Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 10, October 2003

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

Traffic, shoppers return

to The Ave after renovation

By JAMES BUSH

Is the new-look University Way shopping district headed for a major comeback?

So far, so good, say Ave merchants, who have seen improved pedestrian traffic and better sales since the University District's main thoroughfare reopened for business after a 13-month, $8 million reconstruction of the street and sidewalks, which also added new street trees, benches, and bike racks.

"It's doing much better. The buses starting up again really helped," says Anderson Yee, operations manager at Tower Records, 4518 University Way NE. Bus traffic had been rerouted to 15th Avenue Northeast during construction, robbing the street of pedestrian traffic.

Surviving the tough months during construction, "was probably easier for me than a lot of the merchants," says Yee. "We're a corporation and they understand. Some of the mom and pops, I don't know how they did it."

Down the Ave at Shultzy's Sausage, 4114 University Way NE, owner Don Schulze says the rebound has been phenomenal. "This is supposed to be my deadest of dead times, but it's far from normal," he says. "I'm seeing numbers I've never seen before at this time of year."

Merchants also give high praise to the work performed. "The overall look is much better," says Schulze.

"I hear from the customers coming in that it looks so nice," says Toshimo Shiga, owner of Shiga's One World Shop at 4306 University Way NE. She salutes Mayor Greg Nickels, who includes the Ave makeover as part of his plans to help revitalize Seattle neighborhood business districts. "He did an excellent job, I will give him credit for that," she says.

Gayle Nowicki, owner of Gargoyle Statuary at 4550 University Way NE, sounds a note of caution, however. Regular visitors to the Ave who disappeared during the street's term as a construction zone haven't yet returned, she says. "People get in the habit of where they shop." When they are displaced by a project such as the Ave construction, "it takes a while to get them back in the habit."

Nowicki says more major media coverage of the Ave turnaround would help the cause. "It's a matter of getting the word out that the Ave is doing better," she says.

The Aug. 9 "Ave-A-New" block party, a celebration of the street's reopening, sparked some media attention, but others say that word-of-mouth advertising can be just as effective.

Fall quarter at the University of Washington will soon be underway, adding more pedestrian traffic and vitality to the Ave. "It was slow and I think it will get more rapid as school comes back and people see how different things are around here," says Schulze.

Shiga seconds that point: "We have a lot of students coming back pretty soon," she says, "and I'm very happy about it."