The Subway on the corner of Market Street and NW Leary is planning to close.
A big “for lease” sign adorns the top of the building. We spoke with an employee who tells us that Subway is not planning to renew its lease and is currently looking for a new location in the area. The current lease expires the end of March. (Forum member “Great Idea” first posted about this here.)
Subway on Market Street planning to close
Businesses failing is bad. I do wonder, though, if Subway leaving this building might make the building feel less strip-mall-ish and open the way for other types of businesses to move in there.
like another bar……or drycleaner.whew…..
Failing? The article (which I actually read) says they are looking for another location. Most likely the landlord jacking up the rent, just as they are doing with Carnegies across the street.
Good riddance, the less low cost, junk food Ballard has the better. Get ride of McD’s, Burger King, Taco Bell next please….
Well, that’s what I’d say, too, whether it was true or not, if I worked for a nationwide chain that was closing a store. An indie bookstore closing its doors can admit that it just couldn’t make it, but a national brand can’t.
Why, so another expensive yuppie restaurant can open? Businesses oriented toward people of average income close, and are replaced by businesses aimed at the affluent. It shows the trend of society in general.
The other day the manager told me that they are closing because the landlord jacked up the rent…
When is the madness going to stop!? It seems like in the last year so many great local businesses have had to close because of this same problem and I’m getting sick and tired of it! Epilogue Books, Dante’s Ballard Bodega, Chai House and so so many more it’s getting to be ridiculous. Then all those spots just sit there empty and look like crap. Can anyone help me to understand why this is?
In the next year it feels like all that will be left of Ballard is empty, new condos and high priced restaurants and bars because those are the only things that can afford the rent!
Also, although I understand why people may not like Subway because it’s a major chain, it was really nice for people like me who work on Ballard Ave or the surrounding area, to have a low cost lunch alternative that’s fast. I only have 10 minute breaks so I only have time to run to Subway or Annie’s for a quick to go lunch. I guess it’s a good thing that I’ll be forced to brown bag it more often but it kinda sucks too…
I love McDonalds and Taco Bell
Wow, after looking at the headlines on myballard this past few weeks, it seems the owners of this site have pretty much given up. This story was in the forum several days ago. Perhaps they think they can just ride the wave they started a few years back. Get to work!
When that location housed a bagel shop, I’d stop there on my way to work and buy a baker’s dozen. I was there early enough that I never had to feed the meter, but if I did, I probably would have gone elsewhere. And since I’m no fan of Subway (I pack my lunch), I never went in there the entire time they were there.
IMHO, whatever kind of business comes next, I hope they realize that the little parking lot is very inconvenient (unless you have a reverse commute) so they’re going to have to rely on foot traffic, and/or people willing to pay to park at the meter.
I much more unhappy about Carnegie’s. It’s such a unique location, and their food is pretty good. I hope whomever is responsible for charging them so much for rent learns a real hard lesson.
yeah, Snoop.
I broke this story a few days ago. where’s my props, Swedes?
I’m at the Pizza Hut (What?)
I’m at the Taco Bell (What?)
I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell
[Verse 1]
I’m at the Pizza Hut. (What?)
I’m at the Taco Bell (Naw)
I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell
Wait… we’re at the Pizza Hut (What?)
We’re at the Taco Bell (What?)
We’re at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell
We at the Pizza Hut (No…)
We at the Pizza Hut. (No…)
We at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell
[Interlude]
[Verse 2]
I’m at the Pizza Hut (What?)
I’m at the Taco Bell (What?)
I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell
Wait a minute… I’ve got that taco smell
That pescado smell
I’ve got a lot of smells
I’ve rolled a lot of Ls
I’m at that Pizza Hut (Okay?)
I’ve got that pizza gut (Uh)
I’ve got that pizza butt. (No)
I’m at the Pizza Hut, ah… (Nah-ah)
And at the Taco Bell (Yeah?)
I’m at that Pizza Hut (Okay!)
I’m at that Taco Bell (Ha!)
That combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell!
Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell! (Taco Bell!)
Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell! (Pizza Hut!)
[Interlude 2]
Where you at?
I’m at that Pizza Hut (No…)
I’m at that Taco Bell (Really?)
I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell
Okay, wait… I’m at the Pizza Hut! (No, you ain’t!)
I’m at the Taco Bell! (No, I’m over here!)
I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell! Where you at?
I don’t see you!
I’m at the Pizza Hut!
I’m at the Taco Bell!
I don’t see you!
I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell!
Right here at the Pizza Hut on Jamaica Avenue!
Jamaica Avenue! Jamaica Avenue!
The combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell on Jamaica Avenue!
Jamaica Avenue! That’s where I’m at! Where you at?
Yo, that’s where I’m at? Where you at?
I don’t see you here, dawg!
I’m at the Pizza Hut!
I’m at the Taco Bell!
I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell!
I’m at the Pizza Hut!
I’m at the Taco Bell!
I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell!
(One more time!)
I’m at the Pizza Hut! (One more time!)
I’m at the Taco Bell! (One more time!)
I’m at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell! (One more time!)
What… what?
Wouldn’t have anything to do with the rising property values, would it?
It’s easy to rent it out cheap if you paid off the mortgage in 1974, but if you just bought that same building for a couple million today, you’re going to need to charge more in rent to make the mortgage payments.
Of course, this only explains the recently turned over properties and not the ones that have been in the same hands since the Eisenhower administration.
Your props are in the mail. I ran into the Swedes at the Post Office and they said they were mailing you your much deserved props.
How greedy to jack up rent in an area during a recession…with so much unemployment…what the heck is going on? Isn’t SOME rent better than NO rent???
Well, I’d imagine they figure they can rent it. Wouldn’t you? And judging by the new-business boom in Ballard over the last several months, I doubt they’re wrong.
That location is pretty great, and if a new tenant can make that spot look like something other than the anchor store at Ye Olde Strippe Mall Courte, then they can probably make more money there than Subway did.
Kind of a big if, though.
Maybe a Quiznos will open instead. Or a GameStop!
So ‘yuppie’ is now used to describe food that doesn’t taste like sh*t, isn’t made with sh*t or served by 18 year old high school drop outs in plastic cups without silverware?
what year(s) was the bagel shop there?
You obviously have superior tastes to the general public. Wow, how does it feel to be enlightened?
Subway is a decent place to get a damn sandwich. Is that too much to ask? I’d prefer not to pay an extra $4 for something “artesian” that I have to have some tatooed BS artist pouring over.
Besides, admit it, you go there when you roll out of the bars anyway.
Hey “great idea”, thank you ! We belatedly added some props to the story.
I love how Subway advertises that every location bakes its bread fresh.
The turn the oven on, and you can smell the chemicals from blocks away.
Food that isn’t constructed of processed crap is expensive. I love how the same Americans who deride all but the lowest common denominator as “yuppie” are same ones who complain about the spiraling cost of their health care.
Pay the grower now, or pay the hospital later.
I actually used to own a couple of Subway’s. Maybe you should check your facts before you assume something. The products really are fresh and they contain few “chemicals”. You can check all this for yourself.
Yes it isn’t “artesian” or macrobiotic or some frou frou BS but guess what? Who cares. It still tastes good, doesn’t cost that much, and it is made without attitude.
That’s a good enough for most people.
While they do bake the bread on-site (from frozen dough, as they do with the cookies), the products are certainly over-processed and full of chemicals and preservatives. Subway’s website helpfully lists the ingredients…most of which are things I like to avoid.
At best I would say that their food is marginally better quality than McDonald’s, and that’s not a very meaningful benchmark.
Mmm… love that sodium stearoyl lactylate! Thanks for backing me up, ESR.
And azodicarbonamide… that one’s a real winner!
Meanwhile, I’d LOVE for the “former owner” to explain, then, what the hell he thinks causes that signature “subway smell.” It sure ain’t the magnetic aroma of real bread a-bakin’.
Thanks for the laugh. one of the worse things about eating at Tanh Brothers is the stench emanating from next door. My wife once thought it was coming from the restrooms. It certainly isn’t the stench of anything humans would recognize as ‘food’.
But that’s right, Jered lost weight eating that sh*t. It’s true, I saw it on TV.
Subway bread….apparently the good news is, it contains some actual ‘wheat’:
Enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, barley malt, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, yeast, high fructose corn syrup, whole wheat flour, wheat gluten, contains 2% or less of the following: oat fiber, soybean oil, salt, wheat bran, rolled wheat, rye nuggets, dough conditioners (DATEM, sodium stearoyl lactylate), yeast nutrients (calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate), degermed yellow corn meal, rolled oats, rye flakes, caramel color, triticale flakes, parboiled brown rice, refinery syrup, honey, barley flakes, flaxseed, millet, sorghum flour, azodiacarbonamide, natural flavor (maltodextrin, natural flavor, silicon dioxide, lactic acid). Contains wheat.
More good news, the chicken strips contain ‘chicken flavor’. I hate it when my chicken tastes like cardboard. From Subway’s website:
OVEN ROASTED CHICKEN STRIPS Boneless, skinless, oven roasted chicken with rib meat, water, soy protein concentrate, salt, modified food starch, chicken flavor (contains salt, autolyzed yeast extract, sugar, molasses, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate, sodium phosphates), sodium phosphates. Contains soy.
