From a Harvard Market lease promotion
The company says it is simply responding to changing “shopping habits” of Seattle mobile phone consumers as the AT&T store at Pike and Broadway has been permanently closed.
“Consumer shopping habits continue to change, and we’re changing with them,” an AT&T spokesperson tells CHS. “That means serving customers where they are through the right mix of retail stores, digital channels, and our phone-based care team. In April, we opened a new store at 1504 6th Avenue in downtown Seattle. It’s less than a mile from the Pike location and is easily accessible to the public.”
AT&T says shoppers can also visit its University Village shopping center location.
“We take pride in our continued community presence and local network investments,” the spokesperson said.
The Capitol Hill closure comes as the latest blow to the image of the busy intersection of Broadway and Pike where the corner has established an unfortunately prominent place in Seattle’s twin fentanyl and homelessness epidemics. A Seattle Police Department and Seattle Fire analysis found that 10 continuous street segments in the city “had a combined count of crimes against persons and overdose incidents of 100 or greater, accounting for a disproportionate amount of co-occurrence.” Broadway and Pike made the list — twice.
The ownership of the Harvard Market shopping center the AT&T store was part of says to be ready for a long run of the empty storefront. Morris Groberman tells CHS that the company holds a lease into 2025 for the E Pike fronting suite and that the shopping center “can’t touch it” without foregoing the guaranteed rent.
Groberman said the deal was better around the corner when Chase pulled out of its Harvard Market location. The banking giant bailed on Broadway and Pike by paying off its lease to leave the location freeing Harvard Market to search for a new tenant.
Those kinds of tiny drops in the massive corporate leasing budget of global giants ripple heavily into daily life in neighborhoods across the country. Just down E Pike, the empty hull of the former Amazon Fresh grocery remains and has been covered in a heavy blanket of graffiti. We don’t know the terms of that lease and exit.
We have a better view of what is happening at Harvard Market thanks to local ownership including Groberman. Despite the challenges identified in the city report about drug use and street disorder around the shopping center, the property owner and developer says he believes there has already been major changes on his block thanks to renewed public safety efforts and Harvard Market’s own investments in security. He says they have brought on Praetorian Protection Corporation to provide stronger private security on the block — and around the clock including an intensified effort to stop tagging and vandalism. The ominous sounding security detail is named an “elite Roman army,” Groberman says, and is helping get the job done on clearing out the area around Harvard Market — though, Groberman acknowledges, many of the problem issues are now pushed to other nearby blocks.
Harvard Market has its hands full as the Capitol Hill commercial real estate market is fully shifting away from any remnants of traditional retail and services. Upstairs, Groberman said the plan might include breaking up the big 15,000-square-foot space that was home to Bartell Drugs before its corporate implosion into new food and drink or services spaces.
The neighborhood landlords also must keep an eye on the corporate maneuverings around their largest resident business. CHS reported here earlier this month on plans for the two Broadway QFC stores to be sold off As Kroger and Albertsons work toward a $25 billion merger. The Harvard Market QFC is 46,000 square feet and owned by the grocery corporation in a condominium agreement.
In the meantime, there are smaller deals already locked down. On the center’s upper level, “luxury spa services, gourmet treats and premium pet nutrition” chain Woof Gang Bakery & Grooming is lined up to take a space adjacent Harvard Market’s large upper parking lot.
Despite the challenges and uncertainty, Harvard Market appears to be continuing to find new ways to stay part of the neighborhood now nearly 30 years since it was developed.
Groberman, while looking forward at the coming fast future of commercial real estate, looks backward to explain the demand. “Parking is still key,” he claims. But the bigger draw, he knows, are the now densely-packed blocks of apartment buildings and mixed-use developments surrounding the shopping center. “We have so much activity,” Groberman said. “There are thousands living right nearby.”
Thirty years later, that density might eventually be the future for Harvard Market as Groberman says that the opportunity of mixed-use redevelopment looms. But don’t expect those kinds of changes soon.
“That won’t be my future,” Groberman said.
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Maybe it’s also because AT&T donates millions and millions to anti-LGBTQ senators trying to pass laws against us and the gays are sick of it?!
Nah they probably just didn’t want to be located in one of the worst places in the city.
Oh great more blight on Pike and more space for the loser graffiti tag gangs.
