Tag Archives: rumors

E Pike rumor dot com: Amazon just might be opening a grocery store on Capitol Hill

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It's not very interesting inside... yet (Image: CHS)

It’s not very interesting inside… yet (Image: CHS)

A bookstore in U Village. A drive-up grocery store in Ballard. A checkout-less convenience store on 7th Ave in Amazon-ville. With Amazon’s voice control platform Alexa reportedly “stealing the show” at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the retailing giant has also been busy innovating and testing new concepts in its home city. But, so far, none of its “meatspace” experiments have made a home on Capitol Hill, the neighborhood where many of its employees live.

That might be about to change.

CHS has learned that an Amazon executive central to the rollout of the company’s retail projects including 7th Ave’s Amazon Go checkout-less concept is involved in the giant and highly secretive retail project slated to fill a 10,000 square-foot retail space in the Mercedes Benz dealership-turned AVA Capitol Hill development in the 600 block E Pike.

A development manager for Avalon Communities declined to comment telling CHS he was not allowed to discuss the tenant and Amazon has not replied to inquiries about the project.

The Amazon senior program manager included in City of Seattle filings on the project worked on the University Village Amazon bookstore and the launch team for Amazon Go, according to his Linked In profile. Continue reading →

New mystery tenant lined up for Charlie’s on Broadway space

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Thanks to CHS reader Doug for the picture and tip!

Something is definitely afoot inside the former home of Charlie’s on Broadway, just not a resurrection of the recently departed restaurant and bar.

Property owner Johnny Limantzakis was tight lipped Monday on the details of the construction going on inside the longtime restaurant space. Though he didn’t specifically rule out the possibility of the Charlie’s name sticking around, he did dispel rumors that the same restaurant was making a comeback after closing in June.

“There will be something good coming out in the next 30 days,” he said.

Limantzakis Properties plans to continue to hold on to its only Capitol Hill asset as the new project gets underway.

On Monday, the windows were covered up on both sides of the building, but workers could be heard banging away inside. We got a peek of some of that work thanks to CHS reader Doug.

Ken Bauer helped open Charlie’s in 1976, taking it over in 2000 after the restaurant’s namesake owner passed away. As the end of the lease agreement approached five years ago, Bauer started looking to sell to no avail. Limantzakis couldn’t find a new tenant, either.

CHS broke the bittersweet news of Bauer’s long-awaited retirement and Charlie’s closing in June.

The large restaurant and bar space sits on a mid-Broadway block that’s poised for plenty of foot traffic when the Capitol Hill light rail station opens down the street in early 2016, not to mention the 418 apartment units, community spaces and new retailers to open in the following years.

Which (relatively) giant retailer is coming to E Pike this summer?

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IMG_5263Site Plan (3)

If you're looking for clues, this design rendering probably can't be trusted

If you’re looking for clues, this design rendering probably can’t be trusted

At 10,437 square feet, whatever new store is planned to open on E Pike in the new AVA Capitol Hill building this summer will instantly become one of the bigger retailers in the neighborhood.

But, so far, the building’s developers at AvalonBay Communities aren’t talking.

CHS asked the AVA folks about new permit paperwork that showed up earlier this month for a relatively huge new store fronting the 600 block of E Pike in the seven-story, 245-unit, mixed-use project under construction at the site of the former Phil Smart Mercedes dealership.

According to permits, the project’s plans for multiple retail units along the street have been pushed aside in favor of one combined “retail store” in the project. At just over 10,000 square feet, the store would be about half the size of Elliott Bay Book Company, for example, but twice the size of the still-empty OfficeMax that shuttered on Broadway earlier this year. The planned Broadway Whole Foods, on the other hand, will be four times larger than our new, unidentified Pike/Pine retailer.

For your speculating pleasure, 10,400 square feet is plenty of room for an Apple Store which reportedly were averaging around 8,400 square feet of store space a few years back. We have no idea how big a space Uniqlo needs, however.

The AVA Capitol Hill building is slated to open in August 2015.

The future of service in Pike/Pine -- here's what the AVA Capitol Hill will look like

The future of service in Pike/Pine — here’s what the AVA Capitol Hill will look like