(Image: CHS)
The historic — but not landmarks protected — Olive Way Improvement Company building once home to Capitol Hill classics Holy Smoke, Coffee Messiah, and In the Bowl is being readied for demolition and redevelopment as a new mixed-use apartment project.
Early permit filings for the 1550 Olive Way project from developer Guntower Capital show plans for Runberg Architecture Group to design a seven-story, 106-unit building with street level commercial spaces for retail or food and drink, plus planned underground parking for around 22 vehicles.
At this point, any preservation of the 100-year-old structures elements does not seem to be in the plan. CHS reported here in April on the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board’s rejection of property’s nomination for possible historic protections.
Boarded up and empty of all but squatters for years, the building and property at the curving connection of Denny and E Olive Way was acquired by Guntower in a deal with its longtime owners earlier this year. The property was most recently home to a mix of businesses including the former In the Bowl, the departed Bus Stop bar and Coffee Messiah cafe and a sprawling dog lounge charred in a 2017 fire.
Seattle-based Guntower Capital has been pursuing a 102-unit mixed-use development in downtown Bellevue and developing a 24-story, 237-unit apartment building in the University District. Executives include Charlie Bauman, a former partner at barrientos RYAN, “a unique urban real estate development firm focused on making places” that has been active in Capitol Hill development.
The building has been part of the city’s vacant building monitoring program but the previous owners “struggled to be good stewards of the community” a city spokesperson told CHS earlier this year. The building has not been cited for any violations since the acquisition.
The new project joins a small wave of development activity set to further transform E Olive Way. CHS reported here on the plans on the south side of E Olive Way replacing the former Coldwell Banker building and three others with a seven-story mixed-use project from Canada-based real estate investment and management company Low Tide Properties. There are also plans for a new eight-story mixed use project being readied for the All Season Cleaners property just below Broadway. And a new eight-story, mass timber City Market building is also in the works. Meanwhile, the stretch is one of the few in the city where local, state, and federal restrictions allow retail marijuana permits and investment from the industry including The Reef building across the street has followed.
Plenty of process remains before any ground will be broken at the Denny and Olive site including a planned design review sequence that must be completed with the city.
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This is great news! Keep on building Seattle!
Used to live around the corner.. Was just thinking the other day as the bus went by that I was so glad to not be living in what looks like the midst of a garbage dump! I’m sure the replacement building will be boring, but for a change I’m glad something will be put there. You need more parking though. When I lived there, several friends wouldn’t visit because it was hard to park.
Or maybe folks who choose to live without a car will live there, since it’s right next to downtown and just a couple blocks from a light rail station, so there’s less of a need for off-street parking.
Yes please! Anything but that decrepit eyesore there now. It’s a shame the historic building has fallen into disrepair. In a perfect world the historic building would be saved and apartments built on top, like some of the old auto row buildings, but demo and building up is a good consolation prize. Now I just want to know the plans for the boarded up Starbucks.
Yes, exactly! The facade with its individual arches would be perfect to save to add a beautiful element to the new building and to add a non-cookie cutter look to all businesses that set up shop in the new building..just take a look at the desirability of the saved facades over in Pike, Pine area and Broadway. The cool historic facades add so much. In historic elements and walkability. Then they are taken down it is such a loss and the nee building has much less value. It would guess the rents would be lower but for businesses and for living units as they just aren’t special, they are just a new box with no historic value.
This building had some history that the Paul Dorpat’s of the world — love him — nonetheless don’t know. Specifically, it was one of the staging areas for the WTO protesters during N30 1999. Among those using the then-empty space in back were a group calling themselves Eugene Bombthrowers’ Local 666. The empty restaurant – it had just closed the year before – was not yet a dog daycare space, and it was ideal for dozens of out of town protest tourists to use and stage from. Coffee Messiah had protester – anarchy-friendly owner – provided them with extension cord for power, a working bathroom to use, and space heat. This was one of the locations they were running their primitive yet effective WWW page updates – a precursor to Twitter or Twitch feeds – to coordinate the Anarchists’ actions and check-ins and to know which locations in Belltown and Downtown to engage cops with. Cops were being routed all week by better logistics and opsec by the protesters, and one of their command centers was this building.
Something that should be filed away as local legend history if it’s going away. I lived in Faneuil Hall that year, across the alley from this building, and got to see it all unfold; my building was surrounded in chain link checkpoint and I had to give ID to riot-helmeted police to be allowed to enter for 4 days. We tended to just shelter in place and hope the tear gas was blowing the other direction … but did get a nice view down onto the organizers, including many people using that space. Got the detail from the owner of Coffee Messiah later on. Always struck me as fairly hilarious they put so much work into security aimed at Faneuil Hall, but right next door was a command center for the anarchists, and police seemed fairly oblivious. No arrests I saw happened there, no building raids. After 5 days they all left, leaving behind mounds of trash but not much else. Just stories.
Interesting bit of history. Hopefully it is reflected somewhere among the records of the WTO protests.
“a unique urban real estate development firm focused on making places”
As opposed to what? Rarely have I seen a more innocuous promotional statement. I hope they better conceive parking ingress and egress otherwise that intersection could be a permanent disaster.
Anyone remember the nail store and supercuts?
I went to that Supercuts. And let’s not forget Arabica Lounge, short-lived but well-loved!
Arabica Lounge changed my relationship with myself. Best wishes to the owner, who moved to Berlin some years ago.
The previous owners “struggled to be good stewards of the community” aka slumlords who let a beautiful historic building rot into the ground waiting to cash out.
Such a shame they probably won’t keep anything. This used to be one of the prettiest commercial buildings on the hill. I curse the former owners every time I walk past it.
Will anyone be able to afford to live in this new project or any of the others planned on Olive?
Are you asking if the apartments will remain vacant once built for lack of people that can pay to live there? Unlikely.
It’s great that this eyesore will be gone. But the re-construction period will be very difficult for motorists, as that intersection is already very problematic for much of the day, and the inevitable street closures will make it much, much worse. Alternative routes, anyone?
Light rail.
Maybe consider driving your car less? Slower traffic up Olive would be a be a benefit to the neighborhood vs the current demolition derby situation
Would be nice if the facade could be restored and incorporated into the new building, but I know it’ll be just the same generic vinyl and Hardie POS apartment building that looks like every other disposible building built in the last 15 years.
Save the DOTCOM, BTM, and EAGR graffiti!!!!!!!! JK, I hope they tear it down soon.
When I moved to Seattle in 1980, Vyvyn Lazonga, aka Madame Lazonga, had a studio in one of the spaces. I was considering a tattoo but the only thing I could afford was a small black fly. I considered putting it on my forehead (jk) but resisted.
Used to live nearby; sold my condo in 2020– no regrets. Sad to see this once beautiful building turn into a dump, but it has.
Have a very specific memory of walking by one EARLY morning in 2018-2019, and an old homeless man combing his hair in a giant mirror in a window. 😔