For two years, the block between 77th and 78th avenues, just off Southeast 29th Street, has been the thing you glance at on your way to the post office or the library. First the demolition, then the excavation, then the slow climb of framing behind a chain-link fence that residents have walked past so often it stopped registering as news. It was just the hole in the middle of Town Center, the one everyone assumed would eventually become apartments over some kind of ground-floor retail, the way these things usually go.
It has a name now. The city's own project updates confirm the building is being marketed as Lunara, and construction is in its final phase, with completion expected sometime this summer, which is to say now, or close to it. That part of the story is mostly settled. What is not settled, and what makes this worth a longer look than a passing glance at the fence, is what happens to the storefronts at street level. As of the most recent update from the city, nobody, including the building's own management, has announced who is moving in.
What Was There Before
Before the fence went up, that stretch of the block held MudBay, Tiger Garden Chinese Restaurant, and King Insurance, an unremarkable but functional mix of pet supplies, a longtime neighborhood restaurant, and an office. It was the kind of corner nobody photographed for a postcard but everybody used. Its replacement has been a decade in the making, and the version that is actually rising there now is not the version that was first proposed.
The Five-Story Building That Never Happened
In 2015, a different developer, Hines, pursued the site with plans that would have gone five stories and folded in the adjacent parcel at the northeast corner of 77th and 29th, home to the First Church of Christ, Scientist. Community pushback was immediate. A resident group called Save Our Suburbs organized against it, pressing the City Council toward a moratorium on Town Center building permits while the fight played out.
What eventually cleared design review in November 2021 was smaller and more constrained than that first attempt.
- Four stories instead of five
- No church parcel included
- A 54-foot height limit
- 162,990 square feet of gross floor area
- 203 parking spaces below grade
- A 20-foot pedestrian through-block connection and public plaza space added to the plan
The unit count has moved too. The 2021 design review approval described 159 apartments, 16 of them affordable. The city's spring 2026 construction update puts the finished building at 146 apartments across studios, one, two, and three-bedroom units. Plans shift between approval and completion more often than renderings suggest, and this is a clean example of it playing out in real time on a block residents drive past every week.
Lunara, by the Numbers
Here is what the record actually shows, pulled from the city's own project page and reporting in the Mercer Island Reporter as construction progressed:
- Demolition of the prior buildings began in June 2024 and wrapped that summer
- Excavation for the foundation and basement started in July 2024
- Construction cost was reported at $52.8 million
- The design and ownership team have been working on the site since 2018
- Completion is expected this summer, per the city's most recent update
Megan McKay, the Johnston Architects partner who led the design, described the guiding idea behind the site plan in a conversation with the Mercer Island Reporter as construction got underway. The team wanted the project to read less like a single large structure and more like something woven into the Island's existing pattern of green space. As McKay put it, the goal was that "it became a building set in a series of small urban pocket parks."
The Empty Storefronts Are the Real Story
Here is the part that has not been resolved, and the reason this is worth revisiting instead of filing away as old news. The city's project page states plainly that it does not currently have information on which restaurants or retailers will occupy the ground-floor commercial space, that the building's management company is actively working to lease those spaces now, and that utility work and tenant improvements still need to happen before any of it can open its doors.
That gap matters more than the apartment count. Fourteen thousand square feet of ground-floor retail and restaurant space was part of the original pitch for why this project made sense in the middle of Town Center, and McKay's own comments to the Reporter noted that resident feedback during the process kept circling back to two things: worry about parking, and a desire for a meaningful amount of retail rather than another round of ground-floor space that sits vacant or underused. The building's design leans into walkability, with plazas and a through-block connection meant to knit the corner back into the rest of Town Center rather than fencing it off the way the construction site has for two years. Whether that design intention actually plays out will come down entirely to who signs a lease in the coming months, and right now that list does not exist publicly.
If you already know the rest of that block, the mix of Allister, The Crawlspace Gastropub, Mioposto, and Pogacha within a few doors of each other, you know how much a single new tenant can shift where people park, where they walk after dinner, and which corner becomes the one everyone treats as the meeting spot. We wrote about that dining and concert rhythm in an earlier piece on what's left of summer on Mercer Island, and this building is the next chapter of that same block, still being written.
What to Watch For This Fall
The most useful thing a resident can do right now is pay attention to the same channel the city uses, since that is where any leasing announcement will surface first. Beyond that, the practical signs to watch are simple: utility work finishing at street level, tenant improvement permits appearing for specific addresses on 77th or 78th, and eventually signage going up before a name appears in a window.
Town Center changes slowly on Mercer Island, and that has always been part of its appeal. This is one of the more significant shifts to the built environment the Island has seen in years, and the apartments are the least interesting part of it. The open question, what actually opens at street level and whether it lives up to the walkable, plaza-facing design the architects built for it, is still unanswered. That is worth checking back on, not because it changes anyone's plans this month, but because it is the kind of local detail that is easy to miss if you are not already paying attention to this specific corner of the Island.
If you are watching Mercer Island for reasons beyond the next restaurant opening, whether that is a future move, a sale, or simply understanding how a neighborhood you already call home continues to change, I would be glad to talk through what a project like this tends to mean for the surrounding blocks over time. You can find more on the neighborhood itself through our Mercer Island guide, and if you would like to talk specifics, reach out to Melissa Boucher. Let's Connect.