Trader Joe's Confirms Seventh Seattle Location in Northgate Neighborhood

Trader Joe's confirmed plans to open Store #297 at 401 NE Northgate Way, repurposing the former Bed Bath & Beyond inside Northgate Station Mall as its seventh Seattle location. Permit records put the total project cost at $750,000. No opening date has been announced.

The address places the store steps from the Kraken Community Iceplex, the Seattle Kraken's 172,000-square-foot NHL practice facility that opened in September 2021 with three NHL-sized rinks and a public skating program. Sound Transit's Northgate Station light rail stop, which launched in October 2021, connects the neighborhood to downtown Seattle, Husky Stadium, and Lumen Field. The combination of transit access and sustained weekend foot traffic from the Iceplex gives Store #297 a built-in customer base that few single grocery sites in the region can match.

The Greenwood opening last spring offers the clearest preview for crew watching the Northgate timeline. The store at 8726 Greenwood Avenue North opened April 11, 2025 as the first new Trader Joe's in Seattle in more than 13 years, hired 40 crew members, and drew hundreds of customers already lined up when the doors unlocked. If that pattern repeats, the hiring window for Store #297 will move quickly and opening-day volume will demand full staffing from the first shift.

Converting a big-box retail space into a Trader Joe's requires reworking the floor plan, receiving setup, and backroom layout to fit the chain's tightly curated, high-turnover stocking model. The Northgate build-out, at $750,000 in permitted project costs, will involve those same reconfigurations. Crew working the store's opening months will also contend with a parking lot shared with Iceplex visitors, who arrive for public skating and Kraken practice sessions on evenings and weekends.

The Northgate confirmation is part of an accelerating Washington state expansion. Trader Joe's opened Greenwood in April 2025 and a Bellingham location in May 2025, and confirmed its first-ever Woodinville store at 14035 NE Woodinville Duvall Road. Woodinville Mayor Mike Millman publicly telegraphed that deal before the announcement. Washington now counts nearly 30 Trader Joe's locations, more than 20 of them in western Washington.

Northgate Mall has some history in this: it was one of the first American post-war suburban malls when it opened in 1950 and has been in active redevelopment for years. Bed Bath & Beyond's national bankruptcy created the retail vacancy Trader Joe's is now filling. When the hiring window for Store #297 opens, crew at the chain's six existing Seattle locations, in Ballard, Capitol Hill, Queen Anne Hill, the U District, West Seattle, and Greenwood, will have a seventh option in the network and a new route that runs directly through Northgate Station.