Downtown Seattle IGA Closes (8/2020)

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Downtown Seattle IGA Closes (8/2020)

Post by storewanderer »

A bit late on this too.
https://www.king5.com/article/news/loca ... b13f507ef4

Many of the same things said here- echo what was said when Bartell closed nearby.

This ownership group also ran the now-closed downtown Tacoma IGA. They also owned the Lighthouse IGA in Tacoma (which opened as downtown Tacoma closed) which since basically was converted into a convenience store under different ownership.

This ownership group had/has some other locations; IGA in Ocean Shores, Albany, among others. They tried to go into Klamath Falls when the city was somehow incentivizing an operator to take a former Safeway/Haggen, but Holiday ended up getting chosen by the city instead.
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Re: Downtown Seattle IGA Closes (8/2020)

Post by retailfanmitchell019 »

Safeway doesn't have a store in Downtown Seattle yet. They should try and go into this space. How big is this space anyway? It might be too small for Safeway though.
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Re: Downtown Seattle IGA Closes (8/2020)

Post by babs »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: February 19th, 2021, 2:09 pm Safeway doesn't have a store in Downtown Seattle yet. They should try and go into this space. How big is this space anyway? It might be too small for Safeway though.
It's 18,000 sq ft. Half of what's needed for a Safeway. But there's plenty of other retail space emptying out that could work. But the fact that so many are leaving downtown is probably the reason a new grocery store is unlikely to be in the works unless it's by Amazon.
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Re: Downtown Seattle IGA Closes (8/2020)

Post by storewanderer »

retailfanmitchell019 wrote: February 19th, 2021, 2:09 pm Safeway doesn't have a store in Downtown Seattle yet. They should try and go into this space. How big is this space anyway? It might be too small for Safeway though.
This is not a great space, not at a corner, in the middle of a block. Despite good signage, I walked past it and didn't even know it was there (I do not typically miss grocery stores).

I do not see Safeway expanding into downtown Seattle. I do not see Safeway expanding much period for that matter.
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Re: Downtown Seattle IGA Closes (8/2020)

Post by Brian Lutz »

I've been to this store a few times when I worked in the area. As noted, it's a rather small store, and the fact that it's below grade (customers have to go down an elevator or escalator from street level) probably doesn't help much either. For a long time this part of Downtown Seattle had no good options for groceries (one or two overpriced places in Pike Place Market and the Uwajimaya in the International District) but now there's a small Target with groceries about a block away from where this one was, and there's a Whole Foods in South Lake Union and an H Mart (Korean grocery) which opened last year. There's also QFCs at Seattle Center and on Broadway in Capitol Hill, but those are hard to get to by transit (somewhat less so with the light rail expansion to Capitol Hill.) The closest Safeway store to here would be in Queen Anne at 1st Ave. W between Mercer and Republican. I suspect a lot people who live in the Downtown core of Seattle just get their groceries delivered by Amazon Fresh, since there aren't a lot of other good options.
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