Conflicting news reports hint at what might happen to the Broadway Market minimall, which has suffered during the recent retail slump like many other merchant sites. A P-I story claims Kroger, which owns both the relatively-small Fred Meyer drug/variety store anchoring Broadway Market and the QFC grocery across the street, may stick a Fred Meyer food department into the Broadway Market building. A Stranger news brief last week suggested Kroger would pull its existing QFC operation into the building.

Either way, some of the current mall spaces would be shuffled around or displaced altogether. I happen to think that’s not necessarily catastrophic for small business on Capitol Hill. There are other vacant Broadway storefronts (including the former Orpheus Records, Godfather’s Pizza, and Chang’s Mongolian Grill sites) available for subdividing on behalf of indie merchants. There’d be even more such space if the Broadway/Republican QFC (one of the last former A&P buildings in Seattle still used for grocery selling) is vacated. Some smart developer could fashion one or more of those lots into a funky mercantile destination that’d be perfect for some of the smaller current Broadway Market retailers. Let’s just hope such future developers do a better job of landing and nurturing tenants than was done at Pike Street’s short-lived Capitol Hill Independent Mall.