Tag: Greater Seattle

Business, Economy, Urbanism

Greater Seattle: Third Places

By Josh Feit

5,250 > 778

Here’s a rejoinder to those who complain that Seattle’s taxes on big business are going to send major companies fleeing to Bellevue: Seattle has nearly 40 percent more cafes, retail shops, bars, arts and cultural spaces, community centers and food spots per capita than Bellevue.

Known as “third places,” these kinds of public living rooms are considered essential for attracting uniquely mobile high-tech workers away from competing cities.

Last week, the Seattle Department of Economic Development published a new, comprehensive report  about the need for Seattle to foolproof its economy by fostering a more varied set of businesses that participate on the national and international scale. The report, which was written by local economic consultants, cites Seattle’s impressive map of third places as a must-have. “Seattle offers a remarkably rich environment for these connections due to its high concentration of third places mixed into its built environment,” the report states as part of its thesis that third places are an asset for drawing the creative class that’s necessary to resuscitate our flagging startup culture.

The report’s comparison point for what we don’t want to be? Bellevue.

“The difference between Seattle and a less third place-rich region like Bellevue is stark. Seattle has substantially more third places than Bellevue (5,250 vs. 778). Part of this, of course, is a matter of population. But Seattle also has more third places per square mile (63 vs. 23) and per capita than Bellevue (71 vs. 52 per 10,000 residents).”

“Stark” is not hyperbole. When you look at the specifics of Seattle’s 40 percent per-capita advantage over our neighbor across Lake Washington, you can see why young workers would be miserable in Bellevue. While Seattle has more third spaces overall—libraries, community centers, cafes, and gyms, for example—the advantage is stunning when you look at spots that you traditionally associate with “going out.” More than three times as many bars. One-hundred sixty percent more cultural arts venues. Sixty-five percent more shops. Forty-nine percent more dining options.

And, upending stereotypes, Seattle also has more places of worship—by a reverent 42 percent.

Bellevue does beat Seattle in an important category, though. And it’d be good for policy makers at city hall to take note of this. When it comes to parks, Bellevue beats Seattle by 14 percent—7.1 to 6.1 per every 10,000 people.

10 pm > 6 pm

The report doesn’t say how late Seattle’s third spaces stay open on average. That’s important. While people want to move to a city where there’s places to hang out, they likely don’t want to move to a city where there’s a stopwatch ticking on how long they can.  And anecdotally, I can tell you: Shops close too early. This is true in Bellevue as well, but Seattle’s lackluster evening economy is a noteworthy problem in its own right.

From coffee shops to corner stores, from retail to social services, Seattle needs a more energetic nighttime ecosystem. I wrote about this problem decades ago, and I wrote about it again a few years ago, because it’s a defining and persistent shortcoming here. Seattle is too soporific. Newsflash to the rest of country: Seattle is not woke!

A sleepy city undermines equity. The nighttime isn’t just about socializing. If it was easier to take care of business after 5 pm by having greater access to the practical stuff that’s traditionally closed or diminished at night—government services, retail, drug stores, administrative offices, buses, rental visits—people, particularly working-class people, would face fewer barriers to the economic opportunities here.

38 percent > 30 percent

Another thing missing from the report: The evidence to support the consultant’s contention that the creative class workers we need actually gravitate toward third places. I’m not saying I disagree with the report’s thesis. I want it to be true. And it’s certainly logical to assume that creative, young techies like to be out and about.

But is it?

According to a dispiriting essay titled “America is Becoming a Nation of Homebodies,” which urbanist Diana Lind wrote last year, “Americans now spend an average of 99 more minutes at home each day than they did in 2003, while this generation of 15- to 24-year-olds spends 124 more minutes at home than their counterparts two decades ago. Meanwhile, just 30 percent of Americans spent time socializing and communicating in person on an average day, down from 38 percent in 2014, according to [an] American Time Use Survey.”  And another recent report found that Americans are also speaking less—and that the issue is especially pronounced among people younger than 25.

Numbers detailing Seattle’s penchant for being out and about—and how those numbers are trending—would be helpful to have if urbanists want to backup the OED consultant’s third-place advocacy for “face-to-face communication” and “connections.”

The World Cup social scene may have been an aberration. But compared to the crowds I’m seeing at art walks, game days, Saturday night on Capitol Hill, lines at popups, music and cultural events, and crowded coffee shops these days, it wasn’t a huge aberration. Seattle seems like it’s hopping. It’d be nice to know if that’s true.

