"We've basically wrung out all the cost of running a steakhouse." Kurt Dammeier, who founded Beecher's Handmade Cheese, said that to the Puget Sound Business Journal, and KIRO 7 passed the line along in late October. The steakhouse he means is Yukon. It opened Oct. 19 at 16421 Cleveland St., in the small retail building now called the Rail District, right at the entrance to the Downtown Redmond light rail station. It is the first tenant to open in that building. Three more have signed leases. Look at where those four businesses already operate and a pattern shows up. Most of them come from downtown Seattle's weekday lunch scene. Downtown Seattle has been one train ride from this platform since March.
A Steakhouse Built Like a Lunch Counter
Yukon makes the pattern easy to see, because its design is so specific. The room is about 1,500 square feet. It has five tables and no chairs, a layout meant to get people to stand, eat and talk, according to KIRO 7's recap of the Business Journal report. Ten people work there. Dammeier told the Business Journal he modeled the narrow menu partly on Raising Cane's, the chicken chain known for doing very few things.
The menu is short:
- Steak plates, $17.99 to $28.99. You pick one of two cuts. Each comes pre-cut into bite-size pieces, with beef tallow roasted potatoes and a house salad.
- Three house-made sauces to choose from.
- A rotating steak sandwich and prawns.
- A small drinks list of craft beer, wine and batch cocktails.
The beef is American Wagyu from Sugar Mountain's own Mishima Reserve and WinterFrost brands. The opening announcement published by EatSeattle says the kitchen uses no preservatives, flavor enhancers, colorings, seed oils or gums. It describes Yukon as the steakhouse experience "without the reservation, the two-hour time commitment, or the expensive check." Food is ready in minutes for takeout. Delivery runs through Yukon's website, Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub, and patio seating is planned for the warmer months. It is open every day starting at 11:30 a.m.
The company behind it explains a lot. Sugar Mountain was founded in 1999 and also owns Beecher's, Pasta & Co. and The Butcher's Table, a traditional steakhouse in Seattle's South Lake Union. Yukon is the company's fifth concept. The release says Yukon "draws its culinary DNA" from The Butcher's Table. That puts a full-service South Lake Union steakhouse at the root of a standing-room lunch counter on Cleveland Street. Dammeier opened Yukon with his son, Liam, and told the Business Journal the target customer is 25 to 45, though he hopes it reaches beyond that.
The Building Was Here Before the Train
The Rail District building isn't new construction. The Daily Journal of Commerce described 16421 Cleveland St. as "a small line-retail building" when it sold for $3.5 million in February 2025, according to King County records. The seller was MGRM LLC, which is associated with Legacy Partners. Legacy had bought the old Redmond Square property in a much larger $31 million deal in 2016 and later developed the Eastline apartments very near the station, two buildings with 623 units.
The building has four tenant spaces, and Shake Shack was the first tenant announced. In August 2025, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported that the chain would open its first Redmond location in the first of those four spaces, in a center that had changed hands earlier that year.
Things didn't open in the order they were announced:
- February 2025. The building sells for $3.5 million.
- August 2025. Shake Shack is announced for the first of four spaces.
- March 2026. Yukon is announced for a roughly 1,450-square-foot space. Dammeier tells What Now Seattle he plans to open in September.
- March 28, 2026. The 2 Line starts running across Lake Washington.
- October 19, 2026. Yukon opens, about a month after its target date and before the burger chain that was announced first.
As of late October, Shake Shack, Joe & the Juice and 45th Stop N Shop all had signed leases but no announced opening dates.
Where the Other Three Already Operate
The other tenants make the pattern clearer. Two of them already run Seattle shops, most of them in or near downtown office blocks.
| Tenant | Status, late October 2026 | Where it already operates |
|---|---|---|
| Yukon | Open since Oct. 19, daily from 11:30 a.m. | Same company runs The Butcher's Table, South Lake Union |
| Shake Shack | Lease signed; first Redmond location | National burger chain |
| Joe & the Juice | Lease signed | 2118 7th Ave.; University Village; Rainier Tower, 1303 5th Ave. |
| 45th Stop N Shop | Lease signed | 2323 N 45th St.; 2121 Terry Ave., Suite 104 |
Joe & the Juice's Seattle store list is mostly downtown. Two of its three Seattle shops are on 5th and 7th avenues, one of them in Rainier Tower, and the third is at University Village.
45th Stop N Shop calls itself a Seattle poké bar, and KIRO 7 described it as a Hawaii-style bodega. It got its name from its original shop at 2323 N 45th St. Its second Seattle location is on Terry Avenue, in the upper plaza next to the Pan Pacific Hotel. Both Seattle shops close on Sundays. The Terry Avenue counter is open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Those are weekday lunch hours, the hours of a counter that serves nearby offices. The Redmond store hasn't announced its own hours yet.
So a Wagyu counter from South Lake Union, a juice bar best known on downtown Seattle office blocks, and a poké bar from the Terry Avenue lunch scene are filling the building, with a national burger chain alongside them. All four are built around ordering at a counter and eating fast.
Downtown Seattle Is Now One Ride Away
The timing lines up with a change in where this platform goes. On March 28, 2026, Sound Transit opened the Crosslake Connection. Trains now cross the floating bridge on I-90 and stop at new stations on Mercer Island and at Judkins Park. They connect to the 1 Line at International District/Chinatown, and the Sound Transit announcement says that finished the 2 Line. In that release, Sen. Maria Cantwell said commuters would be able to get "from downtown Seattle to a job in Redmond" in 40 minutes.
When What Now Seattle covered the Yukon lease, three days after the crossing opened, it said the Rail District building "anchors the entrance to downtown Redmond's new light rail station, linking residents to Bellevue and, soon, Seattle." By the time Yukon opened, the Seattle connection was already running.
The overlap is geographic. The Seattle addresses on this tenant list sit in downtown, South Lake Union and the Terry Avenue plaza, and their Redmond spaces now face a platform with trains running straight into downtown Seattle. The Eastline apartments sit nearby, and the four bays line the station entrance. The lineup looks like a downtown Seattle lunch block, placed at the eastern end of the line.
The Block as It Stands This Week
For now, one door on this block is open. Yukon has been serving for about two and a half weeks. It opens at 11:30 a.m. every day, and it is built for standing or for carrying a plate out. Its patio won't open until warmer weather. The other three spaces are leased, with no opening dates announced.
Shake Shack was announced in August 2025 and still hasn't opened. Its arrival will be the clearest sign that the building is filling up. Joe & the Juice and 45th Stop N Shop will round out the lineup. When all four are open, the station entrance will have the same mix of steak, burgers, juice and poké that downtown Seattle's lunch blocks have.
Changes around a station tend to show up first in the retail at street level. The Rail District building is a small example of that, with four bays, one of them open. If you own a home near the Downtown Redmond station and want to know how this block's progress may affect its value, Brian Hopper can go through it with you, building by building. Request a private market strategy, and we will tell you what is changing within walking distance of your door.
