‘Right next to Volunteer Park’ — The Baillie creating boutique hotel and restaurant on Capitol Hill’s Millionaire’s Row
From the @harrysgoodtimes announcement of The Baillie
A new life for the Shafer Baillie Mansion will create a new boutique hotel and restaurant on Capitol Hill’s Millionaire’s Row.
The Baillie is slated to open next year inside the mansion that has stood at the 14th Ave and Aloha just down the street from Volunteer Park for 113 years.
CHS reported here in February on the sale of the historic bed and breakfast as its longtime owners prepared for retirement.
The $4.9 million sale was finalized in March but a plan has been in the works for months to shape the project.
The buyers are familiar with food, drink, and hospitality in the neighborhood.
Harry’s Fine Foods debuted in 2016
Jake Santelli and Julian Hagood have grown the Harry’s Fine Foods family around the original 2016-born Bellevue Ave restaurant to include Harry’s Beach House in West Seattle and projects like the Harry’s Guest House bed and breakfast project just off Bellevue Ave.
The Harry’s projects have each been ambitious feats or architecture — not just food and drink. The original restaurant was part of a transformation of a Bellevue at Mercer cornershop.
Now the couple is taking on their most significant business investment yet. They describe The Baillie as “a hotel and restaurant, set within a historic Capitol Hill home. Rooms above. A restaurant below.”
Spaces throughout to gather. Designed for lingering meals, late nights, and a sense of belonging. See you soon, Seattle.
The project has been undergoing review with the city’s Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections since last fall and part of its path through the formal “change of use” process is completed. Once it is finally approved, the project will be a unique commercial addition to one of Seattle’s most valuable neighborhoods.
Millionaire’s Row, which features many of the largest homes in one of Washington’s wealthiest ZIP codes, has been immune to most change since its century-old homes were first built, even as nearby corridors have been heavily developed. The street was added to the National Register of Historic Places in January 2021, though that distinction comes without legal mandate for preservation. Several houses on the block are protected from change by Seattle Landmark status, including the Burwell House as of last year, though others are potentially more susceptible to redevelopment.
The arrival of The Baillie might be part of the growth of new shops and restaurants in neighborhoods across the city under the city’s growth plan changes hoped to encourage more housing development in more parts of the city as well as more commercial corners in residential areas.
Hopefully The Baillie finds a better reception from neighbors than another nearby example of neighborhood commercial mixing on Capitol Hill. The Volunteer Park Cafe ran into a wall of neighborhood backlash after a neighbor’s complaint stymied their plans for a backyard patio expansion and, for a time, put the entire cafe’s existence in jeopardy over permitting problems. New ownership in place since 2021 has managed a calmer coexistence.
As for The Bailie, the new hotel and restaurant will make its home in a mansion lovingly restored by its former owners Ana Lena Melka and Mark Mayhle. The 11,000-square-foot mansion has original mahogany and oak woodwork, light fixtures, and tiling, plus plush fabric walls in one living room. A number of satisfyingly sturdy tubs and sinks remain. Gone is the pipe organ that once graced the third floor ballroom, now divided into guest rooms.
“Everybody thought that we were crazy,” Melka told CHS earlier this year about the top-to-bottom restoration they undertook 20 years ago.
Now husbands and business partners Santelli and Hagood are setting in on a crazy project of their own. In the video announcing The Baillie, one worries about the size of the project.
“It’s like the size of 17 Harry’s Fine Foods!”
The Baillie is hoping for a summer of 2027 opening at 907 14th Ave E. Learn more at thebaillie.com.
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