By AUBREY COHEN P-I REPORTER
Seattle officials issued a permit Friday morning to demolish the Ballard landmark that formerly housed a Manning's Cafeteria, then a Denny's restaurant.
Building owner BCC Mikie Ballard LLC, a partnership led by the Benaroya Co., has a deal to sell the site to developer Rhapsody Partners, which applied to replace it with an eight-story building containing retail space and more than 260 homes.
The city Landmarks Preservation Board gave the building a reprieve in February, when it declared the slope-roofed structure a city landmark. But the board decided last month that there was no economically viable way to save the building and declined to impose any controls that would block demolition.
Project spokesman Louie Richmond said early Friday afternoon that he did not yet know when the building might be demolished.
Modern architecture fans had rallied behind the building, erected in 1964 at Northwest Market Street and 15th Avenue Northwest. They consider it an excellent example of the Googie style, which got its name from a Sunset Strip coffee shop designed in 1949, and was notable for flamboyant elements designed to attract passing motorists.
BCC Mikie Ballard LLC paid the now-defunct Monorail Authority $12.5 million in 2006 for a large site that included the building.
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