University Village (colloquially known as U-Village) is a shopping mall in Seattle, Washington, the United States, located in the south corner of the Ravenna neighborhood to the north of the Downtown area. It is an open-air shopping center that offers restaurants, locally owned boutiques, and national retailers. It is a popular retail destination for home furnishings, popular fashions, gift items, and restaurants.
Founding
University Village was initially developed by Continental Inc., which also developed Westwood Village in West Seattle and Aurora Village in Shoreline, Washington. It was once home to a Coast Salish village named sluʔwiɫ, which means “Little Canoe Channel” in Lushootseed. The 24-acre (9.7 ha) shopping center was built in 1956 across NE 45th Street on an earlier part of the Montlake Landfill (since 1911, 1922–1966), taking out what remained of the Union Bay Marsh that was drained by the lowering of Lake Washington as a result of the opening of the Lake Washington Ship Canal (1913–1916). Some wetland was later partially restored as the Union Bay Natural Area with the Center for Urban Horticulture.
History
Until the early 1990s, the character of University Village in Seattle, WA was decidedly different. Most of its businesses were small, and the chain stores were all local: Ernst Hardware and Malmo Nursery, Lamonts department store (acquired by Gottschalks in 2000), Pay ‘n Save Drugs (sold to PayLess Drug in the early 1990s), and QFC supermarket, then a much smaller facility on the western side of the property, formerly an A&P store. The present QFC store on the east edge opened in 1996; it was once a dairy facility from 1955 to 1991. There was even a bowling alley, Village Lanes, originally a roller rink in the 1950s, located near the northwest corner. Many of the businesses began to falter toward the end of the 1980s, however, and in 1993 the owners of the mall decided to sell. For much of this period, University Village was owned by the Tektronix Retirement Investment Fund.
Modern
The chairman of QFC and a partner bought it, and tenants like those mentioned above began to move out. Barnes & Noble was an anchor tenant after the mid-1990s renovation but closed at the end of 2011. U-Village no longer has a hardware store but features upscale national stores such as Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn, Banana Republic, and Crate & Barrel (as well as related local specialty stores). Despite this, 61% of U-Village merchants are still local. (The Ernst and Pay n’ Save corporate chains went out of business in the 1990s; adjacent QFC still nominally exists but as a division of Kroger.) Bed Bug Exterminator Seattle
Check out different neighborhoods like Wedgewood
