Our sister site, PhinneyWood.com, is reporting that the redevelopment on NW 85th St planned by Fred Meyer, which would include apartments and a new store, has been scratched. Instead, Fred Meyer confirms to that they will do a down-to-the-studs remodel of the current store. The Greenwood Market, whose lease is up soon, will become the garden center and home store for Fred Meyer.
You can read more about the change of plans on PhinneyWood.com.
Good work NIMBYs, all those jobs, investment gone!
No pesos?
stupid activists.. the investment in the area could have really helped the local economy.
maybe they just like living near that GIANT surface parking lot, which shall remain now.
that area will continue looking like a wasteland.
The only way this would have been sweet is if the Greenwood Market stayed.
Dang. I like the Greenwood Market. And why does Fred Meyer need a remodel (apart from connecting the buildings) anyway? Oh, well, I suppose it means construction jobs for someone.
Most likely they took one good look at what wasn't happening in the mixed use place across the street and decided it wasn't good timing to build another one. How long has that been up? And still mostly empty. This had very little to do with whiners or NIMBYS. Developers do what is most financialy profitable.
The Greenwood Fred Meyer is currently a dismal, dreary, clautrophobic place. A remodel will help tremendously and may draw additional business to it.
Especially after a decade of fighting NIMBYs who delayed and delayed the project until construction costs got higher, materials got more expensive. THis had everything to do with the whiners who've spent 10 years fighting any progress on what is one of the ugliest patches of asphalts in the area.
But the junkies will be happy.
Maybe, just maybe, FM realized that it wasn't a good idea to build such a huge expanse on a bog. As for the Nimbys…they are the people whose houses are sinking due to the Safeway etc etc expansion north of Gwd/85th. I suspect they didn't want to wake up one day and find their first floor had become a basement overnight.
It's a Fred Meyer. Nothing is going to make it look *that* good. I can't say I've noticed any differences among the various Fred Meyer stores I've visited — they're all much the same.
Noooooooo…. This is terrible news, losing the greenwood market but still having to look at a sea of concrete. Not good. I was really looking forward to that waste of land being developed.
What is a NIMBY? Anyhow, I had not been to Fred Meyer for a couple of months, went to the Ballard one last night, and once again, I did not like it! While they do have nice prices on necessities (foil, cans of beans, garbage bags) they have so much cheap junk! Their clothes are a complete joke. wish they would carry decent clothes that we would buy, even if they may be more expensive. When we were there yesterday, the whole place was filled with cheap clearance clothes racks, could not avoid them even from the door to the produce section.
If only they'd put in a Whole Foods, then everyone would have been happy.
maybe they will move that coffee stand in the breezeway. the smell of that place makes me enter downstairs!!!!
People who buy nice clothes generally don't shop in FM for clothes and won't even if FM gets some nicer clothes. Socks? maybe. But not nice clothes.
Nimbys like their back yards they way they are. Who the hell are you to tell them their backyard sucks and needs to be “developed”?
Good for the Greenwood locals – I just wish Ballard had a few more NIMBYs. But it's too late for that now. I'm glad to hear that not every Seattle neighborhood has to get screwed over like Ballard.
“their backyard sucks and needs to be “developed”
Their backyards? Can they show title? Where do you live, can I come make claim on your property?
” just wish Ballard had a few more NIMBYs”
Ballard didn't have NIMBYs, just lots of old timers who willingly sold for good $ and moved on. Apparently you missed that boat and are pretty bitter about it, but sure there's a nice ranch house in Kent waiting for you.
Continue to enjoy the dump you live in Greenwood!!
Greenwood, a dump? Seriously?
Greenwood was great when I moved from there to Ballard in '07. It's only gotten better since then.
It's got a lot more to do with the fact that it's a giant peat bog under the building and that it would cost $12 million more to be able to build it as big as they wanted. Add in the fact that it's a bad economic climate to be building mixed use developments while investment money is scarce and the alleged NIMBYism has nothing to do with it. The project just didn't pencil out for the bean counters.
buildings are built above peat bogs all of the time. the entire U-village shopping center is above a 40' thick layer of peat. there are structural solutions for most any type of soil conditions.
