News
Duvall Wants the Spotlight Back
September 27, 2012
| Believe it or not, 100 years ago tiny Duvall was actually more happening than Bellevue. (Back then, the monorail consisted of Model T cars swinging dangerously from a pulley system.) Bellevue boomed thanks to Microsoft; Duvall stayed frozen in time. Until fairly recently. |
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| We snapped Tellus Real Estate Solutions Jason Hershey with Coldwell Banker Uptown Realty's Jim Wahlsten and Dan Gase at a CCIM event. Jason tells Duvall had big plans for more industrial and a Lake Washington Tech satellite campus before the economy crumpled. With markets opening up a bit and the area already zoned for more commercial activity, look for development, Jason says. |
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| Intrigued, we took a ride out to Duvall last weekend and were stunned to see all the new development, including the branding of the older part of town as "Historic Duvall." Signs of progress: while Duvall used to have one grocery store, "it now has two," Jason laughs. That, plus several thousand SF of retail and office space for lease in newly built two-story buildings that keep with Duvall's country-town style. |
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| We think the best restaurant near Duvall is the fabulous Maltby Cafe in another hip circa-1910 town a 20-minute drive away. The railroad once went through Maltby (there are photos of train crashes to prove it in the building next to the cafe). Developer Ron Nardone bought the cafe building—once the old Maltby schoolhouse's gym in the 1970s—and let three determined young women talk him into letting them open up a restaurant in the basement. Nobody thought it would work, and nobody could have been more wrong. The human head-sized homemade cinnamon rolls (and everything else on the menu) are to die for. |
