hmm a beloved local eatery shuts down and is replaced by a corporate chain who will undoubtedly also have automated ordering kiosks and minimal staffing. I'm sure as in other cases there is no relation to the myriad of policies the city has passed that continue to drive up costs for small business and erode what little operating margins they have. As progressives love to say if they can't afford a living wage and all the other hoops the city is imposing then they don't deserve to run a business, well don't complain then when they shut down as that is what you wanted.

"throw up both my hands."

You shouldn't eat your hands.

SDOT has made an absolute mess of 15th Ave S as well as Beacon Ave, installing special lanes for bicycle enthusiasts while ignoring the dismal condition of the streets. I would like to know how many more times they intend to tear up the pavement in front of the light rail station (which is the only part of Beacon that has relatively new pavement).

As for the trees, meh. Fix the sidewalks. Trees grow fast.

You could have also mentioned the Raising Cane's that going up a block away from where this McDonalds will be. Times, they are a changin'

Choke Mind Virus increasingly blanketing US federal government

Soon every restaurant will be Taco Bell and we'll be wiping our asses with seashells.

Freedom Cities are the conservative version of Smart Cities proposed by the Left. It's almost like both parties are trying to control the masses one way or another. These "cities" are not for our benefit, but for the interest of the elite & technocratic billionaires.

@1 from this article: "the introduction of a corporate chain restaurant, replacing three independent, small businesses with a block-wide façade." Emphasis on "three." It's obvious Cedars isn't going out of business because of labor costs or anything else, their landlord is selling out from under them. Sorry to rain on your anti-worker rant parade but it's the capitalists that are killing the Ave's culture here.

@7:

Actually, they sound more like a 21st Century version of Rand's "Galt's Gulch": an idyllic libertarian utopia where the rich and powerful can insulate themselves from the supposed rot and decay of contemporary liberal "moocher" society. I would suggest that, before they unload their billions on such a pie-in-the-sky scheme, they check up on some of the previous attempts at creating such Objectivist-leaning enclaves, none of which, to my knowledge, have ever been successful.

@2, the Marvin Gaye reference went screaming past you like an Ichiro line drive. Makes me wanna holler.

@8 Except in this case the owner of the Cedar's is also the owner of the property so I guess he victimized himself with capitalism lol...Or he decided its not worth it to run a small business in Seattle anymore, took the money and is going to retire. Well wishes to him.

There’s a Jack in the Box on the next block from Cedars that’s been there since approximately forever. In terms of neighborhood character, the Jack in the Box is in a way more prominent location than Cedars (right on the Ave, as opposed to Brooklyn). I’d rather a Lebanese place than a Mickey Ds, but the notion that a fast food chain is something “new” or “troubling” in this neighborhood is a little bit lol.

@11 really because King County Parcel lookup says it's an LLC out of Panama. Where are you getting your info?

@9 there would have to be a correlation between being rich and having exceptional talent/ingenuity for the Galt's Gulch thing to work, and I haven't been seeing that correlation in our real life modern wealthy class. I'm thinking more like the last scene of "don't look up"

I liked Cedars, always made my day when I ventured into U-district. I think the better places to eat around seattle are going to food trucks now, at least for people like me that can't afford to eat from expensive restaurants. Yeah and fuck Drumpf and the GOP. Have a nice evening people.

@12: 50th and the Ave is a world away from 43rd and the Ave, and that JITB is sketch AF. Not unlike the McD's on 3rd and Pine - where a woman once bore a child in the restroom.

@13 Under the section "The History A Local Haunt" it says the following. The last line says he scooped up the property which sounds to me like he bought it. If he's been there for that long I think its probably likely he owns it.

"The owner, John Kahlil came here in 1974, after a speedy Lebanon exit. He got lucky that he didn’t have to wait long to come to the US,

“We've been coming for three months, we've been coming every day, every day, and we just, you know, keep trying. So I went down there on Friday and I put my application in and Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, they told me you're ready to go.”

“I asked her, ‘Are you crazy?’ All these people, they're waiting for 23 months. How come me right away? "

“He said, you're a lucky man. Well where I'm going. He said, you got accepted at Seattle, Washington. I told him, is that a desert over there? 
Because they took so fast? He said, no, no, no, you're gonna love it.”

His luck only got better here. Khalil says it was the cheapest place around, (but apparently everything was cheap then) and he scooped up the property."

@17 well don't take my word for it:

https://blue.kingcounty.com/Assessor/eRealProperty/Detail.aspx?ParcelNbr=1142001025

It looks like the Cedars address has been owned by Marthas Landing LLC for the last 9 years and before that it was owned by Brooklyn Cedars for 11 months and before that it was owned by Alawar Wajih and Alawar Hiam for 29+ years.

@14: A dirty little secret that the Cult of Ayn Rand refuses to hear is that even if the ruling class were all brilliant innovators (they're not) a society composed entirely of that sort of person would last until their food stockpile ran out, at which point it would descend into billionaire cannibalism.

You know what? I've changed my mind -- let 'em make their little utopia.

@18 That's Flowers Bar and Grill. Cedars is on Brooklyn Ave, no?