Josh@PubliCola.com

Density, Mayor Wilson, Transit

Greater Seattle: Late Press Conferences, On-Time Buses, Selfish Housing

By Josh Feit

Five and a half hours > A half hour

As they spin headlines to make Mayor Katie Wilson look bad, local TV news’ populist schtick fails news reporting basics. Taking the word of an unnamed source from SPD who says the press conference after July’s Seattle-Center shooting was delayed because Wilson was waiting on “dignitaries” (the governor and the Seattle congresswoman) is a delusional account if you actually read the email and text message threads from that night.

What the behind-the-scenes conversations between the mayor’s office and SPD show is that as soon as 6:30, immediately after the shooting, Wilson was looking to her staff and to SPD to assess the possibility of going to Seattle Center to make a statement. SPD, however, told her to hold off as they secured the scene. They then withheld critical information—namely, that the shooting wasn’t terrorism or a mass shooting, but a personal fracas, keeping the public largely in the dark for five and a half hours, between 7:30 and 1am when they put out a blog post about the incident. The police were also in delay mode because they were waiting for (now former) chief Shon Barnes to get a briefing and hold a Teams call with elected officials..

This chaos stalled Wilson’s trip to Seattle Center. But when she finally got there shortly after 10 pm, and a presser was ready to go, (with the SPD still reticent on the details) there was a wait of less than half an hour for Governor Ferguson and Congresswoman Jayapal to arrive—far less than the length of time SPD kept critical information from the public.

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The 8 > The L8

My favorite way of judging the mayor—and one that is actually populist (despite the convoluted right-wing notion that riding the bus is somehow elitist)—is by keeping my eye on the infamous (L)8 bus.

Wilson, the founder and former co-director of the Transit Riders Union, has thrown money, fresh paint, and SDOT planners at the historically sluggish, major east-west route. The first part of her plan—an eastbound bus-only lane on Denny—went into effect on August 24. And as part of Wilson’s plan, Metro added more buses the same week.

And, well, well, well. It’s still early (and there are more fixes to come), but dramatic signs of improvement are already clear. On-time performance  jumped to from 68.6 percent percent to 77.8 percent between this August and August 2025, an increase that only includes one week of improved service on the 8. So far in September, on-time performance has continued to climb, to 78.5 percent.

The 7,203 average daily riders (July’s numbers) who rely on the 8 likely appreciate Mayor Wilson’s focus on the basics; as a regular rider, I know I do.

Living Alone ≠ The Housing Crisis

The Seattle Times’ FYI Guy claims the sharp increase in people living solo is “eating up” units, saying we could address most of the housing crisis without building new housing if those selfish singles would just “double up.”

First of all, my own FYI: People who “live alone” don’t live alone. We’re living in multifamily buildings with plenty of other people. This type of dense housing is better for the environment and brings down rents.

The Seattle Times column goes onto to pooh-pooh the idea that rigid zoning is the culprit, even though Seattle’s suburban character notoriously limits mutlifamily housing in the city.

So, I guess, for my contribution, I should ask someone to move in with me in my 350-square-foot apartment to lower regional housing costs while those who eat up 5,000-square-foot lots should continue to manspread.

Josh@PubliCola.com

City Council, housing, Mayor Wilson

Greater Seattle: Katie Wilson is to Jimmy Carter as Zohran Mamdani is to Barack Obama

By Josh Feit

First of all, a quick followup to an item from a couple of weeks ago, when I wrote: “Trump’s Case Against US Olympian David Hearn for Vandalizing the Reflecting Pool (since abandoned by Trump’s own DOJ) > North Seattle Couple’s Case for Recalling Katie Wilson.”

Yup. Last week, King County Superior Court Judge Patrick Oishi dismissed the request for a recall. At a confusing hearing last Thursday, August 27, Oishi told the petitioners their case was “befuddling.” For starters, they missed a filing deadline and then withdrew their request. Seems like the Trump analogy was spot on. And in what seemed even more similar to Trump’s endless mishegas, the couple then claimed they had more info. Oh brother.

