When I was down at City Hall last week, I spied Five Point owner and local music promoter Dave Meinert (along with other nightlife-industry folks) scurrying down the hallway toward Tim Burgess’ office, flanked by a pack of suits from the Downtown Seattle Association. Curious what the two groups could possibly be meeting about, I called the DSA’s Jon Scholes.
Turns out the DSA and the Seattle Nightlife Advisory Board have found common ground on the question of police presence downtown, which the nightlife group announced as a top priority earlier this week.
“I think it’s safe to say that in the recent past, we haven’t collaborated with [the nightlife community] at all, [but] we have a lot of common ground on urban issues, public safety being one,” Scholes says. “Our members and others downtown have definitely noticed general street disorder getting worse over the last year.”
Burgess, who set up the meetings, says he “wanted to open the lines of communication” between nightlife representatives and downtown business interests. “The two groups have very similar aims, and during the meeting, that was quite obvious,” he says.
Clubs and downtown business interests have frequently found themselves at odds in the past, in part because bar and club owners have resented efforts to make them legally accountable for the behavior of their patrons.
“The nightlife community has had a really rocky relationship with the DSA over the years, because we’ve been on opposite sides of issues like the Teen Dance Ordinance,” which made it prohibitively difficult to hold all-ages shows, Meinert says. “I had a very negative opinion of them before, but it does seem like they’ve changed.”
Meinert says both nightlife businesses and the traditional daytime businesses the DSA represents have an interest in reducing petty street crime, like aggressive panhandling. (Burgess plans to introduce a fleshed-out version of his controversial proposed ban on aggressive panhandling in January). “If you want to decrease street crime, you need more cops on the street, and that’s what the DSA is saying as well.”
The club owners’ new outspoken desire for more police presence may reflect a new, post-Sidran (and -Nickels) era at the city: If club owners believe they can trust the city not to burn them (by passing onerous regulations, like the controversial nightlife license proposal), they’re more likely to see the city as an ally, not an obstacle.
