What's Actually New on Alki This Summer, Block by Block

Three summers ago the storefronts along Alki Avenue SW were a running joke among people who lived on the peninsula. Duke's was gone. The Alki Beach Cafe space had been dark for years. Alki Cleaners had ended a nineteen-year run and left a hole next to the volleyball courts. The 30-month West Seattle Bridge closure had done exactly what the operators warned it would do.

The 2026 version of the same walk looks different, and not in the way most beach neighborhoods change. The new tenants are not chains cycling through a tourist strip. They are Alki's own established restaurateurs expanding sideways, plus a small set of regional independents willing to take spaces that sat empty for the better part of a decade. If you have not walked the full stretch in a while, here is what the block actually holds now.

The bakery Alki has wanted for years

The ex-Alki Beach Cafe space at 2726 Alki Ave SW is becoming Seaglass, a coffeehouse and bakeshop from the same team behind Driftwood next door. Dan and Jackie Mallahan, who opened Driftwood almost three years ago, are leading the project alongside Seattle coffee entrepreneur Seth Allen and Chef and Pastry Chef Gerald Hawkins Jr. Allen is the founder of Numa Coffee, which has built a following through collaborations with roasters including Passenger, Dak, Little Wolf, and Valor.

The announcement went up in October 2025 with a Spring 2026 target for opening on Alki Beach at the old Alki Beach Cafe space. What makes it worth paying attention to is not the concept but the address. That storefront had been vacant long enough that most residents stopped looking at it. A bakeshop from operators who already live and work on the beach is a very different proposition than a lease signed by someone who has only seen the space on a summer afternoon.

What the Duke's turnover actually tells you

The other big change sits three blocks west. Duke's Seafood, a staple near Alki Beach for 25 years, closed its 2516 Alki Avenue SW location, and Do Si Korean BBQ confirmed to KING 5 that it planned to take over the space, targeting a July opening per a social media post on April 7. The owners of Duke's said the Alki location "struggled to recover post-pandemic and with the lengthy West Seattle Bridge closure (30 months), forcing us to miss three full summers." Duke's operates six other locations in Bellevue, Green Lake, Kent, Lake Union, Southcenter and Tacoma, and only the Alki location closed.

Read that statement carefully if you have been on the fence about whether the beach economy has actually recovered. A regional chain with six other Puget Sound locations found the math on Alki no longer worked after the bridge closure, and yet a Kent-founded Korean BBQ operator looked at the same waterfront address and moved in within months. Both things are true at once. The tourist-driven volume Duke's needed did not come back. A smaller, sharper independent concept can still make the pencil work.

The three-block walk this creates

If you have not strung the new lineup together in your head, it looks roughly like this heading east to west from the Statue of Liberty end:

1. Salty's on Alki Beach at the Duwamish Head end, still running its Sunday brunch buffet and, on the menu, chilled Dungeness crab legs, Emerald Acres oysters on the half shell, slow roasted prime rib, and made-to-order omelets, scrambles, or pasta.
2. Do Si Korean BBQ at 2516 Alki Ave SW in the ex-Duke's building, the newest full-service anchor on the strip.
3. Happy Lemon at 2718 Alki Ave SW, the boba and tea shop that opened its second West Seattle location 15 months after the Westwood Village shop that took over the former Vatsana's Thai Restaurant space.
4. Driftwood at 2726 Alki Ave SW, a Pacific Northwest seafood restaurant with a hyper-seasonal menu highlighting Washington ingredients, Puget Sound shellfish, and sweeping waterfront views.
5. Seaglass in the adjoining storefront once it opens, filling the last of the three long-vacant spaces on this side of the avenue.

That is a genuinely different walk than the one residents were doing in 2023. The coffee-to-dinner sequence used to require a car or a compromise. It no longer does.

Timing your walk to the tide, not the crowd

The other thing that has quietly changed is how people who live here use the beach on summer weekends. The parking lots at Alki Ave and 60th are a lost cause on any warm Saturday afternoon. The tidepools, on the other hand, are on their own schedule.

South Alki, the beach around the rocky point from the big sandy social stretch, is arguably Seattle's best beach for exploring intertidal life. Along with the pebbles, loose rocks and sand, and some eelgrass, there is a rare stretch of bedrock full of pools and crevices where creatures can hide. The Seattle Aquarium's seasonal Beach Naturalist program runs volunteer educators on the beach during the summer's lowest tides, and a minus-3.5 low tide at Constellation Marine Preserve at the Charles Richey Viewpoint at South Alki draws Aquarium naturalists to the beach to help members of the public explore the intertidal zone.

The residents I know who have kids under twelve have already stopped fighting for beach parking on Saturday. They check the tide chart on Wednesday, pick a Thursday morning with a minus tide, walk down from Beach Drive, and are back before the summer crowds have found their sunscreen.

Practical detail worth knowing if you are going to try this: parking is not time limited on Beach Drive directly in front of the beach, though on a low tide day parking there may be limited. Another good place to park is along 63rd Ave SW, and public restrooms are near the intersection of 63rd Ave SW and Alki Ave SW, about a 0.4 mile walk.

Why this feels different from past turnover cycles

Alki has had waves of storefront turnover before. What is unusual about the current one is where the capital is coming from. The Driftwood-to-Seaglass expansion is a local operator doubling down on a block they already know. The Do Si move is a Kent-founded independent choosing Alki as its Seattle waterfront address rather than a downtown pick. Happy Lemon's second West Seattle shop is a bet that the neighborhood can support a second location within 15 months of the first.

None of these decisions read as speculative real estate plays waiting on a tourism rebound. They read as operators who have looked at the actual numbers of who walks past these doors on a Tuesday in February and decided it works. That is a healthier signal than a summer-only pop-up strategy, and it is the piece most out-of-neighborhood coverage of Alki misses.

If you have been telling out-of-town guests that "the beach is quieter than it used to be," the description is still accurate in a Sunday-morning-in-October sense. It is no longer accurate as a summary of the block's food and coffee options. The lineup between the Statue of Liberty Plaza and Duwamish Head has more independent operators on it right now than at any point since before the bridge closed.

Walk it once with fresh eyes. Then check the tide chart.

If you are thinking about what Alki's turnover cycle means for property values on the beach or one street back on 59th and 60th, that is a longer conversation and one worth having in person. Mara Haveson works this stretch closely and is happy to walk it with you. Schedule a Consultation to talk through what the current block-by-block picture means for a home you already own here, or one you are considering.