Seattle is #9 in Businesses Going Broke

Seattle Metropolitan's Nosh Pit blog has a quote from Txori's Carolin Messier on the tapas restaurant's closure. 86 percent of Urban Spooners liked Txori. Cornichon had fun there. But she's selling:

"It's been a really challenging year for me personally," she said, adding the grueling financial climate hasn't made things easier. "It's been a heartbreaking decision."

At least she found a buyer.

Sometimes even businesses we love go south. Great_Beyond captured the Sunset Bowl shuttered.

The PSBJ reports that Seattle businesses have edged into the top ten when it comes to going out of business. Even with stiff national competition, with commercial bankruptcy filings up 52 percent from 2008, the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett MSA hung in there for the #9 spot in commercial bankruptcy filings in Q4 of 2009.

This is the sort of thing that has distinct trickle-down effects. In his story on the Columbia Tower's loan payment problems, Eric Pryne notes that:

The Columbia Center lost a major tenant in 2008 when law firm Heller Ehrman disbanded. The 2007 offering statement said the firm was then leasing 117,000 square feet--8 percent of the building--and was paying more rent than any other tenant. It also had a lease that ran until 2018.

Collier's International pegs the Seattle office space vacancy rate at almost 18 percent.