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Less than two years after opening a flagship store in downtown Seattle, PCC Community Markets announced Wednesday it will close the financially struggling location Jan. 31.
“Despite an amazing team, fantastic store conditions, and a supportive landlord, our Downtown store has unfortunately remained unprofitable, and we do not see that changing for the foreseeable future,” CEO Krish Srinivasan said in a statement.
“Since continued losses pose a significant financial risk to our co-op’s long-term viability, we are acting now,” Srinivasan said of the store, which is on the ground floor of the Rainier Tower at Fourth Avenue and Union Street.
The downtown store has nearly 80 employees. PCC said it “will prioritize their placement in other roles within the co-op by offering staff positions at other stores.”
The announcement comes 5-½ months after PCC announced a $250,000 loss in 2022, the first loss since the 1990s, and said around a third of the red ink was due to the downtown store.
Downtown residents and boosters had championed the new store, which opened Jan. 20, 2022, as a welcome sign of recovery for a downtown that had struggled to bounce back from the pandemic.
The grand opening drew a huge crowd, including many downtown residents excited about a full-service grocery in a neighborhood that was in danger of becoming a grocery desert due to recent closures.
Instead, the 20,000-square-foot grocery store demonstrated just how far the downtown remains from a recovery.
With remote work still reducing the number of workers downtown and with fewer than expected downtown residential shoppers, the PCC was never able to generate the kind of foot traffic or sales necessary to turn a profit, co-op officials said.
“Based on these dramatically changed shopper demographics and habits, PCC sees no viable path to operating a profitable full-service grocery store at this location,” the co-op said in Wednesday’s statement.
The news was greeted with a mixture of shock and dismay by customers. “I’m super sad,” said Rufo Calvo, who works just down the block and shops at the PCC nearly every day. “Around here, we don’t have a grocery store, technically, now.”
Jean Henderson, a downtown resident of nearly 40 years, was dismayed but not surprised. “I can understand why — I see very few people there,” said Henderson.
The decision to close the store appears to represent a recent pivot. In May, Srinivasan said PCC had no plans to leave downtown. “We’re not going to cut and run at the first sign of trouble,” he told The Seattle Times at the time.
But as the co-op has struggled to recover from the pandemic, the downtown store was seen as too risky to maintain.
“The co-op posted lackluster results in 2021, and an operating loss in 2022; despite strong progress in many areas, 2023 will be similar — even with the closure of Downtown PCC,” the co-op said Wednesday.
“In looking ahead to 2024, the co-op is focused on restoring and securing its long-term financial viability. The closure of the Downtown store is an important and necessary step in that journey.”
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