Condos and cupcake bistros aren’t the only victims of the economic downtown. As the Waterfront Urban Renewal Area’s budget has shrunk, so have plans for the Uwajimaya downtown.
The massive, fantastic Asian grocery chain was hoping to turn the parking lot at the corner of NW 4th and Couch into a new food outlet plus 140-unit mixed income apartment complex. The Portland Development Commission jumped at the chance to offer $10 million in funding for the project, seeing it as not just a way to enliven one of Old Town’s many life-sucking surface parking lots but as a way to put something Chinese back in Chinatown, too.
But now $2 million of that $10 million in funding has fallen through and the PDC is scrambling to find a way to fill the gap so Uwajimaya’s backers can sign a lease by the end of the year. The Daily Journal of Commerce reports that the PDC has a unique scheme: sell properties it has had trouble developing (including the Police Block at SW 3rd and Oak Street) to get enough money to buy the current parking lot that will hopefully be home to Uwajimaya. Peter Englander, manager of the Waterfront URA tells the Daily Journal that the PDC rarely sells or swaps property to pay for new projects, “but we need to find alternatives so we can meet the budget.”
So this could be a great idea and, hey, I love fresh octopus and spring rolls as much as the next girl, but “creative financing” plans always set off some alarm bells. It seems troubling that the PDC would pull out of a project it had trouble developing downtown to invest in a new project that’s already having trouble developing downtown.
- via flickr
- Dragons! Cheap Grocery Stores! Both Are Currently Imaginary in Old Town!
me want! I would love this. BTW, have any ACTUAL cupcakeries closed or is this just more FUD from the anti-cup squad?
Uwajimaya would put the Japanese back in Chinatown, but who cares about the details… all asians are the same, right?
Uwajimaya’s pretty fucking pan-Asian, bill.
sigh… Uji’s is not Chinese, even the name is Japanese. All of their festivals are Japanese. Is it that hard to tell the difference?
It’s “Iwojima” people. Get it straight. I mean people DIED or something for the right to buy yogurt happy pops!
For the record I think that should be “NW 4th and Couch” and “SW 3rd and Oak.”
Addictedtotext, have you shopped at Uwajimaya? They have the broadest selection of Chinese grocery’s in the state. The fact that it’s a Japanese-name doesn’t make it any more of a Japanese supermarket than Mitsuwa or others of that ilk.
Additionally, if you think that the weekend festival festivals are all Japanese, you just haven’t been paying attention.
Uwajimaya started as a Japanese store and is certainly pan-Asian now, but it shouldn’t be described as being a Chinese store. They would be a very welcome addition to that neighborhood and their track record with doing the mixed use and mixed income housing in Seattle is very good.
I guess I’m just missing the part where anyone called it a Chinese store, either in the post or the two linked articles.
OK, finally read the post all the way through. I’ve gotta agree the Uwa brings a hell of a lot more Chinese to the table than an a vacant block or some Pearl businesses creeping in.
I know downtown is SCARY AND CONFUSING to Eastsiders like you smirk, but Couch is in NW and Oak is in SW. Anyone who’s looked at a map and especially someone who’s doing a story about business development in the area shouldn’t make that mistake.
Lazy reporting.
While it’s true that Uwajimaya would put some Chinese groceries in Chinatown, it would do far more to put Japanese food back in Japantown. Before we rounded them up and sent them to internment camps, it was primarily Japanese who populated Old Town. The Chinese businesses were south of Burnside.
Dude is right – NW 3rd and Oak does not exist.
WOW! A smirk article that is poorly researched with numerous glaring factual inaccuracies. Who would have imagined.
The real reason they can’t develop the Uwaj is because they can’t find the proposed locations on maps.
But I really hope that Uwaj gets built. It did a lot for the King Street area in Seattle.
I screwed up and swapped NW for SW in the addresses of this original post – now they’re edited to read correctly.
You know that it’s possible to fact-check and edit posts before they’re posted, right? I’m starting to think that someone just forgot to explain how this all works when you started the “journalism” thing…