brew pub. Nemos.
“BIG” and “Enormous” works like printing money. If it is a well run business. Bad business ideas either accelerate, stable, or loss in profit in the aggregate.
This notion that I have no chance w/o (fill in the $$$) forever is a bit disingenuous considering the potential traffic and incomes here.
“The rent” is a separate issue that you and your landlord settle civil not criminal. “We the people” do not need another restaurant to save unemployment. They are not “job creators”. They are nothing but greedy individuals who are completely out of touch and they do not care. I pay you to come to work on time and work is a Boomer era ploy. Pit labor against each other. Collaborate to keep wages low. Out wait/lay siege to peoples lives if the minimum wage isn’t enough.
Today? Won’t get a single resume paying $15 an hour. The era of 40+ years flat wages is over. No more free money. The people need money to survive.
I kind of agree but I think it’s way more complicated than that.
LOL they’re not closing because of “gang violence”, that’s on Fox News. That has nothing to do with it. They closed because they didn’t get enough business. Sucks. I used to go to the old Broadway Grill all the time. Only went to this spot once. It wasn’t bad, just too expensive. I wasn’t afraid to go because of “gangs” LOL, it was just too pricey. As the article says all the other spots that have closed were immediately taken by someone else. Nothing stays empty on Broadway long even now. Joe’s Coffee in 2 weeks become the French Guys, etc. Every single gay bar on the Hill is still there (R Pace changed to Massive). Union actually got BIGGER. Restaurants are HARD businesses, half fail in their first year. That they last this long is impressive, most don’t. Good for them. But someone else will take the space.
I wasn’t aware Fox News did a story about Olmstead, lol.
Economics and one individuals economics are not comparable.
As I recall, that space stayed empty for a long time after the Broadway Grill closed.
I hope your aspirational statement will come true, but I think that Capitol Hill businesses are suffering from a perception (somewhat true) that there is alot of sketchy people/drug addicts/homeless people on our streets, a situation that is not exactly conducive for potential customers of businesses, especially for people from other areas who aren’t used to this atmosphere.
The area near Olmstead, and around the QFC, is now infested by small groups of addicts using and selling whatever, and the SPD doesn’t do anything about it. My guess is that this is a factor in Olmstead’s closing.
Doubtful. Idk anyone that’s afraid to walk up and down Broadway that actually lives on Capitol Hill. All the tech-worker introverts that never leave their apartment may think like you.
The expensive part I can buy into. The recession is here and everything is just too expensive to manage.
You do realize we are nowhere near a recession right? Where did this rumor get started?
I mean, I have less purchasing power for amenities now than I did in 2019, so even if the instruments say the economy is golden, even you see the signs around you and remark upon them but dont connect it to economic impairment somehow?
Remember when Capitol Hill used to be the goths, gays and punks? We had a better quality of junky back then.
Werd up. These people had class, dignity and great taste in music. They didn’t paint or break shit.
Lived within blocks of Broadway since the 1990s. The sketchiness is worse today. It has a negative impact on business. Whether you are overtly “afraid” or not, the fact remains a nice night out now regularly includes dodging dozens of people who are on the sidewalk not to enjoy urban good life, but rather to pursue aggressively a drug addicted lifestyle. It’s not pleasant. Why would I put myself through this? Didn’t used to have to. But the neighborhood forces it now.
how do the others make it then?
Yall are saying there is no causal factor for drug dens related to anything you mentioned it not being? Do you know what causal means?
Take this for what it’s worth, I live a mile from capitol hill. Probably used to walk or streetcar up 4x a week, probably 2-3x a month now. It’s not all about crime (though is on Broadway that’s why I avoid it.)
What’s the draw to CH anymore? The restaurants are not that good and pricey compared to other parts of town. The nightlife has tumbled to almost non-existence. It’s littered with suburban folks driving crazily through it on weekends. I just don’t see what appeal is left.
