Condos elbow out groceries on Queen Anne
After nearly 50 years of grocery store innovation, Queen Anne's Metropolitan Market closes its doors.
Angela N.
The Metropolitan Market atop Queen Anne has closed after 50 years.
Terry Halverson, whose company, Food Markets Northwest, owned the business, started his career there as a 16-year-old bagging groceries. Before long, he bought the place from its owner, Dick Rhodes. Halverson eventually acquired several other neighborhood groceries around town: Admiral, Proctor, and others, ending up with six stores. In 2004, he turned the Admiral Thriftway into the flagship of the newly named Metropolitan Market mini-chain. After competitor Larry's Markets imploded, Halverson bought the Larry's on Lower Queen Anne and completely transformed it.
Halverson was an innovator. He moved flowers and fresh produce to the front of the store; hired food guru Jon Rowley to promote a better selection of fresh fish, including Copper River salmon, which impressed Julia Child; bought the French bakery Boulangerie to provide fresh bread; installed a B&O Espresso bar; and added mini-kitchens for in-store demonstrations and author signings. All of that is rather ho-hum today, but it was cutting edge when introduced.
The half-block site on Queen Anne Avenue hosting Metropolitan Market is being redeveloped for residential use. That means there isn't enough room for a traditional supermarket, Halverson said. The nearby Safeway is on a full block, and has what Met Market lacks: room for 60-foot semis to back into the loading dock without using side streets. Metropolitan Market's almost 20,000-square-foot building is barely big enough to qualify as a modern supermarket. But it now lacks easy deliveries and easy parking for customers to make it viable. Veteran developer Joe Geivett, of Emerald Bay Equity, has developed several other properties nearby, but can't make the numbers work for Metropolitan.
Instead, Halvorsen has made another move, buying the Thriftway in Magnolia, three miles away, from its longtime owners Jim and Lynne Penhollow. Halverson said, "We look forward to taking part in Magnolia's rich history, such as the Little League, SummerFest, and its neighborhood schools and churches." Met Market will remodel and modernize the Magnolia Thriftway, on 34th West at Thurman, starting in September.
There's a smallish Albertson's in Magnolia Village, and a new, upscale Whole Foods in Interbay, as well as two traditional Safeway stores at the top and bottom of Queen Anne, but the 98109-98119-98199 zip codes still seem underserved by supermarket standards.
What could go into the space on Queen Anne? Funny you should mention it; there's a well-established specialty grocer just two blocks away, in a cramped and crowded building, who would move in a heartbeat: Trader Joe's.
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Comments:
Posted Thu, Jul 19, 10:19 a.m. Inappropriate
I am one of the long time QA Thriftway/Metropolitan Market shoppers who is crying at the loss of our grocery store. Sure, it was small, but I could find everything I needed. And I knew almost everyone who worked there. I deplore the idea of one more massive "mixed use" building on Queen Anne Ave. No matter what they put in that space, I will not shop there.
Posted Thu, Jul 19, 11:36 a.m. Inappropriate
I'm sorry to hear about this closure -- we've had a similar loss in my Roosevelt neighborhood with the closure of our QFC (the site will eventually be a new Sound Transit station). We've got a Whole Foods, so there is still a grocery in our retail core, but for those of us who were long-time QFC shoppers, this feels a little like being orphaned.
Posted Thu, Jul 19, 12:40 p.m. Inappropriate
"There's a smallish Albertson's in Magnolia Village, and a new, upscale Whole Foods in Interbay, as well as two traditional Safeway stores at the top and bottom of Queen Anne, but the 98109-98119-98199 zip codes still seem underserved by supermarket standards."
Only the facts, man:
Uptown's Met Market and QFC are both large as well as in 98109 zip code. The smallish Ken's Market and the largish Interbay QFC are in 98119. And the PCC in Fremont is easily accessible to the organic minded in those zips. Depends I guess on what "supermarket standards" you are referencing. Eastlake and SE Seattle are much better candidates for "underserved" under any standards and for probably different reasons.
You do have a point about the current obsession with unit counts forsaking anything existent in the way. However, is Halverson saying he would eventually have to close the existing QA Met Market for the reasons you state? If so how does the Magnolia site he purchased compare? Thanks for the info you do share.
Posted Thu, Jul 19, 5:39 p.m. Inappropriate
For a start, afreeman, the QA site is being demolished for development, not "eventually" but now. Magnolia Thriftway, on the other hand, is a straightforward purchase of an existing facility.
Posted Fri, Jul 20, 12:48 p.m. Inappropriate
Sorry not to make myself clear. I should have said: did or would you ask Halverson if redevelopment were NOT on the table, would the QA store have limited viable life, or is the problem related to having to write off the existing building's "embodied energy"? See http://www.thegreenestbuilding.org/
In that the Uptown Met Market is owned by Benaroya Capital, and you do not say whether a lease or the site at Magnolia was purchased, the same problem could rear its head there too some day. So one could suspect that Halverson has been giving additional thought to the problems you enumerate with the QA "site."
Clear as mud?
Posted Fri, Jul 20, 7:03 p.m. Inappropriate
Forwarding your questions to Mr. Halverson. Thanks.
Posted Sat, Jul 21, 8:13 a.m. Inappropriate
This is the first I've heard that there will not be a grocery-like reatil space on the ground floor. The proposal last published included grocer on more-or-less the entire ground floor level, with truck access from the east alley. I don't have inside knowledge, but I had heard that the developer was asking $45/foot and that met market considered that too high. Sure, Queen Anne is generally affluent, but that *is* a high price. Perhaps the develper has decided to cut down on the retail space and not seek a grocer? Would be nice to know.
Posted Sat, Jul 21, 10:10 a.m. Inappropriate
If indeed the developer is asking $45 a foot, he's 50% above the already-high going rate of $30 atop Queen Anne.
A number of retailers have already walked away from QA's older buildings rather than pay even the $30, though that doesn't deter unscrupulous real estate agents who lure landlords with the $45 figure.
Example: the building at the corner of QA & Boston, whose three restaurant tenants were chased out seven months ago, is still vacant. Rather than collect roughly $5,000 a month from each tenant at $30/foot, the landlord was persuaded that the "current rate" was $45. The premises remain empty, three families put out of business, their 20 employees laid off, and the landlord out over $100,000 in rents forever lost.
Posted Thu, Jul 26, 8:58 a.m. Inappropriate
So once again density comes in and eventually destroys the amenities that made people want to move there in the first place!
Eventually Queen Anne, saturated with ugly concrete block condos, will fall prey to the same gangbangers, winos and mentally insane people who frequent down town.
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