The old theater marquee has been boarded-up with hopes of lighting up for a new tenant
Capitol Hill will head into the new year with no clear plans for its two largest empty commercial spaces leaving an entire block of E Pike and one of Broadway’s most prominent corners shuttered, darkened, and disconnected.
A CHS review of real estate listings, construction and business permits, and details from commercial real estate professionals familiar with the properties shows that both the 7,200-square-foot former Broadway Rite Aid and the boarded-up 8,000-square-foot E Pike grocery formerly home to Amazon Fresh are likely to remain empty well into 2025.
Both of the spaces are especially challenging leases as their relatively massive square footage collides with the rates typically required in the current Capitol Hill commercial real estate market. Meanwhile, there are fewer and fewer smaller suites available with recent closures mostly quickly claimed by new tenants.
201 Broadway E, where the Rite Aid was shuttered a year ago as massive drugstore chains filed for bankruptcy to settle federal and state opioid lawsuits, the property is being marketed as the “historic Broadway Theater” as its owners look for a new tenant.
That search is a major challenge. The building’s longtime local ownership was not interested in talking about it.
“I spoke with the owner, and he prefers no comments at this time,” one agent involved with the listing told CHS. “Best of luck with your work.”
The 201 Broadway E listing touts the history of the 1911-era building that last served as a movie theater in the 1990s and promotes the opportunity in the “marquis (sic) location on corner of Broadway & Olive.” The listing does not include a lease rate but recent deals have ranged from $35 per square foot to more than $50.
So far, the search for a tenant has been the focus. Pressures to sell the property and develop it could follow.
Just across from the busy transit, retail, and residential development of Capitol Hill Station, the corner appears to be a prime candidate for redevelopment. Next door, an eight-story project is being lined up for the All-Seasons dry cleaners property — after a lengthy soil remediation process. The family ownership of All-Seasons also owns the property and has continued to serve the neighborhood even as the project filings have slowly made their way through the Seattle development process.
The 114-year-old Broadway Theater building is still being cared for with permits showing a plan for pressure washing and repainting was in the works just prior to Rite Aid’s exit late last year. Vandalism and attempted entry into the emptied building are ongoing problems. It has been long-held by Limantzakis Properties, a relatively small commercial landlord with properties across Seattle.
The holder of Capitol Hill’s other massive hole in its commercial real estate fabric is a much larger entity.
AvalonBay Communities is a publicly traded real estate investment trust that invests in apartments and development across the country. Its street level grocery space of the AVA Capitol Hill apartments building has been empty since the abrupt April closure of Amazon Fresh after four years of business on the block.
Unlike the Broadway Rite Aid, there is no active listing for the 601 E Pike lease. Calls to AvalonBay have not been returned. It has been dealing with complaints of vandalism and graffiti on the shuttered block-long storefront.
According to people familiar with the space, it is possible lease terms with Amazon are limiting the ability — or need -to market the listing. A nearby example is the exit of Chase Bank from the Harvard Market shopping center. Under terms of the lease agreed to by the financial giant, the shopping center’s ownership said it was still receiving payments for the space making the search for a replacement tenant a low priority. That financial floor has opened the door to the Market’s owners striking a deal with an unusual client. The city says it is planning a Community Assisted Response and Engagement (CARE) station on the street level of the Harvard Market shopping center in the former bank space.
An alternative use of the former Amazon grocery might be the fastest way forward on activating the shuttered block. On 15th Ave E, Capitol Hill-based developers Hunters Capital have been busy keeping the street’s old QFC active with short-term tenant the Punk Rock Flea Market until the redevelopment process can dig in. Downtown, the city is backing the transformation of the massive former Bed Bath & Beyond into Cannonball Arts, a venue for art exhibits, concerts, and fashion shows hoped to open early next year.
Amazon, meanwhile, has been on the lease paperwork on E Pike for more than a decade. The Capitol Hill Amazon Fresh closed seven and a half years after CHS first reported on rumors surrounding the then top secret project and ten years after the first early paperwork indicated a grocery was in the works.
2025 will bring hope for reclaiming these neighborhood spaces left behind by corporate quarterly reports and Wall Street. On E Olive Way, the popular Starbucks closed by the coffee giant two years ago as part of a streak of shutdowns over what it said were public safety concerns amid an ongoing labor battle will finally come back to life next year.
