The Quality Cleaners building at the southwest corner of California Avenue and Admiral Way has sat empty for several years, ever since soil testing turned up dry-cleaning chemicals beneath it. Now the Bloom family, which has owned the 1916 building since the 1950s, is seeking permits for a remediation plan they hope will finally let people walk back through its doors.
The plan centers on keeping the century-old structure in place rather than tearing it down. As reported by West Seattle Blog, a vacuum tube system would be installed beneath the building to suck up and capture fumes, running continuously until soil samples come back clean. Ilan Bloom, who leads the family's remediation project and is the son of owner Irene Bloom, is working with consultants and a contractor who specialize in vacuum remediation to make that happen.
A Family Business With a Painful Closure
Quality Cleaners closed in 2020 after a death in the family, and the building has not generated revenue since. The Blooms tested the soil in 2021, after more than 70 years of dry-cleaning use on the site, and found dry-cleaning chemicals in the ground. Once tenants in the building learned of the contamination, they vacated, leaving the former cleaners space, another retail space, and residential units empty.
The family briefly considered other paths forward, including selling the property or financing the remediation themselves, and at one point removed a for-sale sign from the building. According to the same report, potential property deals fell through because of how lengthy the remediation process has become. Bloom said his mother and aunt did not expect the cleanup to drag on this long.
No Grants, No Shortcuts
Bloom called the soil remediation extremely costly, and the family says it has found no incentives or grant funding to support the project. The Washington State Department of Ecology added the site to its cleanup-sites database last summer, and its page for the property describes confirmed or suspected contamination that could potentially harm people and the environment, placing the site in the state cleanup process under the Model Toxics Control Act.
Bloom said Ecology was unable to accept new voluntary cleanup program applications this year because it was overwhelmed with applications, and he plans to pursue an expedited application to try to move the process forward. Before any work begins, the owners must still complete federal, state, and local processes and obtain the required permits.
Price Tag Echoes Nearby Park Cleanup
Bloom estimated the remediation would cost more than $1 million from start to finish, a figure that lines up with cleanup costs seen elsewhere in West Seattle. The initial construction work for the Morgan Junction park expansion, which included removing and disposing of contaminated soil along with permits, inspections, and taxes, ran $1.6 million, the blog's report noted. The building may also need a new roof and other miscellaneous construction work once remediation wraps up.
Despite the cost and uncertainty, Bloom said the family will work with the existing building and make the plan happen rather than start over elsewhere. He hopes the building can be occupied again sometime around the last quarter of 2027.
Eyeing a Second Life in Admiral
Bloom wants to renovate the building and preserve it as a community asset, and he is considering a restaurant, wine bar, or other gathering place for the former cleaners space. The Admiral district has already seen other long-running businesses close in recent years, including Max & Quinn's Atomic Boys Shop-O-Rama, which shut down in 2017. For now, the Blooms are focused on getting through the permitting process so the building their family has owned for roughly seven decades can reopen for the neighborhood again.