Barack Obama > Jimmy Carter

Speaking of Wilson and analogies to presidents, let me alert you to this one: With her econo-travel  aesthetic, earnest policy brain, lefty-populist comfort zone, socially-awkward-bookworm personality, and (from what we hear about her behind-the-scenes leadership style) prickly isolation on the 7th floor—Wilson is Seattle’s own Jimmy Carter. If this analogy isn’t tracking for Gen Zers and Millennials, ask the internet about solar panels, sweaters, and thermostats. Carter, an outsider who was a elected during America’s post-Watergate call for goodie-goodie governance, eventually started to tank in the polls during his presidency. I initially thought Wilson’s high-wattage smile and unbridled joy in civics would confound the naysayers, critics, and bitter media. But—recall effort or not—recent polling indicates this mayor is in trouble.

Thanks to Wilson’s socialist label and sudden, surprise rise, the analogy that used to come to mind was more encouraging: Wilson was Seattle’s own Zohran Mamdani. But Mamdani veers toward a presidential analogy of his own. And it’s the opposite of a one-termer like Carter who got mired in “malaise.” Mamdani’s soaring popularity, confident charm, and big-ideas agenda make him like Barack Obama, an incorrigibly popular two-term president.

As Mamdani continues to wow the public and generate hope with his own gleeful project of sweeping governance (sweltering subway stations as pools of sustainable energy being the latest Mamdani lightning bolt) a pal in New York asked me why Wilson was having so much trouble in Seattle. I don’t think this fully explains it, but the fact that he’s a he and she’s a she has evidently allowed the media to normalize an unbridled condescension, giving their anti-Wilson bias free rein.

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50 > 0

Protesting density, liberal Boomers and Xers often quote Joni Mitchell’s famous line, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” Unwittingly, their knee-jerk “Development=Bad” mantra prioritizes car-dependent lifestyles. By stalling new housing development, they are locking pervasive car culture in place, thwarting the density needed to create walkable neighborhoods and expanded transit service. I derisively call it Joni Mitchell Politics.

So, as summer comes to a close, let’s applaud the Seattle Office of Housing and City Councilmember Dionne Foster’s pro-housing politics. Thanks to legislation they passed earlier this summer, OH used $6 million to acquire the site of a former gas station, mini-mart, and parking lot on East Montlake Place E. in the upscale Montlake neighborhood to build 50 below-market-rate condos. There’s currently zero affordable housing in the pricey area.

Under Seattle’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda, adopted in 2015, high-income communities like Montlake that lack affordable housing are known as “high opportunity” neighborhoods.

In her summer wrap-up newsletter, Foster noted the housing win: “Through acquiring property in a high opportunity neighborhood in Montlake we are locking in a future for affordable homeownership in a neighborhood that currently does not have affordable homeownership.”

Josh@publicola.com

housing, Opinion, Transit, Urbanism

Greater Seattle: Bikes, Cars, and Housing

By Josh Feit

First, a quick follow-up to last week’s item about former state house candidate Ron Davis. ICYMI: Despite the fact that the Stranger endorsed a long list of progressives, Davis contended—in a 3,000-word email to his supporters—that because the paper didn’t endorse him, there’s reason to believe a cabal of centrist oligarchs have taken over the paper and are calling the shots on endorsements.

Surprise: It turns out Davis isn’t actually Neo in the Matrix. According to members of the Stranger’s endorsement board, there’s a banal reason he didn’t get the nod from them. I’ll put this as gently as I can: Davis is not a great listener. The SECB wasn’t thrilled with the mansplaining.

Okay. On to this week in X>Y.

No Cars in Pike Place Market > Cars in Pike Place Market

Despite increased business at Pike Place Market and broad public support for the no-cars pilot project that coincides with the bullish numbers, SDOT is looking at opening the Market back up to cars starting this October. Ryan Packer at the Urbanist has been all over the story.

The naive thing about undoing the new pedestrian-only version of  Pike Place Market, which went into effect in April 2025 and tracks to a notable 8.8 percent increase in local visitors who live between 3 and 5 miles away, is that it’s not the only pro-pedestrian upgrade in the area. Have you noticed the new multi-billion-dollar Waterfront Park, including the $70 million Overlook Walk that melds directly into the Market? It’s a whole feng shui down there now. And it started, emphatically enough, when we tore down the car-choked Viaduct.

Pike Place Market is now just one element in a comprehensive waterfront makeover that has embraced pedestrians and de-emphasized cars. It’s one thing Seattle has gotten right.

