(Image: Nook & Cranny Books)
Capitol Hill’s Nook & Cranny Books has lost its lease and is raising funds to help it find a new home.
“Nook & Cranny needs your help getting over this hurdle,” owner Maren Comendant writes. “We are pursuing small business loans for the long-term, but your support will help cover the upfront costs of a significant move: deposit and increased rent, additional shelving and furniture, and rebuilding inventory.” Continue reading
By Emily Riehl
Holiday shoppers looking to keep their dollars in the neighborhood have a new option on 15th Ave E that also features sustainable products, accessible design services, and a commitment to causes like fighting homelessness.
Rufous and Co. in many ways is a front-end, user friendly interface for interior design — a new home decor and design shop on the street level of the new Hilltop Apartments building that serves as a fun place to shop and the start of working with owner Jim MacLean to shape Seattle living spaces.
“My design approach is very client driven. When a client has an aesthetic, I make sure it’s appropriate for the house, the architecture of the home, and I try to push them to think of things they didn’t think of before or provide them with resources that they didn’t have before,” MacLean says. “I try to make it very collaborative and keep the client thoroughly involved in the process.”
After studying design at Cornish College of the Arts, MacLean developed a strong interest in visual merchandising and spent 20 years at Nordstrom, starting as a part-time employee in college, and eventually rising to the role of a regional manager. He has collaborated with renowned brands like Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent, and for nearly 24 years, has led his own design firm, working with at least a dozen clients, some including the Seattle Art Museum and Saint Mark’s Cathedral. He has contributed to in-store development and visual merchandising for companies like L’Oréal, Clarisonic, Sur La Table, and Things Remembered. Continue reading
Inside the Broadway Market QFC
A day after legal rulings blocked the proposed $25 billion agreement, the planned merger that would combine the Safeway and QFC grocery families is off leaving behind scraps of Capitol Hill paperwork and plenty of uncertainty about the future of the neighborhood’s grocery shopping needs.
Tuesday’s legal decisions included a crippling injunction issued by a federal judge following a three-week hearing in Portland over the proposed merger combining the Albertsons and Kroger companies. Albertsons says it is now backing out of the agreement and suing Kroger over its failure to secure regulatory approval for the massive merger the companies have said was necessary to address spiraling costs and competition from Walmart and Amazon.
On Capitol Hill, the multibillion dollar deal was already in motion with early maneuverings. This summer, CHS reported as a company formed by C&S Wholesale Grocers applied to assume the liquor license for the QFC grocery store in Capitol Hill’s Harvard Market shopping center. Both Capitol Hill QFC grocery stores appeared on the roster of “Planned Divestiture Store, Distribution Center, and Plant Locations” as industry giants Kroger and Albertsons promised to shed hundreds of locations as they worked toward the merger.
A $1.9 billion sale of locations would have included 579 stores across the country including 124 in Washington to be acquired by C&S, owner of the Piggly Wiggly brand that was once a staple on Capitol Hill and across the city. Continue reading
On The Block Seattle’s inaugural HOLIDAY SPECIAL Marketplace & End-of-Year Fundraiser Celebration is Friday
To help the 11th Ave arts scene with your holiday shopping, head to 15th Ave E.
Friday night, the Quality Flea Center is playing host to On the Block Seattle’s HOLIDAY SPECIAL Marketplace & End-of-Year Fundraiser Celebration:
FRIDAY, DEC 13TH 🎉🎁🎄🎅🏾💚 Come join us for our On The Block Seattle’s inaugural HOLIDAY SPECIAL Marketplace & End-of-Year Fundraiser Celebration.🎉🎉🎅🏾🎁🎄Our first INDOORS market at the @qualityfleacenter for the holiday season!! 🙌🏽🎄💚🚧 So much space for 70+ local vendors 🤩🤩 Black Santa photobooth @blacksanta206 , raffles games, food and hot beverages, and so much more!! 💚 Join us for this special celebration!! 🎅🏾🎄🎉
Location: Indoors at @qualityfleacenter – 416 15th Ave E, Seattle, WA 98112
Market hours: 4 pm – 9:30 pm
On the Block is the organizer behind the free street market series that has filled 11th Ave with music, artists, and vendors in recent summers. OTB’s Julie-C has helped make 11th Ave a center of activity with her efforts at Blue Cone Studios, So Below, and The Study at CryBaby. On the Block organizers include Mediums Collective, Throwbacks NW, and Vermillion Art Gallery and Bar.
HELP KEEP CHS PAYWALL-FREE
Subscribe to CHS to help us hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you.
Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for as little as $5 a month.
(Image: CHS)
Things are a little less convenient around Capitol Hill’s 15th Ave E. After three decades serving the neighborhood, the ShopRite cornershop has closed for good and its remaining stock and fixtures have been cleared out.
