By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
If you have been hoping to hear about another restaurant taking over the two-years-closed Charlestown Café – you’re likely out of luck.
While the first post-closure proposal for the site has long since been scrapped, a new one is in play – and it is primarily residential.
City records show that Intracorp – the same developers behind the 3210 California proposal a few blocks north, as well as another proposal across the street from that – is pursuing a plan for six 5-unit townhouse buildings “around a central drive aisle” on the ex-café site.
We’re working to talk with the developers to find out more about the plan and the property’s status – it was posted as available “for lease” about a year after it closed – but for now, here’s what we have found out:
The project will require Design Review – no date set yet. The site plan filed with the city by West Seattle-founded Nicholson-Kovalchick Architects shows the townhouses in two 3-building rows – one facing California, one directly behind (parallel to an alley and the single-family homes east of it), with live-work units on the street at the California/Charlestown corner, and residential units everywhere else. The curb cuts (driveways) on California would be removed, with one proposed off SW Bradford on the south side of the site.
Intracorp, as noted earlier, is the developer for the ~155-apartment project at 3210 California SW, which goes back to the SW Design Review Board for a second round of Early Design Guidance on June 27 (as noted here last month), and also is listed as developer for a proposal across the street at 3211 California, described in documents as a 65-unit apartment building to replace three houses.
The Charlestown Café closed in April 2011, after facing various challenges in its final few years – less than three years before that final shutdown, it reopened after a five-month shutdown caused by a February 2008 fire. That fire, in turn, came just days after the café ownership got word of the demise of a year-and-a-half-old development proposal that threatened to close the restaurant.
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