DO you know how many people live near this joint? It’s enough to establish a business capable of printing money.
I mean it’s literally stated in the article that 4 new places are opening on Broadway. 3 of which are about 100 feet away from Olmstead currently.
Whether or not YOU go out and eat on the hill does not takeaway from the fact that there is a very vibrant market specifically in this area for new restaurants.
I live a stones throw from Olmstead and outside of an occasional brunch I don’t eat there because the menu is limited and a bit boring and it’s expensive. Someone will move in and try their go at it.
Cycle of life for a restaurant.
Guggy Bump’s Shrimmmmmpuh is the freshest, tastiest of them all imo.
This place suffered from a limited and weird menu while also being overpriced…Tomato sandwiches, $21 burger, only having 4 entree choices for dinner. Of course it wasn’t a success.
I say turn it into a super Union. There’s plenty of space for a casual bar, while also having a large bar food menu at more reasonable(Union) prices. Keep people coming in with a good lineup of queer and drag events throughout the week.
Maybe a Korean fried chicken place.
dude…there’s a ton already
Ok fine, a boba place then.
Funny one Boris!
I wouldn’t have minded the weird and limited menu if it also wasn’t priced to be that no man’s land of overpriced for casual and underpriced for fancy date night. It’s not a place you could just drop in because you have a spare $50 for dinner.
The Broadway Grill’s formula was mid-priced decent (not great) food and cheap strong drinks. The summer afternoons I would sit there with half carafes of flavored Long Islands…and the brunches?
We really need a straight up 24/7 diner.
Amen. I know safety could be a concern but IHOP and 5 Point manage. There really is way too limited food after 8pm in this city.
Need people in the city that don’t go to bed at 8 then.
Did The Broadway Grill used to be 24/7? I thought they were only open until 10 (or maybe that was just because the carafes of long islands had caught up to me and my friends by then).
Isn’t Lost Lake 24/7?
But, don’t get me started on how Glo’s isn’t open extreme late night weekends anymore. They used to be amazing for after-CCs brunch.
I was referring to the spot. Not the others
Right, and not a diner that “re-envisions the concept” of a diner. Just a diner.
I’d go there all the time.
You said it
Overpriced and foo foo so I didn’t wanna go there either. Prices especially though.
Broadway grill was sub par at best and so was Olmstead. The only thing that made Broadway grill successful was the fact Broadway used to be full of scene queens. And the foot traffic and transients did not spoil your appetite. Broadway is dead and gross!
This place has so many wonderful fun memories for me back in my gaby days in the 90’s and early 2000s. But there really isn’t a market for such huge places that accomodate large groups anymore. If they keep the building as is this space needs to be broken up into several smaller shops. Ultimately the best use of this space and the space to the north of it would be a new affordable apartment building, but, that’s not likely.
It’s a really niche market on the hill. There’s really few places like it on the planet. That advantage is wasted on poor business ideas. Reinventing the wheel here is not the right way to do business. “Improve upon” is where the money is. Every business that’s survives the hill is in that category. Like a cactus in death valley. 200 years survival. The cactuses do it right for that niche market.
The only thing to do after 2AM is trouble. That’s why we can’t “activate” the area in an attempt at lowering crime w/o paying cops. Or anyone really, to secure and keep safe the area. They shot up Broadway and Pike again. I heard em’. They were gone by the time I looked out. I thought it was another smoke show at QFC.
No one is using Broadway *(I’m being hyperbolic). Especially after dark. And Capitol Hill has seen way too many shootings in the last year.
if you are a person who was on the hill in the 90’s and early 2000’s then you know that this gun violence is unprecedented and there is no real solution.
What ever they do with that space, it won’t do much for the neighborhood. But I’m just being Captain Pessimist, your friendly neighborhood realist. Capitol Hill needs to calm it all down, fire all the cute shops and clubs that attract drug dealers and other addicts, patrons included. It’s not some weekend hotspot, it is a hot spot.