All the Best Pet Care announced it is moving into the 4,000-square-foot commercial building that has stood on E Olive Way and served as a home to a string of restaurants and big chains like Boston Market and Starbucks since 1937.
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First movie I saw at that theatre was Repo Man. Theatre itself was quite unremarkable ( unlike the Harvard Exit, at the North end of Broadway or the Egyptian at the South end).
My conclusion: no particular need to preserve the marquee ( send it to MOHAI?).
It would be cool to preserve the marquee for decoration of whatever taller building replaces the current one-story building. Similar to how the Elephant Car Wash sign was preserved in SLU.
Do we really need to destroy that block? I like the oldness of it
Hi Derek! I am somehow surprised by your comment. This is probably the only thing I’ve ever agreed with you on. Thought you’d want it torn down for eight stories of “affordable ” housing.
Here with your regular reminder that ANY additional housing stock on the market helps improve affordability in an area because it eases the burden on existing units; new buildings don’t have to be affordable themselves, they just need to lure people who can afford to move up & free up space in older buildings so everyone isn’t competing for the same handful of units!
Trickle down housing?
Yeah who cares about more housing?
Thank you for tracking these sites! It’s so frustrating that the neighborhood has so much commercial vacancy.
The real estate conglomerates would prefer high rent but with no tenant than to lower or to entice leasing it almost seems like. My apartment building has had 2 empty store fronts since 2019.
The real estate conglomerates do the same thing as Trump. Sometimes it is better for their bottom line to have a vacant space on the books with an artificially inflated price than lowering the cost to attract a small business tenant. Lower retail rent would ripple through their property portfolio. Some of these firms also have policies that they will only rent to other corporate clients, not to local small businesses. The city needs a vacancy tax to put pressure on the corporate developers to fill their commercial spaces that sit vacant for years. The revenue could be used to lower costs and fees for small businesses and to subsidize the buildout for new small businesses.
Look up real estate loan covenants to understand why they sometimes cannot lease a property for a lower price. They’ve told the bank they won’t go below a certain price per sqft, but they’re allowed an extended period of vacancy due to macroeconomic issues.
When the goal is to own more buildings than to fill space in buildings, they artificially raise the minimum rent so the building becomes equity on a new loan.
I would consider regulations that loans can ONLY be calculated on leases in hand. No more, “I’ll rent that tiny store for 2 million dollars per month, so lend me $30 to buy someplace else.
The real estate management companies are focused on creating as many square feet of unoccupied space. This is a blight on the city.
Oh ya, I would be for that. Otherwise then they have no incentive to fill the space and then the blight and vacancy persists.
Yes. Also tax on coming in and tearing down affordable housing like at Mercer and Federal. Housing for maybe 20 people or more. Gone. Chinese firm bought it, tore it down, fenced it off, lots of crap in there now, and did nothing to improve and now trying to sell for megabucks more. Sucks. Lots of people used to live there.
Yes, those now-vacant lots are a blight on the neighborhood. I wonder for how much longer? There should be a law that there is only a certain length of time between demolition and the start of a new project.
That’s just one of many ‘tools’ people with money have that we in poverty do not.
Great idea
There is a reason for this. They are less concerned with revenue and profit. What they want are huge assets. In valuing the price of a building, they calculate sq footage times the lowest rent/sq foot. The building is more valuable empty. The building’s sole purpose is to. build up the balance sheet so the company can buy more property. The real goal is how many buildings do you own. I like the idea of an “unused” space tax.
My concern would be the temptation to construct an entity merely to conform to a law.
Also the Bartells, the Capitol Hill one and First Hill one are still vacant. Wonder what will
Come of those. First Hill could use something. I always come to Capitol Hill, despite a lot of people living just south of it, bummer not as many stores or food places as there could be.
I moved into Ava this year. Management told me Amazon is still paying their lease but they are in violation due to the location being closed.
This is the kind of thing where city leadership needs to take action, there need to be massive fines for this sort of thing. Amazon obviously doesn’t care, Ava doesn’t care that much as long as they’re getting paid, but it’s a huge problem for the people who actually live in the area.
You think fining a business will get them to _not_ close an underperforming location? I think it will just get them to be extra cautious about opening locations, net result being fewer retail businesses.
No, I think fining Ava would pressure them to evict Amazon and open the space to a new tenant.
