North Seattle shoppers may need to wait even longer for a grocery store to fill a former Sam’s Club location left vacant since 2018.

Two years ago, discount grocery chain WinCo filed plans to remodel the building and reconfigure the parking lot on Aurora Avenue North. But the plans encountered opposition from a neighborhood group for their possible environmental impact. 

Last week, a hearing examiner overturned the city’s determination that the project would have no significant environmental impacts, casting doubts on the future of the project. 

The setback could push the project back many months — or cause the discount grocery chain to abandon plans for its first Seattle location altogether.

WinCo and the civil engineering firm behind the plans, JSA Civil, did not immediately return a request for comment.

The hitch comes at a time when big-box vacancies are on the rise. Major retail and grocery chains, including Rite Aid, Kroger, fabrics retailer Joann and home-goods store Bed Bath & Beyond, have shuttered stores in recent years across Washington.

This isn’t the first time a grocery store chain has tried to move into the vacant site at 13550 Aurora Ave. N.

Costco fans buzzed in 2021 when the company filed plans to remodel the former Sam’s Club, but that plan appeared to go dark.

Some took to social media last week to express their disappointment that the site would remain vacant for the foreseeable future.

North Seattle has locations of Sprouts, QFC, Safeway and Town and Country Market within a few miles of the empty site. However, WinCo offers significantly lower prices compared to those stores at a time when grocery prices remain high and gas prices are squeezing family budgets.

WinCo has almost two dozen stores in Washington. The closest to the planned site is in Edmonds.

WinCo first began exploring the vacant site in 2024 when JSA, based in Tumwater, Thurston County, filed permit documents with the city, noting WinCo’s plans. The remodel would include removing and rebuilding portions of existing building walls, according to the filings first reported by the Puget Sound Business Journal.

For a while, everything seemed on track. The city conducted a State Environmental Policy Act process and found WinCo’s plans would have no significant environmental impact.

Then, last fall, a coalition called Lake Washington Working Families appealed the decision. The group, which tried and failed to disrupt plans for a WinCo coming to Renton last spring, has no website and is not registered with the state — leading to online speculation about who exactly is behind the group. But Karl Anuta, a Portland-based lawyer representing the coalition, said it’s made up of King County residents.

The coalition claimed the city’s environmental analysis of WinCo’s plans for the North Seattle site was inadequate and required further review. WinCo would have major traffic impacts, the appeal said, releasing pollutants into local bodies of water.

In an interview Monday, Anuta, who primarily handles cases involving environmental law, said the group is not against having a WinCo store at the location but wants the city to seriously analyze the environmental impacts of such a large business.

“The real issue for the Lake Washington Working Families was you’re going from eight years of nothing there to a larger facility with many impacts,” he said. “You can’t just permit stuff and expect the neighbors to deal with the consequences.”

The group failed to fully prove there would be major environmental harm, Hearing Examiner Ryan Vancil wrote in a final decision last week. However, the city made an error by comparing the project’s environmental impacts to a busy big-box store, instead of what’s actually there now — a vacant building, he said.

“To not analyze existing conditions to determine baseline conditions is clearly erroneous, and the Hearing Examiner is left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed,” he said.

The former Sam’s Club location will remain vacant for the time being as WinCo decides how — or if — to push the project forward.