7 > 69

The Seattle Metro Chamber is trolling me.

Their most recent polling had a stat that made my heart leap: 69 percent of people agreed with the concept that “Building more housing will help slow down Seattle’s increasing housing costs.” This might seem like easy-peasy Econ 101 to you, but as someone who’s been pushing this once-radical urbanist idea since 2004, I was pleasantly surprised to see it’s now conventional wisdom; 58 percent even agreed with the once-anathema notion that “All things considered, growth and development has been a positive for my area.”

Ah, but then, in the same poll, this: Only 7 percent of people think “more density” is among the top one or two things the city should be doing to improve quality of life.

So, nearly everyone supports the idea of growth and building more, but only a smidgen actually think it’s something we should prioritize? Isn’t there a term for that dysfunctional way of thinking. Oh, right. NIMBY.

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2026 > 2019

According to SDOT’s Fremont Bridge tracker, Seattle bike and scooter commuting hit its highest count in Seattle history last month. The previous high was set pre-pandemic in August 2019.

Tom Fucoloro at Seattle Bike Blog, who reported on the data last week with a headline that used the word “obliterated,” writes: “The 153,238 trips was near 11,000 trips more than the previous high-water mark set in August 2019, and total counts for 2026 through July are up more than 18% year-over-year.”

This is excellent news for anyone who supports investing more in multimodal transportation.

And I’ll add another stat: As of July, combined bike and scooter trips are nearly two million higher than last year at this time: 7.2 million versus 5.4 million.

I’m comparing 2026 to 2025 rather than the pre-pandemic 2019 baseline that city planners seem obsessed with these days because all these record-setting bike and scooter numbers exist in a post-pandemic reality that looks nothing like the pre-pandemic world. Fucoloro hints at this in his own analysis by pointing out that return-to-office requirements have generally only gotten downtown office workers back three days a week.

I’d contend the reason we’re lapping pre-pandemic ridership, and doing so when just three days a week is the new RTO norm, has to do with a disproportionate increase in commuting in the so-called off-hours.

For example, another telling 2025 to 2026 comparison: Off-traditional-peak bike and scooter ridership is growing at a faster rate than traditional peak-hour bike and scooter commuting. Ridership at 9 am has grown 21.4 percent while 11 am ridership has grown 23.3 percent. And after work? Ridership at 5 pm has grown 23.7 percent while ridership at 7 pm has grown 27.8 percent. At 8 pm it’s even more pronounced. Ridership has grown 29.8 percent..

There’s a new shape to city life that’s not only about punching the clock. Our infrastructure and planning should adjust to this 21st-century lifestyle rather than looking backward to the old one.

Josh@PubliCola.com

Elections, legislature, Mayor Wilson, Media

Greater Seattle: Junk Fees, Recalling Wilson, and Ron Davis’ Post-Election Fixation

By Josh Feit

8 > 75

Seventy-five dollars was the cost of an unfair “notice fee” that then-PubliCola freelancer Katie Wilson cited when, as a crusading writer in 2023, she wrote a piece for us condemning junk fees—the insidious add-ons that landlords pile onto renters to increase the actual amount they pay every month. These fees include things like “administrative” fees, charges to receive packages, and unspecified “service” charges. Wilson’s $75 “notice fee” example was “for preparing and giving the notice” that a tenant had to remove a potted plant from their balcony.

Eight is the number of votes now-Mayor Katie Wilson got last week, when the city council unanimously passed her legislation banning these junk fees. (The vote excluded Maritza Rivera, who had to recuse herself because she owns a rental property). A 2025 Urban Institute study found that these types of arbitrary and undisclosed fees can add between 10 and 30 percent to base rent.

As chair of the Housing, Arts, and Civil Rights Committee, A-student Councilmember Dionne Foster sponsored Wilson’s priority legislation, noting that the fees disproportionately hit Black residents, seniors, young renters, and working-class people.

Trump’s Case Against U.S. Olympian David Hearn for Vandalizing the Reflecting Pool (since abandoned by Trump’s own DOJ) > North Seattle Couple’s Case for Recalling Katie Wilson

Speaking of the misconception that Mayor Wilson is flailing: It seems unlikely that the recall request submitted against Wilson last week (by a north Seattle couple who are angry about the way Wilson handled the Seattle Center shooting and her overall approach to crime) will get far.