The closure comes after a long goodbye clearance sale that started this summer. ShopRite’s inventory is now the stuff of Capitol Hill legend with tales of what you could find stocked there bested only by tales of what you could not.
The 1904-era Moore Family building ShopRite has called home and the former QFC grocery store on the block are destined to make way for a planned 6-story, “S” design building with 170 new apartment units above 10,000 square feet of retail space and underground parking for 99 vehicles. Continue reading
Image courtesy Cristi Russo
A map of Lord Byron’s roamings from lordbyron.pet
The King of Cat-paw-tol Hill is dead. A memorial grows at 20th and Denny to mark his passing.
Lord Byron, whose years of exploring and making this corner of the city his own earned the orange tabby a place among neighborhood royalty, was 8.
“The best thing about LB was the way he brought people together,” his family tells CHS about the cat’s passing. “It’s what we ❤️ about Capitol Hill and Seattle.”
“Also, he would want everyone to vote,” they added.
Lord Byron, it is true, often had the community and its snacks and soft couches and excellent chin scratches in mind. And Lord Byron always had an angle. Continue reading
(Image: Weber Thompson)
The development project to create a new Safeway grocery store and mixed-use apartment complex at the corner of 15th and John has overcome its final regulatory hurdle.
The City of Seattle issued a Master Use Permit for the long-planned project on Halloween day, records show.
The issuance is the final major step in the city’s development process for a project from developer Greystar and the Weber Thompson development team to create two new five-story buildings including a new grocery, around 330 market rate apartment units, some new, smaller retail spaces, and an underground parking lot for more than 300 cars on the Safeway property at 15th and John.
The development has been in the works for years. CHS first broke the news on the plans in 2019. Plans had called for a start of construction in 2024 and a possible 2026 opening of the project. Continue reading
(Image: Thistle & Poppy)
Cute kids in 5-panel hats? This shop is for you (Image: Thistle & Poppy)
The new lights strung up by the neighborhood merchant group will help. So will a burst of color from new 15th Ave E shop Thistle & Poppy.
The Seattle-born new and “reloved” online kids retailer is debuting its first brick and mortar store this weekend in the space left empty by the move of the neighborhood Rudy’s Barbershop up the street. Eventually lined up to be demolished to make way for a new mixed-used development, the current building will be Thistle & Poppy’s real-world home for the foreseeable future.
“Founded in 2022, Thistle & Poppy is an online retailer offering a curated selection of sustainable and heirloom quality goods as well as a collection of vintage and found clothing, toys, books, and objects,” owner Catherine Roth says about the “family concept shop.” Continue reading
Ready and willing on 15th Ave E (Image: CHS)
It is a small piece of a giant system but Capitol Hill voters can hopefully rest a little easier knowing the United State Postal Service is checking every last box when it comes to making sure ballots are getting where they are supposed to go in the state’s popular all-mail system.
The 15th Ave E rogue mailbox is in service and carriers won’t leave ballots hanging in election limbo in 2024, the USPS says.
“The U.S. Postal Service is committed to the timely and secure delivery of election mail and has a plan in place to make sure all collection boxes are in working order for our customers,” a USPS spokesperson tells CHS.
Following last year’s November election, officials scrambled after it turned out 85 ballots were buried in mail that had not been collected from the USPS dropbox located near Kaiser Permanente’s Capitol Hill campus. Continue reading
(Image: Seattle Police Department)
Police are working to tie a flurry of armed robberies at Capitol Hill-area convenience stores to a string of nearly 80 increasingly violent hold-ups across Seattle and King County.
The Seattle Police Department says a task force arrested a group of teens and an adult suspect Thursday after tracking the group to Federal Way and chasing them down in a stolen mercedes:
The targets of the majority of these robberies were gas stations and late-night fast-food restaurants. The group would often consist of 2-3 males wearing facemasks and hooded clothing. The suspects would show up in a stolen vehicle which was either taken in a vehicle theft or a carjacking. They would enter the store, prop the door open, and point guns directly at the employees demanding they open the cash register. In many cases they would destroy computers they believed were tied to surveillance footage.
CHS reported here on Capitol Hill-area robberies possibly related to the group including a Friday night, October 4th hold-up at the Circle K on 12th Ave near Seattle University where the store and multiple customers were robbed at gunpoint. Less than 30 minutes later, the 7-Eleven at 15th and Denny was also help up at gunpoint where police say the suspect stole cash from the register along with a wallet and phone. The primary suspect was described a black male in his 20s, skinny and around 5’10”, wearing a black tracksuit and black ski mask, and carrying a black handgun with an extended magazine. Continue reading
