Vulcan’s retail row at South Lake Union faces challenges
Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) - by Jeanne Lang Jones Staff Writer
Vulcan Real Estate is taking another giant step in its remake of South Lake Union, this time with plans for an ambitious retail row as part of Amazon.com’s gargantuan new headquarters.
Amazon’s campus, totaling as much as 2 million square feet of office space, will house what amounts to a large strip shopping center along the scruffy east side of Terry Avenue North between Mercer and Thomas streets.
The Terry Avenue retail corridor in Seattle is slated to cover roughly 100,000 square feet, with room for as many as 25 new shops and restaurants.
With wide sidewalks, lots of outdoor seating for cafes and restaurants, and public plazas large enough to host a Saturday farmers market, the new corridor would be a sharp contrast to the aging warehouses it is replacing. The hope is that the concentration of shops and restaurants would be strong enough to attract office workers, tourists and conventiongoers from downtown as well as nearby residents.
But while Vulcan has the vision, the bankroll and an ambitious schedule, it faces significant challenges in creating a successful retail corridor.
“Nothing is worse than retail that doesn’t succeed — and the city has a lot of that right now,” said retail consultant Pat Johnson, of Outcalt & Johnson Retail Strategists LLC, in Seattle. “It can give a whole project a black eye.”
The streets of Seattle’s downtown core are pocked with forlorn, empty shops that failed to pique the interest of passers-by or meet the needs of their building’s other tenants.
If Vulcan succeeds, South Lake Union — a neighborhood where the company owns more than 60 acres — will be more appealing to area employers and residents. If it fails, a struggling retail row along Terry would be a shabby sidekick, reflecting poorly on Amazon’s corporate headquarters above, experts say.
What got Vulcan interested in making Terry into a retail row is the unanticipated success of an earlier development nearby: an eclectic group of small local shops in Vulcan’s Alley24 apartment project, on Pontius Avenue North, a short walk away from REI’s flagship store, on Yale Avenue North. The quirky mix includes a bustling Espresso Vivace, the tottini children’s store, Snowboard Connection and the Urban Beast pet store.
At Terry Avenue, Vulcan plans a similar mix of local and regional retailers and restaurants along with a few “interesting” national chains, said Robert Arron, senior director of real estate marketing and leasing at Vulcan. Arron will leave fashion to downtown stores and concentrate instead on outdoor recreation, lifestyle amenities and home furnishings, along with destination restaurants. There also will be retail services for area office workers, such as a florist and perhaps a hair salon.
To encourage these small businesses to locate on Terry, Vulcan will offer more finished space than is typical and will provide tenants a “good” monetary allowance for making further improvements, Arron said, without being more specific.
That said, it could still be hard to drop rents low enough for small shopkeepers, said Michael Beyard, a senior resident fellow for retail development at the Urban Land Institute, of Washington, D.C.
“Most independents are not located in new corporate space. They are in the quirky oldest buildings where rents are much lower and their whole operation is built around that rent structure,” Beyard said.
Rents are certain to be higher than the 35 cents a foot that one longtime South Lake Union retailer, the import home furnishings store David Smith, has been paying for more than a decade for its old warehouse just up the hill from the construction site, said General Manager Phil Christoffersen. The slick new storefronts also won’t be as well suited to the shop’s funky ambiance and rough-hewn furnishings.
Instead of worn brick, the new structures will be “aluminum, big glass and concrete,” said Christoffersen, “If it’s too glamorous, that doesn’t bode well with the plans we have or how we market our products.”
Although his store will need to relocate when its lease expires in mid-2009, Christoffersen, a longtime Seattle resident, said he’s still excited about the changes in the neighborhood.
When Amazon moves in, Terry Avenue retailers will be able to draw upon some 6,000 nearby residents and an area work force of about 25,000.
The outline for Vulcan’s retail row is part of a larger vision by city planners to create a pedestrian corridor linking Lake Union Park to the Washington State Convention and Trade Center and the rest of downtown. City guidelines are transforming Terry Avenue and Ninth Avenue into pedestrian-friendly “green” streets with extra landscaping, wider sidewalks, benches for sitting and more public spaces. Amazon’s campus will have three such public plazas.
Amazon’s decision to relocate to the neighborhood has put the city’s plan on the fast track, said Lyle Bicknell, a senior urban designer with the city’s planning department.
“We’re surprised at how quickly it’s happened — we assumed it was a 10- to 15-year plan,” Bicknell said.
Related Industry News |
Latest News |
Most Viewed Stories |
Most Emailed Stories |
