Vulcan Plans to turn Terry Ave into Retail Row

The PSBJ printed a well-balanced article ($) last Friday on Vulcan's retail strategy on Terry Avenue as part of the Amazon.com campus development.

The east side of Terry Avenue could feature as many as 25 shops and restaurants stretching from Mercer to the 93 yr. old Terry Avenue Building which will be preserved as part of the project.

The article points out that creating a successful retail corridor from scratch is no easy task, and Vulcan is likely to encounter several obstacles along the way. Vulcan is not going in with any half-baked plans, however, and is confident it can circumnavigate the challenges before them.

“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.

Vulcan will try to recreate the appeal of Yale Avenue across from REI in the Alley 24 complex, but this time they will add a few national chains to the mix of local and regional retailers and restaurants. Targeted retail tenants will be in the outdoor recreation, lifestyle amenities and home furnishing categories.

They plan on bringing life to the area with public spaces, extra landscaping, and wide sidewalks with outdoor seating for cafes. Vulcan will also offer retail tenants flexibility in the look and feel of their storefront beyond the typical aluminum and glass facade. However, the rents will likely be too onerous for independent merchants to hang out a shingle, which will detract from the kind of diversity that makes for the best retail rows.

Another obstacle includes a relatively sparse retail presence on the west side of Terry, save for Portage Bay Cafe, as double-sided corridors are preferrable to shoppers and retailers.

And the elephant in the room would be the struggling economy, but Vulcan is optimistic that will all be behind us by the time the Amazon.com project is complete (Spring 2010 - Summer 2011).

Personally, I hope they can pull it off as this area could use the type of energy a successful retail row can inject.