No new restaurant here

Foodies and those concerned about the shrinking retail core of Madison Park will be saddened to know that there will not be a replacement restaurant for the late Cafe Parco.  We have it on good authority that the building, located on 42nd near Madison, has been purchased by someone, apparently a Madison Park resident, who is going to renovate the space and transform it into his personal office.

Building owner Karen Binder, who for a couple decades operated Madison Park Cafe from the one-time residential building, did not respond to our request for confirmation.  But it's clear that the place is being emptied of restaurant paraphernalia. One of the problems with operating a restaurant in that space is that the kitchen was inadequate, both in terms of size and the age of its equipment.  Extensive work would have been needed to make it efficient.  Even if that obstacle had been overcome, the limited seating indoors was always a problem with no solution. We've been told that in the restaurant's final years in particular, the outdoor good-weather seating and the weekend brunches were what made Madison Park Cafe profitable. Cafe Parco, as was evident to anyone who wandered by regularly, was unable to achieve the same results.

The brick building to the south of the old Cafe Parco location has also been recently purchased, but there's no indication that it will be used for anything more than offices. The same situation is true for the building that housed the now-notorious Lakeside Capital offices on 43rd. That space had been marketed as a potential retail location, but that's not going to happen according to the word we've received.  The building changed hands recently and the new owners will not be adding to the retail space along that street.  As others have found, in any event, it's tough to do retail off of Madison.

Meanwhile, there's a now-empty shop where Ann Marie Lingerie used to be, in the building that also houses Starbucks.  It's unclear from the sign posted in the window whether the current tenant plans something else for that space.  For some reason, the Madison Park Blogger was unsuccessful in getting any response from Ann Marie concerning their abandoned location.

Perhaps we're losing our touch.

Seen or heard in the 'hood

New restaurant to take MP Conservatory space

Though we don't yet have the details, we do know that the space on 43rd Avenue E. vacated by Madison Park Conservatory in February will soon be the site of a new restaurant.  Owners Maria and Ricky Eng, doing business as Eng Seattle Restaurants, Inc., applied earlier this month for a liquor license for the site. Ricky Eng confirms that while the name is yet to be determined, the restaurant will definitely be a full-service, sit-down affair. We'll give you the full scoop when we have it.

Founder moves on but pizzeria still going strong

Tom Siegal, who created The Independent Pizzeria in 2010 and who has been the mainstay pizza maker ever since, moved to Providence, Rhode Island earlier this summer.  His wife was admitted to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design--and Tom, quite naturally, decided to relocate to the East Coast to be with her while she's in school.

While Tom is maintaining his ownership of our neighborhood pizza joint, Joe Heffernan and the rest of The Independent Pizza crew are carrying on the four-year tradition of making excellent Neapolitan pizza in Madison Park.  National foodie website Epicurious tapped The Indpendent as having one of the 10 Top Pizzas in the U.S. last year.

Former Mad Pizza space undergoing refurbishment

Construction of a new interior, along with some exterior refurbishment, is underway at the old Mad Pizza location on E. Madison St.  So it looks like what's rumored to be an Asian eatery is going to be part of Madison Park's future.  What's apparently not in our future, however, is a taco stand at the location of the old Best Buds flower shop on E. Blaine.  Nothing much happening there since the notice was taken out of the window months ago.   Both sites have been vacant since last year.

Ann Marie elects to stay

Although Ann Marie Lingerie announced during Spring that it was giving up its "bricks and mortar" in the neighborhood and migrating to an exclusively on-line business, apparently the moving-out sale and the interest generated from the publicity resulted in a re-thinking of that business strategy.  Manager Felicia Klabo reported to us earlier this month that the shop is staying in place.  The efforts to increase Ann Marie's on-line presence continues unabated, however.

HomeStreet almost ready to enter banking scene

It's taken a long, long time to get to this point, but the new Madison Park HomeStreet Bank branch seems to be nearing completion, with an anticipated late August/early September opening date.  The one-time Tully's site, which was vacated in October 2012, has been under such an extensive repair program that it could almost be argued that the result is a new building.  The original structure is over one hundred years old and has served host to many different businesses along the way, but never a bank. What's happening to this space is part of a trend, however, of Madison Park becoming a banking hub. HomeStreet, when open, will be Bank Branch Number Five.