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In 1903, before Pike Place Market even existed, William Herdman opened an unnamed tavern at the unpaved intersection of First Avenue and Virginia Street, then just a sluice of mud. It was in the ground floor of what’s now the Livingston Hotel—then the Rosenberg Block—constructed two years before. Across the street stood a mountain of dirt and rubble from the just-kicked-off Denny Regrade project, which would eventually be powerwashed down into Elliott Bay. By 1908, the tavern had a name, the Virginia Inn. Today, there’s not an older restaurant in the Market.
Earlier this year, the future of the V.I., as it’s affectionately called, was in peril. In April 2025, then-owner Craig Perez was asked to evacuate the space by his landlords, the Pike Place Market Preservation & Development Authority, which objected to his “extremely aggressive threatening behavior” at community meetings. He’d also refused to sign the PDA’s proposed five-year lease contract—Perez specifically objected to the clause that would require him to pay 6 percent of the V.I.’s profits to the PDA for every dollar it made beyond $1.2 million per year. In combination with the city’s January 2025 minimum wage hike, Perez said, the new lease would cost him too much cash. After issuing the eviction notice, the PDA was actively seeking a buyer for the business.
The details of the eviction are a lot less interesting than Perez’s reaction. In response to the PDA’s notice to vacate, Perez climbed up the side of the building and stole the historic Virginia Inn sign. “The sign is at my house, dogg,” he quipped to me in an interview in April. He claimed the previous lease held the tenant responsible for all signage, making the historic sign his property. In turn, the PDA commented that the historic sign “is a part of the Market and does not belong to any one tenant,” and filed a police report. It’s been a saga. The PDA ultimately let Perez stay in the V.I. space through the summer, and his tenure was apparently extended by a few months. Subsequent requests for updates (by me, at least) went unanswered.
Six months later, though, we’ve got what’s probably a best-case scenario: Four longtime Virginia Inn employees have taken over the business. As of November 1, coworkers Amber Quezada, Marisa Mohr, Jackie Batingan, and Manuel Sarabia are the tavern’s new owners. They plan to continue working normally, they say, with only subtle changes to the menu and vibe. “The three girls, we’re still serving and bartending,” Quezada says, while Sarabia will stay in back of house. “We just all have this new title.”
The takeover was actually Perez’s idea. “The last day for Craig was April 27, but then the PDA said, ‘You can stay open,’” Quezada explains. “And so that same day, he asked us, ‘Are you guys willing to take over?’ He approached the four of us. And at least for me, I was like ‘Hell yeah.’”
Quezada’s worked for the Virginia Inn for almost five years. Mohr’s got seven years’ tenure. Batingan’s been there the longest among them, at 12 years. Although Sarabia has only been there for two, he’s a Market fixture who has worked among various restaurants there for about 25 years. “We know the building,” Quezada says. “We know what’s missing. We know what we need. For the four of us, it’s our first time owning a business, so it’s definitely been a learning experience for us.”
Before this group bought the biz, every Virginia Inn owner was a white man. (Well, technically, a former owner’s widow was an owner on paper, although the city reportedly refused to honor it.) One of them reportedly still hangs around in the office—he’s a ghost, one of several who are said to haunt the building. Another one, a cyclist who was killed on the road, zips through the dining room periodically on a ghost bike, per eyewitness accounts from Quezada.
“It’s also queer-owned,” Quezada says, referring to herself, “and I’m also Filipino, too. And Manny, he’s Mexican. It’s really important to have this kind of visible diversity in ownership, and especially now.”
If you need any more good news, hey, they’ve got it. The Virginia Inn’s historic neon sign, over a century old, was put back up on the side of the building on November 3. After a full restoration, it’s glowing noticeably brighter than it did before.
Inside the tavern, it’s mostly business as usual, although the crew is spicing up the cocktail program with some goofy drink names and adding some new flair to the brunch menu. They’re planning to lift up the V.I.’s visibility as an art venue as well, as it once was known for in the ’70s and ’80s. Quezada says that they’re still planning to participate as a venue in the Belltown Art Walk, and there’s a new installation going in by mixed-media artist Alyson Storms before the next event on Friday, November 14.
A whole lot of people across this city were already mourning the Virginia Inn in advance of losing it, and in a city that’s been absolutely hemorrhaging beloved old bars and restaurants as capitalism surges and festers, any old thing could have happened here. To the patrons of the historic Virginia Inn—whether dating from its grunge-era past life as one of the city’s first art bars, its prior decades as a hard-drinkin’ old-man saloon, or its modern brunchy-bistro incarnation featuring cioppino and chocolate martinis—this 11th-hour reprieve feels like a real miracle.