Originally published Saturday, November 1, 1997

By MARK HIGGINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

While some Central Area businesses will profit from the coming changes, others may fail. Jay Youn and his wife own Video Max in the Promenade 23 shopping mall at 23rd and Jackson. They work seven days a week, taking time off only on Sunday to attend church.

Youn says he just learned last week about a new Hollywood Video store that is expected to open across the street from his shop by early next year. "I'm not against development in the area, but this is not how you do it -- to let the big fish eat the little fish.

"It's not going to happen to just me. It will happen to others, too," Youn warns.

The corner of 23rd Avenue and East Union Street is another focal point for the Central Area and real estate speculation.

"What they are doing today, they should have done and planned 20 years ago. I always told people to stay and don't move," says Jack Richlen, who has sold meat, groceries and produce at the corner for 52 years. His son-in-law, Sid Cohen, now helps him manage Richlen's Super Mini, which sells a couple of thousand pounds of cooked chicken a week.

Richlen says his folks moved from Tacoma to the Central Area in 1933, where they found a house to rent at 29th Avenue and East Spring Street for $25 a month.

"I see the neighborhood as being rebuilt. We have some beautiful old homes that are getting rebuilt, which is what I always believed in doing," Richlen says.

Walt Hubbard, chief executive of MidTown Commons, says he has offered to buy Richlen's Super Mini for a proposed family practice medical clinic for Providence and Medalia Healthcare. So far, his purchase offer has been rebuffed.

Down the street a half-block, the Casey Family Program is poised to build a "showcase" two-story brick building. The $2 million office will be a few doors from where Jim Casey, the program's benefactor, grew up.

Casey helped found United Parcel Service. He and his siblings established the Annie E. Casey Foundation in 1948. The organization says it is the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to disadvantaged children.

Construction of the new office is expected to begin in March. Though the site was underused for years, some in the neighborhood are critical of the new building's design.

"What they are proposing is pretty much the antithesis of what we would like to see," says David Foster, a co-chairman of the Central Area Neighborhood Association, a community council.

Many in the community want more retail activity at 23rd and Union, as opposed to the Casey building, which will be set back from the sidewalk and have a large parking lot, Foster says.

Continued:

• Change is coming quickly
• Hard work is renewing neighborhood with long history
• Once blighted area's economy now booming