(Image: CHS)
Six months after going dark and quietly ending its 11-year run of Capitol Hill nightlife, the former Rhino Room space at 11th and Pine is suddenly filled with furniture as custom retailer Couch has moved to Capitol Hill from Ballard.
“Pick one of our thoughtfully designed styles or work with us to come up with a new variation. We are custom builders in the truest sense of the word,” the store’s pitch goes. “Custom elsewhere can mean you get to choose blue instead of gray. At Couch it means you design a sofa in your exact size, style and comfort specifications.”
Founder Ameer Radwan has been in the custom furniture business in Seattle for 17 years and moved the company’s retail presence from Ballard where a San Francisco-based children’s furniture brand has moved in. Couch’s couches are manufactured in Los Angeles.
The new activity at 10th and Union is hopefully a good sign for better times ahead for the auto row-era White Motor Company building. Efforts from property owner Legacy Commercial to upgrade the building under the city’s preservation guidelines in hopes of attracting new office tenants continue. Those office floors still sit empty after The Stranger moved out in 2020.
An early component of Seattle’s REI history, the prominent terra cotta-faced building at 11th and Pine has stood at the corner since 1918.
A Couch couch (Image: Couch)
As for the demise of Capitol Hill, it has been a long, slow, wonderful death. The Hill has suffered through furniture retail before. Most recently, big chain Joybird, the Toledo Pewter, Essence Ash, and Bentley Daisey-colored, online-focused furniture wing of La-Z-Boy, opened in 2023 around the block in the 10th Ave space formerly home to record shop Everyday Music.
Meanwhile, Couch will soon be joined in the new Pike/Pine retail class of 2025 by the arrival of the World of Smoke & Vape chain on E Pike. Maybe you can buy a smoking chair.
Couch is now open at 1535 11th Ave. Learn more at couchseattle.com.
$5 A MONTH TO HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE THIS SPRING
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Cue the outraged comments not recognizing the sarcasm font
Furniture/mattress stores seem like such a waste of space in an urban nightlife district. Instead of a space you could visit frequently, it turns into a space you might visit every 5 or 10 years.
Super happy it’s not empty anymore but couches? Wishing it was another restaurant or café or at least something a little more interesting but I hope coach succeeds. We need all businesses.
I like Mattress Firm.
JD Vance is having the FBI look into this.
This is mucho pain….ugh
Yeah well.. good riddance! People be acting like they are the reason Seattle is Seattle up there!
The random couch showroom appearing definitely felt like a surprise for this space when we walked by, but I guess it’s better than whatever homeless service or dentist office that it could’ve been.
Homeless services are infinitely better…wtf is wrong with you
Kristy,
Do you not see that the backyard here on The Hill is absolutely full?
WTF is wrong with you?
Don’t listen to all the “wanna be rights”, Kristy. Continue having your compassion and empathy for the less fortunate citizens of Seattle.
My guess: a crippling lack of empathy paired with a life spent breathing in the rarified atmosphere of privilege
Lol. Only in online Seattle comment sections is one immediately called privileged w/no empathy for suggesting we don’t need a second homeless service within a two block radius on what is supposed to be one of our main retail streets. Don’t worry, youthcare is going to be right down the street.
Only in Seattle are goofy fascists like you seething over poor people existing
And now I’m a fascist? Sorry, I meant that I want pike/pine to be lined with homeless services. Take away everything else because anything else is for fascists. Screw all of the people that pay a lot of money to live here and what they want. Does that make you feel better?
so the “people with money” demand representation? Money is speech sweetie
Yes, screw them until people aren’t suffering on the street. You are getting it slowly.
Infinitely better is crazy. This is the pike/pine retail corridor. Any retail is infinitely better in Seattle’s struggling main retail corridor.
I prefer helping people over having some temporary knick knack store
Couches are temporary Knick knacks?
the store, not couch
As someone who WAS homeless and strung out on heroin, stuck in the terrible addiction of alcoholism (about a half gal a day at one point, and I’m female) and lived that horrible way of life for over 12 years, I see why you say that. See people think just cause I was homeless I’m automatically gonna get offended by something like this. Nope. Why? First of all, victim mentality IS A THING. I’m not a victim. Actually the only thing I would say I was a victim to was to my disease of addiction. That’s about it. It’s sad. But there’s absolutely a reason people feel this way. Many homeless folks are not housebroken. They destroy anything they get their hands on – I witnessed it firsthand. We’re not all that way but sadly most of them hate the world and destroy what they are given. Take the Red Lion in Renton for example. That hotel was given to DESC to us homeless folks to live in during COVID. We where put up on there FOR FREE and even fed 3 times a day! And what they did all do? They completely trashed the place. They give the few homeless people like me (some of us do have some morals. Seriously. I’ve committed crimes cause of drug addiction and did my time, best believe that but I wasn’t into destroying properties, scaring residents or stuff like that) a bad name. So, just because people say “thank God it’s not another homeless service” I totally get WHY. Instead of being grateful people help them, a lot of them feel entitled to it, like you guys OWE them something. This isn’t right. And it’s why they destroy things. Can’t blame your addiction 100 percent cause I was messed up out there too and I cleaned up after myself and left people alone. So…..there’s much more to it then that. You don’t “lack empathy” just because you say something that is valid. Those holier then thou, virtue signallers just say that because it makes them feel better about how self righteous they are for not saying that 😂 that’s my guess. Of course I see more homeless services as a good thing too, however they need to start throwing these people in jail for trashing places because consequences curb bad behavior. The only thing that makes one ignore that is addiction because you really don’t care when you’re stuck in that cycle….which is why often times addicts are repeat offenders. We don’t learn. It takes real sobriety to get your life back on track (unless you’re a functional addict/alcoholic. Idk how they can hold down anything and maintain their habit…but it’s also harder for them to admit they have a problem because they’re functional!) Anyway, that’s just my 5 cents. Thought I would share from a completely different perspective…not many of us survive the horrors of addiction and homelessness. Many stay caught up in that lifestyle forever. Let’s just pray for them at least, addiction doesn’t just hurt them it hurts everyone around them.
RIP, again
Capitol Hill was already dying when that space stopped being a kick-ass bicycle shop and became a bar…
Yes, this!
Friend, I bought a custom couch from Couch about 15 years ago when it consisted of one dude in a scrappy bare-bones space down on Western. Loved it so much I ended up buying another just a few years ago from their show room in Ballard. Furniture stores in Capitol Hill may not be your thing, but Couch is a great company, sells great product, and is not the usual corporate garbage or mass-manufacture. Give them a try.
Do they sell other things besides couches? Things that might bring customers in more than once every 10 years? I’d go in to browse, why not!? But not very often do I buy furniture. Anyway I wish them success. We have enough vacancies
Rhino Room is a dumb, unsavory name for a bar, whether clientele is LGBT+, frat boy or tech bro. No wonder it failed.
I wouldn’t exactly call an 11-year run “failed”.
Yeah it was like walking into an MTV casting call for “pimp my podcast” where contestants compete each episode to see who is the best hot air blower 😑I mean podcaster. The prize? 60 hours of Podcast studio time at a professional podcast studio furnished by MTV, ten thousand instagram followers and two memes that will definitely go viral. The host? Idk… anybody form Hollywood really, they are all the pits! EVEN GEORGE CLOONY. He sold Biden out! He should have just shut up until after the election.
Who am I kidding?! It was an up hill battle once musk got involved!
Rhino Room is just a nicer term for what they’re into! Like Honey Hole. 🙄
Eh….less human trafficking, more comfort