The family opened Cedars in 1975, bought the property in 2015 for $1.5 million, and sold the property last year for just over $3.9 million, realizing a $2.4 million appreciation in nine years. Hardly victims of capitalism, as posited by @8! 😂

Source: https://www.djc.com/news/re/12161564.html

Here is who owns the address Cedars is at: https://www.homes.com/property/4759-brooklyn-ave-ne-seattle-wa/j0103b7r39hdv/

@21/22 Cedars has had multiple locations, so the fact they owned the building where one was located does resolve D13's confusion, but look at the picture in the article: this is about the location adjacent to Flowers (https://maps.app.goo.gl/FpsKVYMT3XSrMbwW8).

Also see this:

https://www.change.org/p/save-seattle-s-u-district-icon-ness-flowers-building-say-no-to-mcdonald-s

@24 In any case it seems like at one time he owned a property and sold it for a tidy sum and is going to retire. Good for him. Hardly a case that he was screwed over by evil landlords. Do you think the McDonalds that is due to take over the space will be fully staffed or will they rely largely on the self service order kiosks that have become more and more the norm?

@24 wait it actually looks like "Cedars" and "Cedars of Lebanon," confusingly, are entirely different businesses. But the McDonalds is going to replace the latter, which is in the same building as Flowers was

Here's an article from a few years ago saying they're playing on building student housing where Cedars is. I wonder what happened to that?:
https://www.djc.com/news/re/12147908.html

@25 no you're just still confused

@26 that's the wrong building

@25 That makes sense. When I think of Cedars I think of the Indian place. I should have paid closer attention to the full name of the restaurant.

When you google cedars of lebanon the google listing for the menu sends you to cedarsseattle.com which is the restaurant I was thinking of... but that's not Cedars of Lebanon. lol. They should probably fix that. Guess it doesn't matter now though. Gotta change it to mcdonalds.com instead.

@29 what's crazy is they apparently opened only about a year apart ~50 years ago. Wonder if the owners are friends or just really chill because these days you'd expect one to have sued the other over the name.

The Cedars on Brooklyn is the one that proves capitalism will make multimillionaires out of hardworking immigrants who come to America with nothing and open a restaurant.

The Cedars on the Ave is the one that proves capitalism will shatter the hopes and dreams of hardworking immigrants who come to America with nothing and open a restaurant.

@12 Wrong on every count.

"Tech billionaires are now talking about building their own damn cities.""
Fine with me. Come the revolution they'll all be undefended in one place. Not to mention that Univ of MN tried to plan & build model utopian cities about 75 years ago and it all slid into the dumper under it's own phantasmagorical weight.

".....Bill Gates, is......"retooling his empire for the Trump era."" I believe that means Bill is retooling his lips to wrap them around Trump's tool.

(I really don't know anything personally about Gates except that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he was dramatically in the right place at the right time (to buy DOS from IBM when IBM thought it was worthless) and Gates' empire would routinely buy up the most inovative software to keep it from us.....which means he's ALWAYS been a vulture.

There's actually a place to buy actual Gyros in Seattle?

Beware of AI programmed robot guards. Unlike the X-Men, the Sentinels are all too real and ready for deployment to enshackle humanity at the command of the tech bros. Don't let the Dr. Wily's win; Dr. Light must invent Mega Man to stand a chance. John Connor's time to step up has come.

Tech billionaires building cities of their own? Sounds like a great! It will end just like the Golgafrincham Arks.

https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Golgafrincham

Thank goodness there will be another McDonald's where I can cash the points I have earned in the app. Maybe it will be a showcase and run entirely by AI, as a prototype for the McDonald's they'll have in Elon Walled City on San Padre Island.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qy2IgK5qmk

Sad to hear that Cedars of Lebanon might go. But I think Charles is really bemoaning the loss of Flowers, next door.

https://youtu.be/cYp4_cCW4Lw?feature=shared&t=53

@30, flowers exited a year or so ago....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCJgvmOlKg8

Classic UW District restaurants like Cedars and Flowers (a year ago, according to Charles Mudede) closing and being replaced by McDonald's???? Big KKKorporate is hellbent on making the deeply Divided States of MAGA KKKonfusion a nationwide food desert.

Save our trees---dump a Trump instead!

Catalina Vel-DuRay is correct. Republicans are horrible people. Senate Dems should vote against the CR and let the government shut down for the needed fight. Chuck Schumer is wrong.

Mercy!

@35 CDizzle: Holy shit, Batman! Where is Edward Furlong when we need him? I want to get as far away as possible from Elon Mu$k, its sock puppet, Mein Trumpf, his right hand jack-off, JD Vance, Vladimir Putin, their bootlicking MAGA tools, and the tech profiteering insanity of AI.
Okay---when the world starts looking like scenes from Terminator2: Judgment Day, I'm convinced that all guns will be firing at what USED to be the United States, a once thriving democracy where the idea of Nazi Germany level fascism was unheard of. So many citizens--myself included, up until the past ten years---believed it could never happen here. This is NOT what I served this country for.

@37: Where will you be when Big Tech puts AI microchips in your BigMacs, Swifty?