Historic J&M Cafe Moving On -- Apparent Dispute With Landlord In Pioneer Square

The J&M Cafe, a venerable Pioneer Square saloon with bragging rights as one of Seattle's oldest restaurants, has been booted out of the building it called home for 93 years and will re-open late this year in Belltown.

The cafe closed last Saturday. Plans are to start construction soon on a new location at the corner of First Avenue and Bell Street.

"We lost our lease," said Dwayne Ague, J&M assistant manager. "There was a dispute over the rent and changes in the lease, and they couldn't compromise," he said. "The landlord asked us to leave."

The landlord, Jack Buttnick, has been involved in litigation for years with the owners of J&M, said Irwin Koval, Buttnick's advisor and spokesman.

Koval said the disputes have escalated since the J&M closed and the cafe's owners removed the bar, stained glass windows and historic wall panels owned by Buttnick.

A J&M employee who would not give his name described that scenario as "absolutely false . . . We only took things that are ours," he said.

Koval said the cafe's lease, signed in 1979, expires at the end of this month and Buttnick was under no obligation to renew it.

The J&M got its name from partners named Jamieson and McFarland, who opened the Seattle Bar in Pioneer Square in 1892. They sold out years later and moved two doors north to open the J&M Hotel and Bar in a building that Ague says once housed a brothel.

The J&M, at 201 1st Street, has been a fixture in Seattle, a place to meet people and, Ague said, a favorite pick-up spot in recent years. A hydroplane named after the restaurant, the U-9 J&M Cafe, roared briefly on Lake Washington in the 1980s. The J&M was the scene of a highly publicized murder last year, and its outside sign has shown up over the years in films made in Seattle.

Ague said the cafe's Belltown location will have about 10,000 square feet, or 2.5 times the space of the former J&M, although the bar will be separated from the dining room to conform to modern codes.

"We will have the same saloon atmosphere," he said. "We will try to duplicate what the J&M used to look like, but we'll include an upscale restaurant and add some banquet facilities.

"Our customers have been loyal for 93 years, and that's what we're banking on" with the new location, he said.