(Image: CHS)

A year after The Reef won the race to bring legal pot to Capitol Hill’s western slope of E Olive Way, its neighborhood competition will finally begin construction on its new store.

Last week, the city’s planning department finally approved the construction permit for Uncle Ike’s “Capitol Hill West” shop, a project that will convert a former two-story legal office building neighboring The Crescent into E Olive Way’s second marijuana store.

Pot entrepreneur Ian Eisenberg paid more than $2 million for the two-story, 1967-era property in the fall of 2017 as a land rush for E Olive Way properties played out after shifting laws and policies opened up the street to I-502 pot development.

But the long wait for state approval and city permitting has made the investment a long-term play for Eisenberg who opened the original Uncle Ike’s, the city’s second ever I-502 pot shop, at 23rd and Union in 2014, and added a second Central Seattle Uncle Ike’s on 15th Ave E in late 2016.

The Reef, meanwhile, opened in the former Amante Pizza location in August 2018. The Reef’s new home made the old pizza shop nearly unrecognizable after a redesign of the interior by architects Olson Kundig. The Reef’s look and feel is modern and bright and its opening announcement played up the shop’s technology-forward approach to pot and the store’s location on “Capitol Hill’s Amazon Slope.”

Eisenberg hasn’t said much publicly about the coming Capitol Hill West shop and permit documents reveal only that the work will transform the two-story building and an added first-floor addition into a new retail space.

In June, his Central District original Uncle Ike’s clocked in with just under $700,000 in sales while his 15th Ave E shop turned in a $620,000 — down about 20% compared to last June. Total reported marijuana sales in the period were flat according to 502data.com. The Reef sales on E Olive Way, meanwhile, have been steadily rising. In June, the company reported its biggest sales month ever since moving from Bremerton to Capitol Hill with around $521, 000 in sales.

Overall, Uncle Ike’s shops have generated nearly $85 million in sales since 2014. Around $32 million of that has gone to Olympia under the I-502 excise tax.

Both The Reef and Uncle Ike’s are CHS advertisers.

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