University Village, Seattle

University Village (colloquially known as U-Village) is a shopping mall in Seattle, Washington, United States, located in the south corner of the Ravenna neighborhood to the north of the Downtown area. It is an open-air shopping center which offers restaurants, locally owned boutiques, and national retailers, and is a popular retail destination in the region for home furnishings, popular fashions, gift items, and restaurants. It is currently owned by multimillionaire Stuart Sloan.

Creation
University Village was originally developed by Continental Inc. who also developed Westwood Village in West Seattle and Aurora Village in Shoreline, Washington. it was once home to a Coast Salish village named sluʔwiɫ, which means "Little Canoe Channel" in Lushootseed.

The 24 acre shopping center was built in 1956 across NE 45th Street on an earlier part of the Montlake Landfill (since 1911, 1922–1966), taking out what remained of the Union Bay Marsh that was drained by the lowering of Lake Washington as a result of the opening of the Lake Washington Ship Canal (1913–1916). Some wetland was later partially restored as the Union Bay Natural Area with the Center for Urban Horticulture.

Early history
Until the early 1990s, the character of University Village was decidedly different. Most of its businesses were small, and the chain stores were all local: Ernst Hardware and Malmo Nursery, Lamonts department store (acquired by Gottschalks in 2000), Pay 'n Save Drugs (sold to PayLess Drug in the early 1990s), and QFC supermarket, then a much smaller facility on the western side of the property, formerly an A&P store. The present QFC store on the east edge opened in 1996, it was formerly a dairy facility from 1955 to 1991.

There was even a bowling alley, Village Lanes, which was originally a roller rink in the 1950s, located near the northwest corner. Many of the businesses began to falter toward the end of the 1980s, however, and in 1993 the owners of the mall decided to sell. For much of this period, University Village was owned by the Tektronix Retirement Investment Fund.

Modern
The chairman of QFC, Stuart Sloan, and his business partner Matt Griffin bought the property, and tenants such as those mentioned above began to move out. Barnes & Noble was an anchor tenant after the mid-1990s renovation, but closed at the end of 2011. U-Village no longer has a hardware store, but features upscale national stores such as Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn, Banana Republic, and Crate & Barrel instead (as well as related local specialty stores). Despite this, 61% of U-Village merchants are still local. (The Ernst and Pay n' Save corporate chains went out of business in the 1990s; adjacent QFC still nominally exists, but as a division of Kroger.)

Shops
Anchor tenants today are Bartell Drugs (locally owned 1890-2022), Apple Store, Crate & Barrel, The Gap, and Pottery Barn. Significant adjacent anchors are the Seattle QFC flagship store and a large Safeway. In 1991, neighborhood activists initiated a campaign with the City to "daylight" Ravenna Creek through Ravenna Park to Lake Washington, but the segment from the park to the University of Washington (UW) and the Union Bay Natural Area was successfully blocked by the owners of University Village. It has been recently updated to include more shops below the brand new medical center.

Amazon.com, an online retailer founded and based in the region, opened its first physical storefront at University Village on November 3, 2015.

Boundaries
The campus of the UW is to the west and south, the neighborhood of Bryant farther to the east, and the neighborhood of Ravenna to the north, but portions of the surrounding neighborhoods are often referred to as being in "University Village" themselves, approximately west to 22nd Avenue NE, north to NE 55th Street, and east to Union Bay Place NE and 30th Avenue NE.< The area's principal arterials are 25th Avenue NE and NE 45th Street; 35th Avenue is a minor arterial. Collector arterials are NE Blakeley-Union Bay Place NE and NE 55th streets.