Are you a clothing snob?!?
HEY NOW!
Now that's funny… now how many bums are living down in Ballard? Watch out and don't step in that big pile of human feces buddy.
Yeah SPG, I agree and I dont shop at Fred meyer for clothes, It would just be nice if they carried decent socks, decent t-shirts, and work out clothes etc. It would be nice to have the basics in the neighborhood. Right now, all Ballard has is cheap fred meyer junk, and way too expensive boutique stuff ($200 jeans)
where is all of this feces is people keep stepping in. i've never encountered it and I'm out and about all the time. I won' t judge your fetish though, man.
enjoy the tweakers wandering around your vast parking lots!
“where is all of this feces is people keep stepping in. i've never encountered it and I'm out and about all the time.”
Bound to happen sooner or later when you look at the amount of growth in the homeless population in downtown Ballard. Why is that? Maybe you're easier for them to take advantage of.
“I won' t judge your fetish though, man.”
Is that some dimwitted attempt to insinuate that I like poop? Nothing I said remotely implies that. But you on the other hand, with a name like 'busboy', well, you might as well have just referred to yourself as 'raging homosexual'. Not that I'm judging you because you like to smoke a little pole though.
“enjoy the tweakers wandering around your vast parking lots!”
I don't even know what to say to that. I guess Ballard is superior in that regard, because you have parking garages? I mean it just crushes me that there's gonna be a big parking lot down the street. And tweakers, well , they're everywhere, so you should enjoy yours too.
Hopefully they'll put in some raingardens that also water some canopy plantings. This combo would reduce the heat of the asphalt, reduce storm water runnoff, and make it all look a lot nicer!
This is the worst possible news. Greenwood market is going away, and we are left with a giant parking lot again, which is truly UGLY, and makes the whole neighborhood look crappy.
I'd like to make a comment about the peat bog. The entire property that FM was thinking of building on is sealed with asphalt. It is a giant parking lot. I fail to see how changing a sealed parking lot to a building is going to change the ground water. It is a totally different situation from the Safeway that was built.
I have read the comments from FM, and I understand the inflated cost of sinking pilings into the peat to keep the building from sinking.
I just don't get the groundwater argument.
Enjoy your big ugly parking lot. I suppose you could park a couple more Zipcars there.
I've never bought any clothing other than socks and 3 packs of white T shirts at FM, so maybe I am.
Take a big wet sponge. Put a few pennies on it. Those pennies are the neighbor's houses. Now, drop a whole $20 roll of quarters in the middle of it. Notice what happened to all the pennies? There's the problem. Without putting in pilings (the equivalent of toothpicks through the sponge) the sheer size and weight of the FM would disturb the bog so much that it would wreak havoc on the whole neighborhood's structural integrity. Buildings would lean, houses would sink, roads would open up with sinkholes, basically a lot of seriously expensive damage.
FM could build there, but they'd have to put in pilings for the buildings to sit on which would increase their costs. Add in the current market and lack of investment capital and it just makes better sense financially to shelve the plans for a while.
What do you mean you are “left with a giant parking lot”?
You will have a store exactly where the Greenwood Market is, and there will be a continuation of that store exactly where the Fred Meyer is now. And there will be places to park, just as there are now.
Does any one of you live right across the street from these stores? What is it about the parking lot that bothers you so much?
There is a vast parking lot at the Holman Road QFC, but nobody is complaining about that one.
Last I checked, the Holman Road QFC has a GIANT surface parking lot (in both the front and the back) and I've never heard a single complaint about that one.
I am simply baffled about what the objection to the parking lot is. I'd rather have a place to park when I go shopping than to have to drive around looking for one, or park somewhere subterranean and hard to navigate.
If Fred Meyer does some decent landscaping when it remodels, I'm sure it will look fine. The point is, it serves a purpose.