The Suquamish Tribe is nearing completion on its rebuild of a seafood shop on the site of the old liquor store next to the Masi Shop and gas station along SR305.

According to Suquamish Seafood’s general manager, Tony Forsman, it made sense for the new seafood shop to be built there because the necessary utilities were already in place.

Over the years the seafood shop has operated out of the Suquamish Seafood plant, with greater and greater numbers of people coming to buy fresh, locally sourced seafood.

To accommodate the growing popularity and potentially expand the hours of the business, it made sense to Forsman to rebuild the liquor store and make it into the retail location for the seafood.

The tribe hired Your Design out of Poulsbo to do the contract work while Ridgeback Excavation, also from Poulsbo did the site preparation work.

“We’re just waiting on getting power this week, then we can load in the display tanks,” Forsman said.

With a few more things left to do to complete the shop, Forsman hopes to open sometime in October.

“With the way things are going now, we will probably do a soft opening sometime in October, but you never know with construction projects,” Forsman said.

One of the key spaces in the shop will be for the Suquamish harvested oysters, a best seller, and the tribe’s largest export.

“Our oysters go all over the country and all over the world,” noted Forsman.

The seafood shop will also have locally sourced crab, salmon, and geoduck among other types of seafood.

When asked if he was concerned at all about the quality of the food given recent sewage spills, Forsman stated that their food and the food sold at the shop is all FDA approved.

“People are excited about his place and we want to do everything right so that everything is ready to go on day one,” Forsman said.