A New Downtown Supermarket

Two blocks from Seattle's iconic Pike Place Market, in the basement of the historic Kress Building, Tyler Myers is trying to make history by building a 17,000-square-foot urban supermarket. He's a grocery guy from a grocery family on Whidbey Island, and he thinks he knows what his customers want: a full-service store (not just shelves of ramen and canned tuna), with fresh produce, meat, takeout.

Escalators will glide customers from the 3rd Avenue sidewalk to the terrazzo-tile lower level, where flowers, fruit and vegetables await, along with wines, desserts, artisan breads, gourmet cheeses, sushi, fresh sandwiches, a deli, a salad bar, a full-service butcher. Not much baby food, nor giant packages of toilet paper, however. An everyday place with supermarket prices, not mini-mart rip-offs.

If the Pike Place Market is first and foremost a tourist attraction, the new Kress IGA is a neighborhood grocery. "They'd recognize it in New York," Myers says. He expects to open in June.