Debut Of Harvard Market Retail Complex Nears

The Harvard Market retail complex on Broadway is scheduled to open by year's end, anchored by a 45,000-square-foot QFC and a 15,000-square-foot Bartell Drug Store.

Jim Alekson, vice president of Milliken Development, the Vancouver, B.C., developer of the project, said 87 percent of the space is committed at this point.

He declined to name prospective tenants but said the three-story shopping center will have about 20 mostly service-oriented businesses, including a dry cleaners and hair salon. The complex also will include two apartment units.

Milliken Development, headed by Donald Milliken, developed Queen Anne Marketplace on Lower Queen Anne Hill. That project includes a Larry's Market, Bartell, McDonald's restaurant, Seattle's Best Coffee and Hair Masters salon. It also has a Blockbuster Music store with a TicketMaster outlet, Baskin-Robbins, Marketplace Cleaners and Top Nails manicure and pedicure business.

The project, which replaced the old Hansen Baking building, opened in February 1995 and was Milliken's first venture in Seattle.

The Harvard Market's QFC store, at East Pike Street between Broadway and Harvard Avenue, will be larger than the chain's store at Broadway East and East Republican Street, but smaller than the 66,000-square-foot store that recently opened in University Village.

Harvard Market is the latest in a series of new developments along Broadway, coming on the heels of Seattle Central Community College's Student Activities Center and Bookstore and the upgrading of the Broadway entrance to Seattle University.

The market's exterior will be mostly red brick. The center will have about 300 parking spaces - 215 underground and 77 street-level stalls, said Alekson.

The QFC will have a miniature elevator to transport groceries from the store to a clerk on the basement parking level.

Alekson wouldn't disclose the cost of the Harvard Market project, but it has been estimated at $14 million to $16 million.

Frontier Construction, based in Lynnwood, is the general contractor. B. James Wensley, based in Vancouver, B.C., is the architect.