Comments

1
I has a sad.
2
Cats will do that to a place.
3
Does the rubble smell like cat pee?
4
when i walked by this morning the building had been cut in damn half. sad story, although their new digs are pretty slick.
5
I can smell the cat pee from here in the U-District.
6
Can I haz help? I iz stuck in rubble.
7
Is this where the new subway station will be?
8
I do believe this corner will be the front of the new station:
http://www.soundtransit.org/x1756.xml

Building that once housed Vivace looks like it's coming down soon too. I saw a crew putting the chain link fence up around it yesterday.
9
This makes me sad.
10
at last!

(sure I'll miss Piroshkyland, but not the low-slung building that's occupied that block since last year).
11
SULK AM SAD!

RIP, Cap Hill Twice Sold Tales.

And no, I don't feel like letting it go.
12
They should put a goddammed turn lane there so good citizens going east on John can not get stuck in the stupid bottleneck.
13
I also miss the piroshky place, but I'm glad they finally tore those buildings down. All those empty storefronts was way more depressing than this rubble is.
14
I think if you condemn or demolish a building you should be required to start construction in a timely manner, say within six months. These buildings sat empty for ages doing no one any good and adding nothting to the tax base. Likewise the old Cha-cha site aint doing much as a parking lot.
15
Oh, and boo on tearing down an old bookstore that smelled of cat urine.
16
You can still get that delicious cat urine smell at the new Twice Sold Tales on Harvard.

Didn't the Piroshky place move to 3rd near Pionner Square?

The empty lot where ChaCha was is empty because some tired old queen kept on delaying the original building over NIMBY issues/design issues, etc. and whatever. He delayed it so much that the builders could no longer build it. Now it will be empty for a few years.
17
Woah. I wasn't prepared for that image, even though I recall the pics from the houses at the other end of the block coming down. I can't tell from the photo, but I assume the lovely apartment building on the John/10th corner got razed today as well? I'm more sad for that than the Twice Sold Tales building.

When do they start construction on the rail station?
18
There's still an open pit opposite Gregg's Greenlake Cycle on Woodlawn. Part of their plan to get the neighbors to welcome a new condo.
19
1)This will give Christopher something new to bitch about instead of the glare from the bank sign across the street...

2)uh, they're tearing down that block to build the tunnel for light rail...there won't be any builings on that block for years.

3)The building designed to replace the Cha Cha block was an abomination and the objections to it didn't kill the project but were used as an excuse by the owner to not proceed which in itself is rather odd as the economy hasn't derailed that many similar sized projects. Hopefully, that site will only have to sit vacant for a couple years, then the owner will redevelop it or sell it to someone who has the sense to hire a better architect.
20
Yeah right @16. That "tired old queen" probably saved the developer a metric shit-ton of money by delaying the project so long that they never got it off the ground, just at the time when another metric shit-ton of condos that nobody is currently able to afford just went on the market.

I imagine that developer is even now crying themselves all the way to the bank - which incidentally, won't give the developer, or any potential home-buyers for that matter, a loan right now anyway.
21
...and it was also home to one of seattle's greatest restrooms!
22
@21:
yes it scored #9 on The Strangers 101 favorite restrooms list:

"9.
Twice Sold Tales
905 E John St Though technically not a place you can drop a load, the kitty litter box at Twice Sold Tales holds a special place in The Stranger's heart. Last summer, books editor Christopher Frizzelle wrote about Twice Sold Tales facing stiff competition when corporate-owned Half Price Books moved into the Capitol Hill neighborhood, and in the piece he mentioned, as an aside, the oft-voiced concern that Twice Sold Tales sometimes smells like cat pee. Anecdotal experience proves that the cat-pee problem seems to have been taken care of (did they change the carpets?), and Twice Sold Tales and The Stranger again love each other (we recently found a rare and beautiful edition of Kafka there). Nonetheless we cherish the gold plaque that Twice Sold Tales posted over its kitty litter box shortly after Frizzelle's original story appeared, which announced that the contents of the litter box were devoted to Frizzelle's "life and work."
23
When I went into their new storefront not far away, I didn't smell cat pee at all. I only smelled a geekily intoxicating alchemy of used-bookstore and convention-hotel (I have no clue where that latter smell comes from - perhaps the cleaning supplies?)
24
I thought the lot was going to be used as a staging area for the giant machines and piles of material they need to put somewhere close while they're working on it.
25
Yeah, I know, cats and all, but the smell is probably not from THEM. It's more likely the non-acid-free paper used in many books, which begins to rot after a few years, especially in humid coastal climes. I was majorly pissed to find that my $75-in-the-early-80s biochem text with all the cool stereoscopic pics of protein structures was was starting to turn brown and the page edges to crumble after 10 years in San Diego.
26
for fnarf:
where the empty Mongolian bbq place across Broadway was, thats the staging/massive dirt removal area, I think.
27
So, is there going to be anything in this megablock before five years is up or are we going to have a stinkin' hole in the ground til 2012?
28
Ah. Thank you.

That Mongolian place was there for at least thirty years. I must have walked past it a thousand times. Did anyone ever venture inside? It always seemed like something you'd find in an airport, not on Broadway.
29
@28 you are right! when i moved back to seattle from the suburbs i ate there a few times before finding better places. it was a transitional period/restaurant for me. the kind of role maybe subway plays now?
30
Holy Crap Chips, Batman!! I take a coupla days off work and look what happens!! I won't even recognize the place when I get back next week, I betcha.....

O Change thou art so freakin' constant.....

31
I miss the Mongolian BBQ place - it was one of the first Seattle restaurants I went too before moving here.

And still in my top ten.

Le sigh.
32
Figures.
33
Were you naked when you took that picture?
34


Cities grow, people. Be happy you're in a city that is growing.
35
I probably won't come back to Broadway until after all the construction is over (unless rents just went way down).
36
The Mongolian place sat empty for many years.

Before that, it was a Mongolian place.

Before that, it sat empty for many more years.

Before that, it was a Sizzler steakhouse.
37
This was one of the first used book shops I went to when I first discovered Seattle back in 2000.
38
before it was cat pee biblio heaven...it was some record store ran by old grampy punker u-ron from the seminal texas band really red. i got me some good rekkids there sir!

and he did not smell like cat urine but was kind of a nob.

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