So I’m a little reticent about telling you this, since we agree on the Subway-stench phenomenon, but Than Brothers’ phở broth is basically a big vat of MSG.
MSG is naturally occurring, salt and glutamic acid, traditionally found in East Asian cuisine and extracted from seaweed. It’s salt with a kick, that’s all.
I know that MSG is literally one of the five basic tastes perceptible to humans — it’s pure “umami” — but I think the version used in cheap-style phở, like the version used to coat Doritos, is synthetic. I certainly find it cloying in excessive quantity.
This thread is precisely what is wrong with Seattle and Ballard today. How about everyone eat wherever they like, and keep their insults about what other people like to eat alone.
Clearly you are new to here.
The Internet: where awful people meet!(tm)
Convince the Feds to halt the agricultural subsidies that artificially cheapen crap foods and you’ve got yourself a deal!
Let’s see- niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid- those are VITEMANS, don’t know if they you learned that yet. whole wheat flour, wheat gluten, rolled oats, yeast nutrients (so the bread rises, duh), rye, flaxseed, etc, etc
Not only is that hardly bad, it is pretty good. Unless you bake your own bread anything you buy anywhere is going to have pretty much the same list- if you are lucky. Usually it is much worse.
I know it is hard to believe but just because some “granola” person serves it to you and you paid $9 a slice for it and they stamped it “natural” doesn’t mean it is actually better for you.
Honestly, I don’t think any of you have ever worked at a restaurant and/or know too much about how food is prepared.
OMG!!! You mean they tried to make it taste more appealing? Are you serious? I can’t believe those nasty capitalist would stoop to such lows. Outrageous.
What’s next, a clean facility and low prices? When does it end?
What it means is that they bought the cheapest, most poorly raised, most malnutrition-addled, and LEAST TASTY chicken possible. So bad, in fact, that they felt they needed to add an chemically-derived ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR just to make it approximate the taste it should have had in the first place.
This is the very definition of a processed food, and Subway’s website is full of similar examples. There is mounting evidence that the human body simply deals with processed ingredients in a different manner than unprocessed ones — more differently than it deals with categories like fats, proteins, carbs, etc. — and that this is at the root of our national health crisis.
I don’t know if I’m more perturbed that you don’t seem to understand what we’re talking about, or that you don’t seem to care!
thanks!
I was just kidding though, I don’t really need the credit.
Again, you are a city person and have no idea how chickens are raised. There’s no taste difference between free range chicken and chicken raised on a big farm. How do I know? I grew up on a farm in IN.
Chicken flavor is just a catch all for spices. I saw the other absurd post that MSG was a “natural taste”, whatever, MSG in a jar is no more natural than any other processed spice.
They didn’t add the flavoring/spices to make up for a deficiency, they added it so it would be more appealing- the same reason that any flavoring or spice is added to any food.
Anyway, you’ve made up your mind and haven’t bothered to take the time to learn too much about food preperation. No matter, you feel superior and that’s all that matters to your type.
Yes it is and 99.9% of landlords understand this. Usually when a business can’t make it they blame the landlord for raising the rent when in fact that is not the case. Kind of a “I wasn’t fired, I quit” situation.
I see a lot of commercial leases in the northend, the vast majority of landlords the past few years have decided to forgo rent increases (even those that are provided for in the lease) in order to keep good tenants. I don’t know if this is the case with this property but it is fairly rare to let a paying tenant go unless you have another paying tenant ready to take their place.
Unless you’re under 35, Former Owner, YOU didn’t grow up on a farm bearing any resemblance to ones that produced the corn-stuffed and chemically-spiced chickens you served either.
Oh, and yet again you are either a liar or an idiot. It took me about 20 seconds of research to learn that disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate are both chemically-isolated food additives that are used to impart an amorphous “meaty” flavor to processed foods.
“Chicken flavor” is therefore not “a catch all for spices,” along the lines of “any spice is added to any food.” It is literally “artificial generic meat flavor” being added to the crappiest meat you can buy.
I’d have more faith if you could spell ‘vitamins’….btw, why do they need to inject vitamins into Subway’s bread at the factory?
Let me know where that mystical $9 a slice of bread is.
Hey, it sounds like if I added the right flavor and artificial coloring, priced it right (99 cents for 10!), had Jered claim it helped him lose 100llbs, I could sell you a dog t*rd.
Speaking of capitalism, it looks like the Turdway is going out of business. I guess the market has spoken, and t*rds disguised as food are out.
