Seattle’s Pike Place Market to get USD 74 million renovation

Pike Place Market, famous in Seattle and throughout the United States for its salmon-tossing fishmongers and fresh oysters, crabs, and geoducks, is getting a much-needed USD 74 million (EUR 62.8 million) facelift. 

Created in 1907 on the waterfront in downtown Seattle, the popular Northwest landmark is being renovated for the first time in 40 years. 

Portions of the renovation were already completed this summer with the construction of an indoor strip of restaurants and new outdoor market area with room for 47 vendors, both of which opened in June. Plans for 40 new units of low-income and senior housing, public art installations, and 300 covered parking spaces are in the works. 

Complaints from tourists and from locals that the market was too crowded to enjoy finally motivated developers to spring into action, according to the Washington Post.

Within the market, Seattle restauranteur Bryan Jarr is hard at work on a project called Little Fish, which will incorporate a restaurant, deli, and seafood cannery into a single space, scheduled to open in January 2018. Jarr’s business partner in the venture is Zoi Antonitsas, who was on the television series “Top Chef” and was named by Food & Wine Magazine one of the best new chefs in the United States in 2015. 

Jarr has already opened a restaurant called Jarr Bar in the market, which features a Spanish menu influenced heavily by tapas, with more than half a dozen canned seafood items available, including sardines, cockles, tuna belly, mussels, and octopus.

To Jarr, it makes sense to open a seafood cannery in the market, given its history. 

“There used to be canneries right here,” he told the newspaper earlier this month. “That’s something that young Seattleites probably don’t know and that old Seattleites have likely forgotten, given the rise of tech companies in the area during the last few decades.”