Thanks to reader Sandy for the tip and picture!
E Barbara Bailey Way finally has a coffee shop. Some five years after planning for the project first began, the Seasmith cafe and casual hangout from the Burien Press family of businesses has opened above Capitol Hill Station.
The opening is a pull of happy news in a sad week around the busy transit facility.
The opening of Seasmith has been quite the endeavor. CHS reported here in November as light could finally be seen at the end of a subway tunnel of pandemic, government, and property management bureaucracy red tape.
Even then, it has taken another six months for the cafe to finally go into motion.
Seasmith’s arrival joins the expanded Glo’s Diner (May 2023), and H Mart’s M2M grocery market (April 2022) as the development’s commercial tenants have finally reached critical mass more than eight years after the station went into service.
Seasmith will be much welcomed. The busy light rail station serves thousands of riders daily and this stretch of Broadway lost its big chain coffee provider when Starbucks pulled out of most of its Capitol Hill locations. No loss. That old Starbucks is set to become a new spot for a Carmelo’s Tacos location.
Across the intersection, the new cafe is envisioned as an “all day cafe, really looking at how do we create something that is activating every part of the day — coffee, fresh food in morning, full kitchen, lunch, dinner, beer, natural wine,” owner Matthew Wendland said about Seasmith when we first spoke to him about it in 2021.
For now, the “all day” Seasmith is beginning with limited hours — 7 AM to 2 PM daily, according to CHS tipster Sandy. The new cafe is located at 118 Broadway E. Seasmith’s website and social media are still getting set up so check out @burienpress for updates in the meantime. UPDATE: @seasmith.xyz is now live.
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Honestly it’s so awesome to see Starbucks totally get shafted from that corner for local businesses. Yay Capitol Hill!
Wasn’t the first Starbucks less than a mile from here? Also, aren’t they still headquartered in Seattle, with thousands of local HQ employees?
Just trying to understand what “local” means here…
This is irrelevant. Starbucks is a publicly traded corporation that cashed out their local status a long time ago. Local is not about geography, it is being a part of the community you do business in (for starters).
Starbucks, Amazon, and their corporate peers are not local businesses in Seattle, they are merely *located* in Seattle.
Yes, and excited for Carmelo’s to take over the actual former SB space!
WOOOT welcome to the neighborhood.
We need more businesses – and separately, more businesses that stay open late in the hood