Seattle Alert: B&O Espresso's Future Uncertain

There's a lot of development and building that's going on here in Seattle. Mrs. F and I have been gratified by all the multi-family home construction that's been going on around us here in West Seattle. But there can also be a downside to development in the city, especially as new construction redevelops existing sites with long-established businesses. Which brings me to this story in today's Seattle P-I sent in by FotF CogintheSystem (still working on just the right alias) about B&O Espresso. It was one of the first coffee joints I visited when I first moved to Seattle back in 1992, and I was re-introduced to their delicious delicacies (from wonderful Middle Eastern-inspired tapas and dinners to the f'ing fantastic chocolate pots) by Mrs. F when we first started on our journey four years ago. It seems that the owner of the building where B&O resides is going to be tearing it down for a standard mixed-use building with bottom-floor retail topped by several floors of apartments.

John Stoner, the owner of the building at the corner of East Olive Way and Belmont Avenue East, said he'd love to keep B&O Espresso as a tenant in the ground floor of the new building, which could be up to six stories.

Despite incomplete details posted on a city land use notice -- which led many to fear the proposed retail space would be too small for B&O -- Stoner said he's willing to design the building's commercial area to meet the restaurant's needs.

[...]

B&O owner Majed Lukatah said he's not sure what will happen, but that his family intends to keep the business going.

He worries what a yearlong construction closure would do to his employees, some of whom have worked there for decades. If customers start finding coffee and company somewhere else, would they return?

[...]

He and his wife, Jane, who started the B&O in 1976, tried to buy their building the last time it went on the market. But they came up several thousand dollars short compared with the money that those with redevelopment plans could afford to pay.

It would be sad day, indeed, if Seattle were to lose the bohemian B&O.