Boom UPDATE: Queen Anne QFC
posted by on December 6 at 11:24 AM
I won’t even brief you on the fight over replacing one grocery store with another up on Queen Anne Hill, except to say that well-mobilized neighbors, replete with a website and 36 media hits, have been giving the developer hell over a plan to replace the small Metropolitan Market with a much larger QFC. I slogged about the second Early Design Guidance meeting over the summer, when hundreds of people packed Queen Anne Presbyterian Church to complain about… well, everything from the tragedy of a beloved local store leaving the hill to the noise the QFC delivery trucks will create. The ruckus has died down since the summer, but Queen Anne Neighbors for Responsible Growth (QANRG) is still determined to heckle the planners into creating a project that fits their community vision.
Now, finally, the last Early Design Guidance meeting has arrived: Tonight, 6:30PM at the Queen Anne Community Center (1901 1st Ave W). I expect it to be exceptionally boring seeing as the items of discussion, after months and months of hashing out other parts of the plan, loading dock and parking configurations. But, unsurprisingly, these are hot issues for QANRG, which predicts a major negative impact from most parts of the project.
After the first round of acidic public comment, the local family redeveloping the store went back to the drawing board and made a slew of changes to make the project more in line with the neighborhood goals — including the addition of 55 upper-story apartments and two small retail spaces on the corners of the QFC. But the project is damned from the start, according to neighbors. “A lot of developers have been very proactive in their projects in coming to the community council and asking, ‘What can we develop that benefits us and also works for the community,’” says Kemp Hiatt, a QANRG leader, “[These developers] signed the lease with QFC before they discussed it with anyone. So it’s really put us in opposite corners and really given us no choice but to fight.”
So will the fight stop after the Early Design Guidance period is over? Of course not. Next up, it’s the entirely more cumbersome State Environmental Protection Act review process. Yeeha.
Why don't they just call a spade a spade already? The upper crusty, masters-of-the-universe "I have no problem spending $900k for a 650sqft upper Queen Anne studio condo as long as it isn't a $500k 650sqft Belltown studio condo" just say what they mean... that QFC is such a lower class, common, found in every suburb grocery store that it will simply clash with the boutique $12 bar-of-bath-soap store and the $6.00-for-a-tall latte stand?
The old Safeway on Stone Way is finally being torn down. A year ago the manager at the Wallingford QFC said Kroger owns the property, so it will probably be a QFC with condos on top. If I was rich I might want a Whole Foods, or if I was poor I might want a Red Apple. As long as they sell food I'll be happy. I'd even settle for Taco Bell or Dairy Queen.
The people who are sentimental about losing the QA Metropolitan Market miss the point. As a Queen Anne resident, I don't care who the tenant is, as long as the developer doesn't do to the avenue what Harvard Market and the other developments are doing to Pike/Pine.
By the way, my tall latte on top of the hill costs only $3.
@1,
I kind of doubt that's the reason QA residents oppose this. The Queen Anne Safeway is very popular and, if Kroger has any sense, the new QFC will be very similar to the Harvard Market.
Neighborhood group strategy: Decide upfront whether they like the grand plan (say, QFC instead of Metropolitan Market), then create delays under the guise of constructive debate.
Truth is, they'd never support a QFC. Fine, fight it, but don't pretend the problem is that the developer wants 12 parking spots instead of 24 ("oh, if only'd they'd change..").
I hope QA residents get what they deserve...a boarded up vacant grocery store behind a chain link fence.
Add upper Queen Anne to Seattle's long, proud list of organized NIMBYs. I saw the Phinney Ridge Neighborhood Ass'n sing at Figgy Pudding last week, and half-expected them to have some petition barring Santa Claus from making freight deliveries past 6pm.
I hope they end up with a spite project twice the size, twice as loud and lit up ten times as brightly as the QFC would have been.
And then I hope the venture goes bankrupt (but not until the babies have been tortured for the better part of a year and a half by OMG PEOPLE USING RETAIL IN A CITY) and the property turns into a white elephant/attractive nuisance that attracts every crackhead within 20 miles.
Cheers @3 -- Lol. Duh, like, my slice was like thirty bucks up there and stuff. Man, I hate those peoples of Upper Queen Anne!
Cheers @6 -- Hey Upper QA, drive down the Hill if you miss your effin Met Market. Pretty pale, though, compared to the former Larry's MM took over at 1st & Mercer.
Never in my life would I have figured so many Stranger readers to be such a bunch of corporate suck-ups. "masters-of-the-universe? Where? 900K for a 650 sq. ft. condo? Where? Who? $12 bar of soap? Who sells that? A $6 Latte? Where? I don't know ANYONE up here on Queen Anne that would subscribe to ANY of that. It's pretty clear that you have no idea what you are talking about. Go to a meeting asshole, before passing judgement on people you have never met. Then look at the QFC and Safeway on Broadway - across the street from each other - that were closed and boarded up for years. Is that a good thing?
Why don't they just call a spade a spade already? The upper crusty, masters-of-the-universe "I have no problem spending $900k for a 650sqft upper Queen Anne studio condo as long as it isn't a $500k 650sqft Belltown studio condo" just say what they mean... that QFC is such a lower class, common, found in every suburb grocery store that it will simply clash with the boutique $12 bar-of-bath-soap store and the $6.00-for-a-tall latte stand?
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