Merchants look to Uwajimaya for Old Town/Chinatown boost

UPDATE • Proposed Asian grocery store development hinges on PDC funds, road improvements

By Peter Korn

The Portland Tribune, Jul 9, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (25 Reader comments)

Courtesy of Sockeye Development

A rendering shows a proposed Uwajimaya grocery store that could be the linchpin of redevelopment efforts in Old Town/Chinatown. A development proposal was outlined Wednesday to the neighborhood vision committee.

Plans to build a new Uwajimaya store in Old Town/Chinatown could lean heavily on the city’s plan to improve parts of Burnside and Couch streets.

Representatives of the Seattle Asian grocery store and Sockeye Development LLC told members of the Old Town/Chinatown Visions Committee Wednesday morning that the project could be built in the next three years if a lot of things fall into place, including financing by the Portland Development Commission and approval of the $28 million East Burnside-Couch Street couplet project that could improve both roads and send more traffic through the Old Town neighborhood.

Increased traffic is critical to development of the new store, said Doug Obletz, manager of Sockeye Development, which would guide the store’s construction, bringing more people into downtown to shop.

“It’s not a neighborhood store, it’s a regional attractor,” Obletz said.

‘All that energy’

Even before it is constructed, the proposed Uwajimaya store is becoming a draw for some businesses because the project could propel redevelopment of the Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood.

Howard Weiner, owner of Cal Skate Skateboards on Northwest Sixth Avenue in Old Town, already has his eye on a new spot, the corner shop at Northwest Fifth Avenue and Davis Street, just a block away.

But that one block may eventually represent a considerable difference in potential retail trade, Weiner said Tuesday. In fact, Fifth Avenue might soon run along one side of the proposed project.

Obletz joined officials of Uwajimaya Inc. in the Visions Committee presentation on plans for what the city calls Block 33, currently home to a 200-space surface parking lot bounded by Northwest Fourth and Fifth avenues and Couch and Davis streets.

Uwajimaya officials have worked with Sockeye and the PDC for more than a year on the project, which might be part of a larger two-block development that would include the neighboring Block 32 fronting Burnside Street.

A new Uwajimaya store would face Couch Street and Fourth Avenue, and, according to Obletz, would resemble the Museum Place at Southwest 10th Avenue and Jefferson Street. That development has a large Safeway supermarket on the ground floor with mixed income apartments above, and was another Sockeye project.

The Uwajimaya project would include 30,000 square feet for the grocery store and other, smaller retailers. Obletz said that an Asian bookstore and restaurant are also envisioned for the development.

In addition, 140 publicly subsidized affordable housing units would sit above the retail space. Between 210 and 340 parking spaces are planned in a three-level underground garage, some of them dedicated to public use.

Obletz said that work on the project could begin by the end of 2009 and be completed sometime in 2011.

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