(Image: Winner’s Circle)

A blast from Capitol Hill’s skateboarding and streetwear fashion past is now open on Broadway. The new Winner’s Circle shop marks the next trick in a comeback for the skate and fashion entity that traces its roots to a stretch of Capitol Hill where the neighborhood’s pulse of 2010-era redevelopment first hit hardest.

Winner’s Circle was part of the E Pine block also home to the original Cha Cha plus fallen legends Manray and Kincora infamously razed for planned redevelopment and then left empty for years through the global economic downturn. The development wheels started spinning again around 2011.

These days and several Capitol Hill lifetimes later, Tamari Bar calls the block home on the ground floor or the Terravita apartment building.

Winner’s Circle’s exit from E Pine began a journey that included stops on E Olive Way and in the Central District along with a change of ownership or two. In recent years, Winner’s Circle was revived with new designs and pop-ups and partnerships with neighborhood entities like LOVECITYLOVE, now resident itself on 15th Ave E in the old ShopRite space while that corner awaits demolition and redevelopment.

On Broadway, Winner’s Circle is again part of that relentless Capitol HIll cycle of change. It is filling in the retail space left empty by the exit of the Revival boutique earlier this year after 11 years of business.

(Image: CHS)

The Broadway building will someday be razed. In 2021, the landmarks board rejected protections for the 119-year-old gabled parapets and semicircular bay windows of Broadway’s Wilshire Building clearing the way for the planned development.

The Broadway Urbaine project has been planned as “100% Publicly-Funded Affordable Housing” and will rise seven stories with 95 new apartments, five ground floor live/work units, and retail space replacing the 118-year-old, two-story commercial building currently home to Revival, the former Jai Thai restaurant, and a Mud Bay pet supply store location, plus 14 upper floor apartment units.

That project has been on ice for years now.

In the meantime, Jai Thai remains empty but Mud Bay continues to cater to the neighborhood’s fur babies and, now, Winner’s Circle is back to join a new mix on Capitol Hill with sounds, arts, and boards.

Winner’s Circle is now open at 233 Broadway E. Learn more @winnerscirclesea.

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