Flowers Bar and Restaurant, in the U District, had their liquor license suspended by the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board on June 7, 2023, for repeatedly serving underage patrons, a pattern of violent incidents, and refusal to cooperate with law enforcement or Seattle Fire Department. The bar was owned by Wisdom Corporation, with liquor licensees Fadi and Sonu Hamade, and has subsequently closed.
The Hamades recently purchased the building that was occupied by The Stepping Stone, at 5903 24th Ave NW, and ordered The Stepping Stone to vacate the property within a month and a half. The last day of service at The Stepping Stone was January 21, 2025. Stepping Stone was completely moved out of the space January 31, 2025.
Neighboring businesses are now reporting a drop in customer volume, and an uncomfortable isolation at night because there's no longer any customer traffic at 5903.
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According to the Liquor Board, there were 11 calls to Seattle Police Department from May 2022 through May 2023 for "acts of violence directly related to Flowers, their staff and their patrons. Most recently, on May 21, 2023, an incident involved security staff and the licensee repeatedly punching a patron on the sidewalk outside the building, inciting a larger altercation which ultimately escalated to gunshots being fired."
The Liquor and Cannabis Board imposed an emergency license suspension about two weeks later.
Flowers had previously been closed in 2021 by King County Health Department, for repeated blatant violations of COVID precautions.
On September 13, 2024, Sonu and Fadi Hamade, using a different company name (Eastlake Hill Properties LLC), purchased the building at 5903 24th Avenue NW in Ballard. This building housed One Stop Smoke, The Stepping Stone, a branch of Sparkle Cleaners, and Tall Grass Bakery.
On December 8, 2024, Sonu and Fadi made an unannounced visit to The Stepping Stone, berating the Stepping Stone owners with disruptive and defamatory accusations. The bar was full of customers watching the Seahawks game. According to witnesses, Fadi Hamade physically threatened one of the Stepping Stone owners outside the bar.
Five days later, the Hamades gave notice to The Stepping Stone to vacate by the end of January 2025, 7 weeks from the notice date. This effectively destroyed The Stepping Stone, which had been an anchor for the neighborhood for 11 years. They were noted for many charitable events, and for engagement and support of the Ballard community and local food banks. That's exactly what you'd like a landlord to do: destroy an adjacent business that was a terrific neighborhood steward and citizen.
Of the other three businesses in that building, two are on 5 year leases (One Stop Smoke, at 5901, and Tall Grass Bakery, at 5907-5909). Tall Grass Bakery signed a 5 year lease when they assumed the old Cafe Besalu space at 5909. This happened late 2024, not long after the new owners took over.
The Sparkle Cleaners branch at 5905 was asked in February to move into the former Stepping Stone Space, or vacate completely, or face a doubling or more of their rent, presumably so that the Hamades can take advantage of the much bigger space at 5905 to put in their own bar.
"New Location Coming Soon", proclaims the
Flowers website. But domain
flowersbarandrestaurant.com wasn't registered until nearly 6 months after Flowers had
their liquor license suspended. The website was
blank (serving a 403 page)
until 3 months after that. The website could not have been related to Flowers' previous operation.
As of March 2, 2025, it's still a partially finished Squarespace site, with placeholders for the menu and merchandise store. Social media links go to Squarespace instead of anything related to Flowers Bar. Contact info listed is flowersbarandrestaurant@gmail.com.
The direct Squarespace address for the new website is https://tangerine-dory-6b68.squarespace.com.
In this author's opinion, considerable renovation would be required to get the 700 square foot Stepping Stone space to a point where it could reasonably command a $25/square foot annual rent. There is minimal heat (Stepping Stone got by with space heaters). There is no air conditioning, and no way for air to flow through the building, which makes the space incredibly hot and uncomfortable during the summer. The drain line from the bar sink flows slightly uphill. The upper windows leak, and the framing above and below them is badly rotted; the windows do not open for any sort of ventilation. The electrical infrastructure is barely adequate to support freestanding coolers and an ice machine.
As of February 28, 2025, there were no listings for available leases in that entire parcel, according to a Seattle commercial real estate broker who looked it up.
On May 14, 2025, a neighbor spotted a newly placed "For Lease" sign in the window of 5903, "Call/text 206-609-0008". The building address doesn't show up in any commercial lease websites, and the phone number doesn't come up in any search engines, so I conclude that it's a burner phone associated with Fadi or Sonu.
A former customer of The Stepping Stone texted the number and inquired about the rent. The asking price is $3500/month, for what they said is a 700 square foot space. That works out to $60/square foot/year, which would be outlandishly high even if the building had a working HVAC system and serviceable plumbing. They're also asking for triple net, meaning the tenant pays three times the landlord's cost for property taxes, insurance, utilities, and repairs. That would bump the price to approximately $75/foot.
As the bear said, "you didn't come here to hunt, did you?" For a property with a large mortgage like this one has, there are advantages to keeping a space vacant but at a high asking price (it makes the loan-to-value ratio look better on paper). I suspect that's what's happening here. That still doesn't explain why the Hamades traded a $2000/month tenant for a vacant space.
To inquire about their intentions for the property, contact Fadi Hamade by phone at (206) 902-7501, or Sonu Hamade at sonu_hamade@yahoo.com, phone 206-883-5344. Or, of course, the burner phone number mentioned above.
I hope that, if the former licensees of Flowers pursue a new liquor license for their newly acquired property, the Liquor and Cannabis Board considers their previous behavior. Our neighborhood does not need an establishment that condones roofies, underage drinking, violent patrons, or violent publicans.
I predict that if I were looking for commercial space in the area, I would choose not to do business with the Hamades under any of their LLCs.
New liquor license applications are published at https://lcb.wa.gov/resources/licensing-actions. If you care to make a comment on an application, you can send it via letter, fax, or by emailing customerservice@lcb.wa.gov.
Start at https://ccfs.sos.wa.gov/ in the "Corporation Search" section. Then search by UBI.
On April 22, 2025, sonu_hamade@yahoo.com provided this update: "Subject: False Info. Please take down your article as it is incorrect with false information. Please do not write an article based on incomplete information based on someones [sic] false narrative." No other correction or details were supplied. Sonu, if you'll send me specific corrections that you'd like to see, I'll take a look. But a generic "it is incorrect" isn't going to cut it.