When we wrote about the Alaska Building last summer, the historic tower at Second and Cherry had a handful of tenants left: a hair salon, printer, chiropractor, and deli. Now, the deli stands alone in a vacant former office building that the city sold to developers in 2005. That was a year after the city signed its last commercial lease in the building with Kyung Shil “Kelly” Kwon, who’d bought the Alaska Building Deli from its prior owner.
Soon, she was happily serving sandwiches to the hundreds of city employees who worked in the 15-story building. “[Business] was good,” Kwon recalls, “because the building was pretty much full.” But since the city relocated all its workers not long after selling the Alaska Building, Kwon’s business is now “down more than half” from what it used to be.
Earlier this year, following a $38 million resale of the building, its new owners—planning to convert it into a Marriott hotel—offered to buy out the remaining year of Kwon’s five-year lease for $10,000, which she rejected. Now, with no counteroffers, the building is being gutted around her. Signs facing the sidewalk indicate asbestos removal—one more reason for pedestrians not to stop for a $1.99 breakfast sandwich special. Adding insult to financial injury, Kwon and her few remaining customers have been cordoned off from the rest rooms in the lobby, forced to use a Honey Bucket in the lobby.
According to her attorney, Gene Seligmann, “She’s in violation of [King County health department] code because she doesn’t have a toilet. It just shuts her down.”
Seligmann is now suing the city on Kwon’s behalf. “The city knew that the building in which the premises leased to Kwon were located would be vacated well in advance of the termination of the lease,” he argues, “and that the conversion of the building from an office to a residential use would have material and substantial adverse impacts on Kwon’s tenancy and the value of the business.” (The city won’t discuss pending litigation, and the building’s developers didn’t return calls seeking comment.)
In plainer terms, Seligmann adds: “There’s this immigrant getting fucked.”
The South Korean–born Kwon came to the United States in 1970 as a girl. She scrimped and saved in Los Angeles, married, had kids, and gained citizenship 10 years ago. In 2004, knowing nothing about Seattle or running a deli, she says, she “found a good business” and “decided to move up here.”
Ironically, funding for the Alaska Building project includes the controversial EB-5 “investor visa” program, which allows wealthy foreigners to essentially buy a green card by investing at least $500,000 in supposedly job-creating real estate partnerships. The Alaska Building–Marriott deal was brokered by immigration attorney Henry Liebman, perhaps the most successful procurer of EB-5 visas in the country, and one of Seattle’s major landowners. And Kwon knows where at least some of this EB-5 money originates: “They are getting so much money from Koreans!”
Kwon says there’s no chance she could find a new downtown location with comparable rent ($963 per month). “Tell Henry Liebman I’m very upset because he’s not treating me right,” says Kwon. “If this were a Starbucks [and] if I were a white attorney, they wouldn’t put a Honey Bucket there. They think I’m nothing because I don’t speak English very well.”
