The workers earning $21.30 an hour sorting donations at the Ballard Goodwill could lose their workplace.

A land use application filed with the Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections seeks to demolish the store at 6400 8th Ave. NW and replace it with a 300-unit apartment building.

The proposal, first reported by My Ballard on July 28, calls for a mixed-use building with approximately 300 apartments, ground-floor retail and below-grade parking on the 1.6-acre site. The SDCI filing number is 26SCI-00000-74764.

Evergreen Goodwill of Northwest Washington does not own the property. According to the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, a Portland-based investment group purchased the land in 2000.

Goodwill became the tenant in 2004, inheriting a building that started life as a Safeway in 1967. The store is one of Evergreen Goodwill's largest retail locations in Seattle.

The timing is jarring. Goodwill just finished a renovation in April, relocating the store's entrance and expanding the sales floor. The organization also opened a second Ballard donation drop-off site at 1145 NW Market St. in 2025.

Neither investment signals a tenant preparing to leave.

Evergreen Goodwill had not responded to requests for comment as of Wednesday, July 29, according to My Ballard. The developer who filed the SDCI application has not been publicly identified in available records.

What this means for the corridor

The Ballard Goodwill is one of the few large-format affordable retail anchors left on 8th Ave. NW. For customers, it offers low-cost clothing and housewares in a neighborhood where independent retail rents keep climbing.

For workers, a recent LinkedIn posting for a Donation Station Attendant at the Ballard location listed a wage of $21.30 per hour.

The total number of employees at the store is not publicly available.

If the project advances, the 22-year-old store would join a growing list of Ballard commercial tenants displaced by residential development on sites they lease but do not own.

SEPA changes could affect the timeline

The Seattle City Council was scheduled to vote Tuesday, July 28, on CB 121215, legislation sponsored by Councilmember Eddie Lin that would redirect State Environmental Policy Act appeals from the city's Hearing Examiner to the Growth Management Hearings Board.

The vote outcome had not been confirmed at press time.

In a Seattle Times op-ed published Tuesday, Lin wrote that the bill "will remove one of the biggest roadblocks preventing us from meaningfully addressing many of the biggest challenges facing our city: housing and homelessness, traffic safety and environmental justice."

The legislation, if approved, would reduce the window for environmental challenges to projects like the Goodwill redevelopment. Council staff found only 28 SEPA appeals reached the Hearing Examiner over the past decade, with dismissed cases averaging 69 days, according to a Seattle Times editorial.

We will update this story when the developer is identified and Evergreen Goodwill responds.

Readers can search the permit number (26SCI-00000-74764) on the Seattle Services Portal for additional filing details.