U Village Gets Pottery Barn, Banana Republic As Tenants

The Pottery Barn and Banana Republic will be moving into the former QFC grocery store site at University Village, while Northwest Gardener, a gardening supplies store, will be temporarily moving into the Village's old Ernst space, according to shopping center officials.

The Pottery Barn will be the chain's first full-sized store in Seattle, at 12,331 square feet, according to Janet Bayne, University Village's general manager. It is scheduled to open in late summer, as is the new 6,668-square-foot Banana Republic store.

Northwest Gardener will move into the Ernst spot by the end of March or the beginning of April, but it will stay only a few months. University Village is trying to find a permanent tenant, though Bayne declined to say who it might be.

The Ernst site has been vacant since the 103-year-old Seattle hardware and garden center chain went out of business in late January.

The Pottery Barn and Banana Republic will be on the north and south ends, respectively, of 12,000-square-foot Restoration Hardware, the upscale home-fixtures store opening this spring. It will occupy the center of what used to be QFC before it moved to the east end of the Village. The new West Building is now fully leased.

Banana Republic's parent, The Gap Stores, already has a Gap with Gap Kids store in the Village.

The Pottery Barn, which serves people who " are looking for plants and supplies for their gardens," according to Bayne, has a

store in downtown Seattle in the City Centre retail complex, but it is scheduled to move to a 16,000-square-foot, two-story space in the Pacific Place retail-cinema center now under construction at Sixth Avenue and Pine Street.