Of course the real problem, and the source of urban blight, is the people who break into the properties, vandalise them, and graffiti every square inch. Why has noone mentioned dealing with those derelicts? Without them these are just temporarily empty buildings. Not great, admittedly, but not urban blight. The blight is the responsibility of those who break the law on a regular basis by committing property crimes, not the property owners.
If the companies fixed them up,. I would understand. They don’t want to rent the properties.
Seriously? That’s the real problem?
This is a pretty bad case of whataboutism to me, tbh: “What do you mean you want to make it harder for large conglomerates to profit off of leaving large commercial spaces empty at a neighborhood’s expense for the sake of their bottom line? What about the GRAFFITI PEOPLE?” The second thing can be an issue without negating a single point made in this thread so far–it’s just not the issue that is the subject of this particular discussion.
bring on the vacancy tax. commercial and residential. in a place like capitol hill it should genuinely be a crime for such valuable spaces to go unoccupied for no other reason than price. pick a percentage of their proposed rent as the tax amount and have it increase regularly or reset if they lower the rent by a significant amount. with a budget shortfall we have to be looking at hitting up the local moneybags, not at more regressive taxes.
What’s your evidence that the only thing stopping a tenant is price?
ALL economic theory is price vs. demand. Businesses scream they are paying too much or there’s not enough supply. Then they turn around and say no one is willing to pay. Look at all the empty luxury condos. I know the building cycle takes 5-10 years. Why do they seem surprised when they all build new buildings that open. at the same time that they can’t rent them.
i don’t really understand this objection…? price would seem to me to be by far the single most important factor, certainly many small businesses owners i know have said as much. do you have something else in mind like evidence to the contrary, or are you just muddying the waters?
basic economics, babe. (also, i have a couple friends actively working on starting businesses right now who would ABSOLUTELY move to some of the empty buildings in the neighborhood if the prices weren’t so high; it’s definitely a thing.)
Absolutely. 100 percent. YES!
I can understand a vacancy tax on commercial property but residential properties? really? If I buy a place and I spend 3-6 months renovating it before moving in, should I and other homeowners in that same situation be forced to pay a vacancy tax? Or if my company offers me a year-long opportunity overseas and I don’t sell my place, should I have to pay a vacancy tax on my property b/c I’m not living in it for just a year?
i should have been more clear – I meant for landlords and other large scale owners, not individual homeowners. and of course it would not happen immediately in order to accommodate everyday scenarios and ordinary gaps in occupancy. probably kicking in after a year would be fine, but I’m not a legislator obviously!
Our last rep actually tried to tax Amazon and developers but you guys were butthurt because she was a woman who yelled a lot. But now we have an idpol black women who owns a business and wants business owners to get money before workers.
I think the main reason people were butthurt was actually because she was one of the worst politicians in Seattle history who left a destructive wake behind her wherever she went.
I remember how weird the Broadway Theater felt. Steep, long, dark, and narrow. I went to see Das Boot, the German submarine story, and the theater felt just like being in a submarine. I recall freaking out during the movie. Who says pot wasn’t good in the ‘80’s?
Afterwards we would go to Charlie’s for Banana Daiquiri’s.
Old Broadway was so cool.
I love the idea of a vacancy tax. An owner should not be able to sit on a vacant property in order to resist downward market pressure. It creates blight, and destroys the fabric of the entire neighborhood. Capitol Hill is the most dense residential neighborhood in the entire city, but there are very few places to buy practical goods (ie. a pack of socks, wrapping paper, etc). I miss the Fred Meyer that used to occupy the back of the Broadway Market.
We desperately need more 3rd spaces that don’t cost a ton of money to visit, particularly for folks 18-21. I wish these spaces could be used in a way that benefited the community.
Let’s also consider the closed Egyptian theater on Pine, the closed A&T on Pike, and the closed Bartels in Harvard Market. Looks like the Century Ballroom on Pine may close, and Walgreens plans hundreds of closures. The site for the new Youth Center on Pine/Broadway ight be finished in our lifetimes. And the empty strip of stores under Pride Place seem to scream out: We are a real estate company, so we cannot make mistakes–trust us, it’s worth paying twice the rent–did you think businesses are supposed to make a profit?”
The spaces will stay empty or get torn down. Commercial rent is unmanageable in Seattle.