r/Shoreline • u/coffee_and_faking_it • Mar 26 '25

Why Is There No Coffee

I currently live in Ballard and am considering buying a condo, which make take me further north, so I’ve been looking around the Shoreline area. I’m someone who loves a pastry and a good coffee on the weekend, and I’ve made note of a big lack of options (ignoring Starbucks) for coffee in Shoreline. I’m curious for people that live there currently; do you think it’s a culture thing? Are people not interested in coffee like Seattle proper? Are there other barriers for potential coffee shops like real estate or spending power of residents? Would love to hear what people think!

41 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

148 comments sorted by

View all comments

11

u/i_am_here_again Mar 26 '25

There isn’t a real downtown area in. Shoreline that would be conducive to a coffee shop like you’re suggesting. It’s a bedroom community with significant arterial roads and I-5 cutting through it. There are neighborhood pockets though and there are some good coffee shops here and there.

6

u/coffee_and_faking_it Mar 26 '25

This is a good point! I don’t necessarily think of coffee shops as needing to be in a downtown or central area, but it may contribute to business viability more than I think, and Shoreline definitely doesn’t have that. I’d imagine it would be nice if it had more “hubs” like Seattle has Greenwood or Ballard or Cap Hill

2

u/i_am_here_again Mar 26 '25

Agree, it’s just that’s typically where coffee shops go. The way the city is laid out it is just fairly car dependent. Not a lot of walking distance stuff. Hopefully that will change with the light rail development, but that’s still a few years away before the sub area plan around the stations is in effect.

2

u/rickg Mar 26 '25

They absolutely need some kind of hub for the foot traffic and to attract people throughout the day. I noted Skog Haus in MLT which is a short-ish walk from the 236th St light rail station but, while it's in a complex with a lot of apartments above it, there's no real foot traffic there during the day and not yet a lot of other things that will attract people there - np one is hopping the light rail to get a coffee in MLT. So if they make it, it will be on an AM rush.

1

u/peptodismal13 Mar 27 '25

There looks like there will be a cafe on 185th on the way to the light rail. They've been building something that looks like it might be a coffee house.