We need more jail beds. King County reduced the number of jail beds by 50% during Covid and never added them back. It was Dow Constantine’s backdoor way to appease criminal justice zealots like Shawn Scott that wanted to abolish prisons. We need to get the drug dealers and repeat offenders off the streets or the death spiral for places like Pike and Broadway and 12th and Jackson and the lost souls that flocked to these areas for drugs will continue. Once the businesses are all chased out of Capitol Hill, it will be very difficult to right the ship. This is a crisis that requires immediate action from our elected officials and SPD.
Maybe we need more shelters and affordable housing. Not jail stuff.
Yeah it’s been so crazy, no lie. It’s so hard to find open businesses in Capitol Hill even now to be honest. Where are all the people at? Nowhere in sight. All’s left is just zombies that eat drugs like friggin candy corn. No block parties or restaurants will even be there by next year, and I’m FED UP!!! Take me back to 2019 when everything was perfect please. Ugh. Are we having fun yet?
100% Yes – agreed. Enforce the law.
you think they reduced bed count at county… during the pandemic… to appease protestors? KCJ is the most notoriously overcrowded jail in the state. it has a lot of big tanks where like 20 inmates share air. KCJ was already a petri dish before, during covid if they operated at full capacity it would have been an incubator. . my guess is it operates so much more safely now that it’s at a lower max limit that they are refusing to return to the unsafe pre-pandemic levels. the idea that this was some kind of SJW trojan horse is not realistic.
I don’t disagree that we need some bad actors off the streets. but this is not a seattle problem, let alone a capitol hill problem. it’s happening all over the country and world in urban areas. no one has found a solution for the combination of circumstances that produced the housing and drug crisis we’re seeing. the justice system is overwhelmed in every big city. anyone selling you a simple solution has something to gain by it.
You have zero evidence of that because you pulled it out of your @SS. Pandemic-era booking restrictions are still in place because there aren’t enough guards to maintain safety standards of pre-Covid inmate population levels. If you want to say “Hire more guards” and/or “Who cares about inmate safety,” then knock yourself out. But you don’t get to flat-out make sh*t up.
That part of Broadway is going through some things. Tweakers are multiplying and have turned a lot of the storefronts into permanent hang outs.
Yea it’s always had a rough side, but not like this.
Looking at the average income feels apocalyptic.
Who cares, it’s an at&t store. There’s no way it employed more than 5 people and I’m sure they did everything they could to pay them as little as possible. Decimate the economy of capitol hill and bring back the artists please. There was less crime, homelessness and gun violence before the mid 2010’s boom and the rent was lower. Do the math on that.
Good riddance. My grandmother went in there looking for something specific and was clear about that, and was pressured and bullied into a two year smartphone contract which she never needed. Hours wasted on the phone trying to get AT&T to sort out and reverse what that store sold, only to be told the store is a franchise and they can’t do anything about sales tactics in individual stores.
Curious: What was she looking for at an AT&T store?
Yeah, everything about AT&T sucks but that store was extra terrible. I bought a new iPhone, declined the insurance, then later saw they had added it anyway.
Went back to complain & ask for my money back, and the manager got mad at ME for being angry and “making him look bad” in front of other customers [who I’d just tipped off about his scam] and refused to help.
The young woman who worked there was helpful and nice, but couldn’t issue a refund w/o her manager’s sign off. F. that store.
100% I hope it gets razed and a lot more parking + storefronts can be added in its place
lol more parking
I was going to say this.
Dated architectural nightmare: weird 90s, car-centric design with that awful roof parking. Zero charm.
Just everything about the structure is hostile and depressing, and thanks to a truly garbage design — thanks terrible architects! — there’s little to be done aside from demolition and rebuild.
That whole corner is awful: the diagonal is an ugly gas station that shouldn’t be there. Then there’s the surface parking to the north. And what’s up with the decaying abandoned upper floors on the building abutting the gas station?
Such a mess and a lot has to do with the design of structures at the corner — Harvard Market is unusable, depressing garbage architecture and to have a gas station kitty corner? Whole block needs serious demo-and-rebuild.
No arguments! Horrible depressing intersection/block on such an otherwise unique part of the city.
Pride Place looks like a gay prison.
And another dot connected creating a sad picture of the future of this neighborhood. It looks like it does now but even worse if you can imagine. Our city neighborhood will be void of all places of necessity. I don’t blame them for leaving this shithole. Don’t get it twisted. The crime and vandalism is why they and many other businesses have/are leaving. The city has washed it’s hands of Pine/Broadway. Once it’s empty, it will likely become a huge camp for living and loud partying, sorry residents around Harvard Market. I feel for you now in anticipation of what IS COMING. And the crime will come back to all our neighborhoods without places to shoplift from.