The Houghton Center is undergoing a major facelift as they prepare for the arrival of a new Metropolitan Market, hopefully in 2010. The old Houghton Market is long gone and only a shell of the building remains. This past week a rendering was posted shedding light on what the future holds for the site.

Design work at Nelson Legacy Group’s Houghton Center in Kirkland involves both the vision for what the facility will be in 25 years and the design of an immediate upgrade to accommodate new tenants, including Metropolitan Market. The current project will remove a building front that was installed in the 1980’s. The original buildings will be exposed with a variety of store fronts and pedestrian amenities. In the long-term vision, the main level will remain retail while offices and up to six floors of residential above structured parking will be added.

The Metropolitan Market is one of the nicest grocery store chains in our region.

Grocery stores have lots of food demos and promotions, but the Metropolitan Market “For the Love of Cheese” event fascinated us because we heard directly from Molly in the cheese department, who’d been working for a long time helping plan and prepare for the big event, particularly the demonstrations yesterday and today. Above, that’s Molly, showing how they make hand-pulled mozzarrella, which MM manager Brad Halverson says is unique to their markets in this area. Our video is from Friday afternoon, but you’ll find cheese demos, samples and specials there this afternoon too:

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