Queen Anne residents are speaking out against bringing a CVS store into the Queen Anneneighborhood.
If plans go through, the Kidd Valley on Queen Anne (531 Queen Anne Ave. N.) would be turned into a single-level CVS pharmacy by 2015. Reports indicate CVS may attempt to develop in Wallingford and West Seattle, too.
Developers went through their first Design Review meeting with the Department of Planning and Development on July 17.
Bob Donegan, president of Ivars Inc., which owns Kidd Valley, said it’s locked into its contract with the buyer. As long as the developers can secure the proper permits, the plans will move forward.
Donegan has heard feedback from community members who want the developers to build multiple stories for housing.
“If we had known this a year ago, we would have had a different discussion,” Donegan said. “We’ll be supportive of the community because we’re a part of it. [The process] is outside of our control right now.”
Martin Kaplan, chair for the Land Use Review Committee (LURC) for the Queen Anne Community Council, said LURC has been involved with the development from the start.
“We are completely against under-developing that site with a one-story, ubiquitous, North American suburban shopping-center building,” Kaplan said. “It takes into consideration none of the urban context.”
The area is zoned for multi-use, Kaplan said, and he’d like to see more density there, with housing or offices built on top of the CVS structure.
“Just to put up a one-story shopping center — that’s just not the thing we think is appropriate for really any urban neighborhood,” he said. “If they want to do that in Bellevue, a shopping center in a sea of concrete, that’s fine.”
Kaplan isn’t against CVS: If it wants to build there, more power to them, he said. Instead, it has “everything to do with the loss of opportunity.”
Many community members have argued against another pharmacy in the neighborhood, and it’s a reasonable argument, Kaplan said. Kaplan runs an architectural firm and doesn’t consider himself an expert in business, “but when I go shopping, when there’s a Bartell’s on one corner and a Safeway on the other, I think it’s kind of overkill,” he said.
New developers need to plan for density, Kaplan said. Between now and 2030, he estimates 100,000 new people will live within the city limits and they need to live somewhere.
“It’s incumbent upon this to plan sensitively, so that people can live, work and play downtown and uptown,” Kaplan said. “Those are the kinds of projects we advocate for.”
Kaplan can’t begin to describe how important thoughtful urban planning is, he said. The developers have “shown no interest in collaborating with the community.”
While most planners call LURC and the community council to discuss their plans and get input, this project was a total surprise, Kaplan said. The community group found out about it by accident, and by that time, the designers had already planned the entire project.
“I met privately with the developers to try and advance community concerns to see if they’d consider partnering with a housing developer,” Kaplan said.
The developers will meet with a housing developer within the next few weeks.
“Recent correspondence I received from their attorney suggests to me that they accepted my invitation only to assuage, in some way, the momentum of our rapidly growing community concerns and reaction,” Kaplan said in a letter to City Hall. “They made it very clear that they were continuing along the path to permit their current proposal ASAP.”
CVS did not return multiple calls for comment.
Staying put?
Helen Neville, senior vice president of marketing for Bartell Drugs said her company hasn’t heard any feedback about the development plans. The Bartell store in Queen Anne (600 First Ave. N.) is just 0.2 miles away from the current Kidd Valley location.
Bartell Drugs understands there will be competitors in the retail landscape, Neville said: “We’ve been around since 1890, and we’ve encountered a lot of competitors since then. We’ve stayed focused on the community that we serve. We’re very committed to that area.”
If the development project goes through as is, Microloans Northwest (539 Queen Anne Ave. N.) will lose its store because it shares the building with Kidd Valley.
The company has four locations now, manager Kevin McCarthy said. It would be down to three stores and lose “an employee or two.”
Microloans Northwest has been in that location for 24 years; its lease is up in mid-2014.
Many people use its services to buy money orders and cash checks, McCarthy said. He estimates the older population will be the most affected if its store closes. It may try to open another location, McCarthy said, but he doesn’t expect it to be in Queen Anne because it will be difficult to find a location with parking.
“We haven’t started looking yet because we don’t know how this is going to come out,” McCarthy said. “We’ve been part of this community since ‘89. It would be a shame for us to be gone, but that’s life, I guess.”
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