“How about everyone eat wherever they like”
Because those of us who eat well wind up paying the health care bills (70% of healthcare costs in the US are from chronic, lifetsyle diseases: diabetes, heart disease and hypertension) for Subway eaters that’s why. Create healthcare pools for fast food eaters only, then I’ll stop complaining.
Come on guys! Forget the $5 footlong and get a $5, 2.5″ Rajun Cajun down the street? Yeah!
TUBS SUBS!
A Rajun Cajun costs like $9 now.
I used to eat at the OC all the time, but it just got to be too much.
Sigh…let’s all go get a gyro before they jack the price up on those or get kicked out of their space.
I just got done watching Bill Maher recite the credentials of the founding fathers for the edification of the teabaggers: lawyer, lawyer, lawyer, another lawyer, astronomer, scientist, spoke 6 languages, translated Greek and Latin, liked to hang out in Paris. Etc. Etc.
So if not wanting to eat garbage from Subway makes me an “elitist”, well that’s just fine with me. Elite is pretty good company to be in.
I guess you’ll give up whatever vices you consume then? Sure, Subway eaters are way more obese and health problem ridden than those eating freedom farm-raised chicken swimming in an organic butter and cream emulsion. Suuuure.
And lest anyone be confused: I personally find Subway disgusting. But that’s my taste, not some objective indictment of the product, which many enjoy. I’m smart enough to not assume that I hold the golden key to good living, and the golden ruler to act as a yardstick for everyone else.
Type your comment here.wow. it’s amazing how sanctimonius you are. this blog is full of people like you and one of the reasons ballard will end up a ghost town. grow up.
“Food that isn’t constructed of processed crap is expensive.”
Really? Flour is expensive? Butter? Eggs? Milk? Whole organic chickens? Apples from my tree? Pears from my tree? Basmati I buy in bulk? Beans I buy in bulk?Quina I buy in bulk? Fish I catch in Alaska each summer? Half the cow I buy each fall? The strawberrys, blackberrys, ansd raspberrys that grow in my backyard? The tomatoes I grew and can each Summer? How about the squash, lettuce, potatoes and onions I grow? It all costs peanuts. Even the chicken at $10 makes 8 meals.
Some of you are so pretentious that it turns your brain to mush. Whole, unprocessed foods are cheap, easily avaiable and around you all over.
Seriously, take your head out of your ass and grow up. You probably think such decalrations make you appear enlightened. But really, you look like an ignorant teenager.
When I’m on the bus and I hear some asshat spout garbage like that I just smile and nod. And you know what? The asshat inevitably thinks it’s in approval, rather than ridicule.
“Food that isn’t constructed of processed crap is expensive.”
Really? Flour is expensive? Butter? Eggs? Milk? Whole organic chickens? Apples from my tree? Pears from my tree? Basmati I buy in bulk? Beans I buy in bulk?Quina I buy in bulk? Fish I catch in Alaska each summer? Half the cow I buy each fall? The strawberrys, blackberrys, ansd raspberrys that grow in my backyard? The tomatoes I grew and can each Summer? How about the squash, lettuce, potatoes and onions I grow? It all costs peanuts. Even the chicken at $10 makes 8 meals.
Some of you are so pretentious that it turns your brain to mush. Whole, unprocessed foods are cheap, easily avaiable and around you all over.
Seriously, take your head out of your ass and grow up. You probably think such decalrations make you appear enlightened. But really, you look like an ignorant teenager.
When I’m on the bus and I hear some asshat spout garbage like that I just smile and nod. And you know what? The asshat inevitably thinks it’s in approval, rather than ridicule.
The house in Ballard with a backyard big enough to cater to apple and pear trees, tomatoes and a magnificent assortment of berries? The plane ticket to Alaska? The week off you can afford to take just to go fishing every summer? A half a cow every fall? Seriously? I don’t know how much that costs, but I’m sure it requires a nice sized freezer. Maybe a decent 2 car garage to house said freezer? No?
You don’t sound like an ignorant teenager by any means, but you do sound like someone who can afford to shop at Whole Foods and gets more than five minutes for a lunch break. Not the case for everyone. Some of us barely had enough change at CoinStar to pay their internet bill so they could sit at the computer and reply to your post while eating stale Cheez-its for dinner because that’s all that’s in the barren pantry. Some people find the convenience and price of “processed crap” quite appealing when means aren’t so good.
I’m certainly not trying to put you down for “eating like you mean it”, its quite the opposite, I’m envious. But just because someone can’t or choses not to eat as sustainable as you doesn’t exactly make them an “asshat.”