Tag Archives: jackson

Amazon Fresh hopes at 23rd and Jackson: Neighborhood hires, human cashiers, cheaper groceries, and local business neighbors

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Yes, the Vulcan development home to Jackson Apartments is shaped like a 12. Founder Paul Allen, who passed away in 2018, also owned the Seattle Seahawks (Image: Vulcan Real Estate)

(Image: Amazon Fresh)

Plans for the new Vulcan development at 23rd and Jackson are shaping up with new business tenants coming in and Amazon Fresh working on plans for its first of its kind grocery stores in Washington. The companies discussed details of the new development and soon to open store in a community meeting Thursday night.

QueenCare, a body-care company, became the first of three 500-square-foot retail tenants to open facing S Jackson and comfort food cafe Simply Soulful is set to expand with a 1,900-square-foot space this summer. Currently based in Madison Valley, Simply Soulful plans to reserve some of its space for local artists to display and sell their work.

The signature anchor tenant of the apartment development, however, is Amazon Fresh, which the company’s senior external affairs manager Taylor Hoang likened to conventional grocers like Safeway and QFC. Unlike the nearly employee-less and checkout-less Amazon Go, which opened on E Pike in early 2020, the store will still have human cashiers and unlike Whole Foods, also owned by the tech giant, it is expected to be more affordable.

“Anything that you can expect from a grocery store, this is what this is,” Hoang said at a Thursday evening meeting of the Central Area Neighborhoods District Council. She said they could possibly try a socially distanced walkthrough of the store before it opens. Continue reading →

Celebrate the Central District’s jazz legacy as this weekend’s 2021 Jackson Street Jazz Walk goes virtual

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The Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio

South Jackson’s celebration of its jazz legacy returns this weekend with a virtual version of the annual Jackson Street Jazz Walk.

“One of the hottest jazz spots in the country in the 1940s was along Seattle’s Jackson Street, with clubs that saw early performances from then-local stars Ray Charles, Quincy Jones and Ernestine Anderson,” KNXK says about the street’s history.

Saturday and Sunday, you can enjoy the Jackson Street Jazz Walk from home as the event returns following its 2020 postponement. 2021’s performances will include the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, Eugenie Jones Jazz Band, a Lewis vs. Lewis Drum-off with David Lewis, D’Vonne Lewis, and Donovon Lewis), Alex Dugdale, Julio Jáuregui, Rafael Tranquilino, and the Darrius Willrich Trio. Continue reading →

Plans cooked up for new Central Seattle baked good goodness with Temple Pastries ready soon in the Central District and Sea Wolf Bakers a slower bake in Montlake

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(Image: Sea Wolf Bakers)

(Image: Temple Pastries)

By Vivian Cheung, UW News Lab/Special to CHS

The recipes for two projects to bring new baked goods and pastries to Central Seattle neighborhoods that came together before the pandemic have been — if you’ll pardon the metaphor — baking.

One in the Central District is ready to come out of the oven where Temple Pastries is set to debut its new Jackson St. cafe in a collaboration with Broadcast Coffee.

While in Montlake, it’s a slower bake on a big new addition to the neighborhood.

Sea Wolf Bakers is set to expand to 24th Ave with a new bakery and cafe to take over the space left empty when Capitol Hill gay bar ex pat Purr shuttered in Montlake two years ago.

Sea Wolf’s Jesse Schumann tells CHS the 24th Ave location is an expansion for the company set to debut next year after a buildout of a new bakery and cafe designed by Heliotrope to achieve the openness and light of the Stone Way original. Continue reading →

23rd Ave Vision Zero work not complete but street getting back to *new* normal in the Central District

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(Image: SDOT)

After more than a year of construction as part of the overhaul of 23rd Ave from Montlake to the Central District, the southern end of the route is back open to vehicular traffic and the long project is moving into its final phases.

The Seattle Department of Transportation announced that 23rd Ave south of Jackson has been re-opened to two-way motor vehicle traffic though construction is still being wrapped up.

The so-called Phase 2 of the 23rd Ave Vision Zero plan began last spring to continue the effort of slimming down the corridor and adding sidewalk improvements including new paving, crosswalks, and upgraded pedestrian crossing signals, new landscaping and trees, and transit improvements including real-time arrival information and bus pullouts between Jackson and S Hill. Continue reading →

Dozens of shots but no reported injuries in shootout near 23rd and Jackson

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There were no reported injuries as bursts of gunfire rattled the area around 23rd and Jackson and put nearby schools in lockdown Wednesday afternoon.

