By the end of 2024, every corner of Greenwood Avenue North and North 85th Street was occupied again, together, for the first time since the Lodge Sports Grille closed in 2021. A steakhouse, a bank branch, a coffee shop, and a brand-new bistro filled in the last gaps at what locals still call the center of Greenwood. It read like the neighborhood's literal center had finally healed. What almost nobody guessed is that the restaurant everyone was watching would fold within a year, while two far quieter arrivals a few blocks north would end up doing the real work of putting the neighborhood back together.
The corner that still carries the scar
Before there was a bank or a steakhouse drawing a crowd, that stretch of Greenwood Avenue was a debris field. At around 2 a.m. on March 9, 2016, an abandoned Puget Sound Energy gas line that should have been sealed years earlier leaked into the buildings between North 84th and North 85th Streets and exploded, injuring nine firefighters and leveling Mr. Gyros, Neptune Coffee, and Greenwood Quick Stop Market outright. State utility investigators later found the line had been damaged by unauthorized digging after it was abandoned, and Puget Sound Energy was ordered to pay a $1.5 million penalty, with a larger fine deferred on the condition that it inspect every other retired service line in its system. Fifteen businesses filed damage claims. For years, that block sat as the neighborhood's open wound, and even once it finally filled back in, the restaurant chosen to anchor the comeback didn't last.
The bistro that tried to reclaim the ground, and didn't
In 2024, Model Restaurant Group, a partnership between chef Grant Rico, formerly of Bainbridge Island's Seabird and California's Michelin three-star SingleThread, and restaurant executive Or'el Anbar, opened Greenwood American Bistro in the old Lodge Sports Grille space on the northwest corner of Greenwood and 85th. The 150-seat restaurant was built to serve the neighborhood morning to night, with a walk-up espresso bar out front and an oyster bar in back, and its opening was treated as the final piece completing the intersection alongside FlintCreek Cattle Co. and a new US Bank branch across the street. It didn't hold. By December 2025, about a year after its splashy debut, Greenwood American Bistro closed for good. The same ownership group had already opened and closed a second concept, Robin's Restaurant and Market, in that same stretch within the same twelve months.
Two blocks north, the comeback that stuck
While the marquee project at the historic corner was struggling, two smaller, more personal returns were unfolding a few blocks up Greenwood Avenue, and neither one bothered trying to reoccupy the ground where the explosion happened.
| Comeback | What was lost or missing in 2016 | Where it landed instead | Reopened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mr. Gyros | Original shop, Greenwood Ave N between N 84th and N 85th | 8535 Phinney Ave N | March 16, 2025 |
| Trader Joe's | Neighborhood had no location; old Safeway site sat at N 87th & Greenwood Ave N | 8726 Greenwood Ave N | April 11, 2025 |
Mr. Gyros, the family restaurant Sammy and Joni Arsheed opened in 2003 and lost outright in the blast, reopened at 8535 Phinney Ave N on March 16, 2025, just two blocks from the original address. The date was chosen on purpose: it landed nine years and one week after the explosion. A Phinney Neighborhood Association small business advocate, Christopher Maykut, had spent the prior year running a fundraiser that brought in nearly $10,000 toward getting the family back open, on top of the Ballard, Wallingford, and Lynnwood locations that had kept the business running in the meantime.
Four weeks later, on April 11, 2025, Trader Joe's opened its first Greenwood store at 8726 Greenwood Avenue North, on the old Safeway site at North 87th Street that the neighborhood had been asking about for years before anyone announced a timeline. Neither business needed the historic corner. They needed a couple of blocks of ordinary storefront, and that turned out to be enough.
What filled in around them
Once the two anchors settled in, smaller restaurants filled out the blocks around them with names Greenwood didn't have two years ago:
- Mr. Maqluba took over the former Olive and Grape storefront with Middle Eastern dishes built around the layered rice dish it's named for, plus chicken mandi, dolmas, and grilled kofta.
- Waca Maya opened as a Venezuelan counter spot serving empanadas, arepas, and plantains, with a basket of kids' books by the register for anyone who needs to occupy a toddler for ten minutes.
- La Cabaña, which opened this spring, specializes in Central American cooking spanning Honduran, Salvadoran, Costa Rican, Nicaraguan, and Guatemalan dishes.
- Ray's Rice & Noodle Bar has quietly become the neighborhood's go-to Thai spot in the same stretch.
None of this replaced older energy. It filled in around two returns that had already convinced people the block was worth betting on again. The longer-standing names are still doing steady business alongside them: FlintCreek Cattle Co. for steaks and its Happy Hour burger, Halcyon Brewing for a patio and dumplings, Adulis for Ethiopian lunch, Cornuto for Neapolitan pizza on the back patio, and Ken's Market, an ordinary grocery store that still runs a Thursday-only smashburger from its deli counter that has nothing to do with any of this rebuilding and everything to do with why people stay.
The one thing that never left
Through the explosion, the decade of rebuilding, and last year's restaurant closures, one Greenwood ritual never skipped a summer. The Phinney Farmers Market runs every Friday from June through September, and this year is no different. It's back in the upper parking lot of the Phinney Neighborhood Association at 6532 Phinney Ave N from 3 to 7 p.m. every Friday through September 25, with the Power of Produce kids' tent, live music, and new vendors like Ojaswe Co. selling South Asian chickpea pancakes alongside the regular produce stands. If you already live here, that market has probably outlasted three restaurants you used to frequent. The neighborhood's most reliable gathering spot was never a storefront at all.
What this means if you already call Greenwood home
None of this changes what your house is worth or whether this is a good place to raise a family. You already know that. What it means practically is that the map of a normal week here has quietly shifted. The grocery run that used to mean a drive to Ballard or the U District now happens on Greenwood Avenue itself. The gyro plate you missed for nine years is two blocks from where you remember it. And the splashiest restaurant investment the neighborhood saw in years, the one built to complete the historic corner, is the one that didn't make it. The plainer returns did.
That's worth knowing the next time someone tells you Greenwood is still recovering from 2016. It isn't recovering. It rebuilt itself a couple of blocks over, and it's been running that way for more than a year now.
If watching your own neighborhood reshape itself has you wondering what it means for your home's value, The Shutes Team can walk you through it with the same attention to detail we bring to every Magnolia, Queen Anne, and north Seattle listing. Get your instant home valuation whenever you're ready to see where you stand.