Seattle Police rushed to the reported shooting scene near 23rd and Main just after 2 PM after a report of dozens of gunshots. According to East Precinct radio dispatches, police were searching for two to three suspects reportedly armed with handguns seen by witnesses as the melee broke out. Some witnesses reported that the shooters appeared to be juveniles and at least one possible suspect was reportedly riding a bicycle as he fled the scene. Police were also looking for vehicles possibly involved in the shootout. Continue reading →

Tired of baking French pastries on the Hill, Mariela Camacho brings pan dulce to the people

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“It’s also about food justice,” Mariela Camacho says. “I want to give this to a community that doesn’t have a lot of food that is healthy and accessible to them.” (Image: Margo Vansynghel for CHS)

The sky is invariably dark, the atmosphere eerily quiet when Mariela Camacho gets to the commissary kitchen at 3 AM. No buzzing of mixers yet. No butter sizzling in pans, radio in the background, or cooks chopping onions, or bakers kneading dough. Usually, it’s just her and her diablitos (smoked paprika croissants), conchas (sweet bread rolls with crunchy toppings) and roles de canela (cinnamon rolls). One by one, Camacho loads them onto trays that go on top of the warm oven for proofing, the final rise before the final bake.

While the pastries rise, Camacho mixes the dough for sweet buns and bread, assembles pink cakes and alfajores, and chops up queso oaxaca for empanadas.

“And that’s just a regular day,” Camacho says. It’s 11 AM, and she’s worn out after a Sunday morning of baking. Her cheeks rosy from the work and oven heat, she’s loading up big boxes with bread, sweet buns and pastries to be whisked off to her wholesalers across the city: La Marzocco Cafe, Elm Coffee Roasters, Resistencia, Little Neon Taco, Addo, Bait Shop and Damn The Weather. Her wholesaler’s list has been growing quickly since she started her on-demand and pop-up bakery Comadre Panadería last spring.

Her pastry pop-ups, at Little Neon Taco, Dorothea Coffee or Broadcast Coffee, are increasingly popular as well. During her next pop-up, planned for Sunday, January 27th at Broadcast Coffee’s Jackson roasting house, Camacho will be selling cardamom orange conchas and a raspberry/beet niño envueltos.

Comadre Panaderia Pop-up

Continue reading →

Central District council says SDOT went rogue with community-driven street improvements

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The Judkins Park Community Council says its solution for the stretch of Jackson SDOT focused on would cost $500 (Image: Judkins Park Community Council)

A Central District neighborhood group had the strange experience earlier this month of asking the city to stop work on improvements Seattle Department of Transportation claimed it asked for.

“It is heartbreaking as we were so excited to get a grant to have improvements in the Jackson Street Business District,” organizers for the Judkins Park Community Council posted about the situation. “But this project, which we may not be able to actually stop at this point, being done in our name with our hard work on getting the grant, is not acceptable.” Continue reading →

CHS Pics | Jackson’s Lake Chad open ‘until they force me to close’

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Felix Ngoussou isn’t going down without a fight. The owner of S Jackson’s Lake Chad cafe tells CHS he’s staying open “until they force me to close.” Saturday night, CHS stopped through a party at Lake Chad with the Jim O’Hollaran Trio and an effort from friends and neighbors to try to boost business.

CHS wrote about Ngoussou’s efforts to keep Lake Chad open last month. The entrepreneur and community leader tells CHS he hopes to keep Lake Chad open as a cooperative-style coffee shop that can serve as a community meeting and work space. Our report wasn’t all bad news, Ngoussou tells us. In it, he got first word his Seattle Business Education Hub nonprofit was tabbed for $164,000 in funding from the city.

In the meantime, Lake Chad remains open and ready for Central District neighbors around 23rd and Jackson to stop in. You can find it at 1712 S. Jackson. Learn more at facebook.com/lakechadcafe.coffee.

Two Central District cafes facing closure point finger at Seattle City Hall

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They both have become familiar faces whenever Central District small businesses are being discussed — usually in the context of the next big development or the next big infrastructure project promised to bring change to the neighborhoods their cafes have called home. Neighbors are now saying their goodbyes to Felix Ngoussou’s Jackson St. Lake Chad Cafe and Sara Mae’s 701 Coffee.

The 23rd and Cherry cafe owner Mae said she takes personal responsibility for 701’s closure but said she also lays blame with Seattle City Hall and District 3 representative Kshama Sawant for what she predicts will be a wave of Central District closures:

701 is just one in a line of real small businesses in the Central District that have been forced to close. We aren’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last. I firmly believe this trend will continue. There’s certainly no elected official—Kshama—that is going to give two shits about the plight of Central District Small Businesses. We have an elected official in the Central District who isn’t willing to devote some of her time and political capital to assuring that there is prosperity on the horizon for Central District small businesses. Instead she has created a movement that is based on resentment, and divisive political rhetoric that serves no purpose but to hold power, and keep people who are struggling trapped in a cycle of spinning their wheels, waiting for her precious cake. Frankly, all we have received in the aggregate from Kshama in all of this is Central District small business circumstances that has worsened under her reign.

Continue reading →

After ‘nightmare’ arson fire, Med Mix returns to the Central District

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Tuesday, we found out just how many people love tacos and broke some news about the future of food and drink at 23rd and Union. Today, CHS has good news on a sad part of 23rd and Union’s restaurant past. Five years after an arson fire destroyed its 23rd and Union shop, Med Mix is open again in the Central District.

Owner Otmane Bezzaz dropped CHS a note earlier this week to announce that, “after years of trying to come back,” his new location just off 23rd and Jackson is now open. Continue reading →