Like in cities nationwide, crime is down in Seattle this year.

The recall proponents must show and detail malfeasance or a violation of the oath of office. Those claims need to pass muster with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and then the King County Superior Court. If that happens, the aggrieved duo needs to get 69,000 valid signatures to send the recall effort to the ballot.

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0 > $6,250  

$6,250 is what third place North Seattle state house candidate Ron Davis spent on political consultants in the runup to the August primary. $0 is what the Stranger is paying to live rent-free in Davis’ head.

I do not come to praise the Stranger. I was the news editor there for nine years two decades ago, built a dogged news section (that included ECB!), established and forged the influence of  the SECB (Stranger Election Control Board), and have since watched from afar as the news section has lost its credibility and the paper has lost its way (long before Brady Walkinshaw took over.) And so yes, I agree that their outsized influence over elections is a drag.

But Ron Davis’ recent sour-grapes email to his supporters about the Stranger—in which he even seems to take issue with the fact that they make endorsements— says more about him than about the paper. For starters, his conspiracy theories about Walkinshaw’s centrist agenda make little sense when you consider the paper endorsed socialist Kshama Sawant along with a slew of progressives, such as Kelabe Tewolde, Nilu Jenks, Rebeca Saldaña, Nicole Macri, Teresa Mosqueda, Gabe Rothstein, and Rob Foxcurran. (They also have a legit, self-avowed Marxist on their staff and editorial board who wrote a pro-Sawant piece in advance of her primary challenge against Rep. Adam Smith.)

Ah. But they didn’t endorse Ron Davis. I don’t know why they didn’t; he’s a dedicated YIMBY and they probably should have supported him to emphasize why the NIMBY incumbent in the race, Gerry Pollet, is the wrong choice. But neither the revolution Davis believed he would bring to Olympia nor Stranger-endorsed second-place challenger Will Dreher’s bland agenda points to oligarchic marching orders from on high. And if the Stranger is the compromised avatar of centrism Davis thinks it is, why does he want their endorsement so badly (doth protest way too much)?

Davis is not the first person to base his whole campaign on getting the Stranger’s endorsement in the primary (it’s every local consultant’s “knowing” advice.) But sending out a 3,000-word concession email with a section—a section!—titled “Educate my community on how the recent purchase of The Stranger by still-anonymous wealthy investors had corrupted a once-reliable ally in the progressive movement” is not healthy behavior.

Josh@Publicola.com

City Council, Elections, Mayor Wilson

Greater Seattle: Primary Election Edition

By Josh Feit

Mayor Wilson > Theories of Mayor Wilson’s Demise

As the mainstream media and the Seattle Times pounce on Mayor Wilson, please keep their bias (and incoherence) in mind.

As fans (and endorsers) of former mayor Bruce Harrell, the Seattle Times hasn’t liked Wilson from the start. Long before the brouhaha over now-former police chief Shon Barnes, they were hyperventilating about Wilson’s supposed gaffes. What that meant was that they didn’t agree with her support for State Sen. Jamie Pedersen’s millionaires tax. (Of course, they now love it because Pedersen is Exhibit A in their argument that last week’s election amounted to a backlash against progressives.)

If you can overlook the contradictions in that line of thinking, can I interest you in a victorious peace deal to open the Strait of Hormuz?

I also don’t follow their objection to firing Barnes in the first place. Or did they do a 180 on that one too, now that Erica has made any defense of  the OOO chief laughable thanks to the comprehensive reporting she did on his schedule?

It’s true that the city council is steamed at the mayor—and has been, as PubliCola has reported, for a host of reasons that date back to well before Wilson pushed Barnes out earlier this month. But tension between the second and seventh floors is hardly new—and certainly not grounds for the kind of hyperventilating at the Seattle Times.

The premature death notices are wishful thinking. And I must say: If wacky temporary councilmember Debora Juarez —who went on KOMO recently to say she had “no confidence in this administration”—is your champion, you don’t have a bead on the Seattle electorate. P.s. The progressive candidate in last week’s primary running to fill Juarez’s open D5 seat, Nilu Jenks, is currently beating the establishment choice Julie Kang, 54 to 33 percent.

Get a bead on this, though: Last week, popular lefty council member Alexis Mercedes Rinck turned to supposedly down-and-out Mayor Wilson for backup on her new, progressive Mamdani-esque legislation to stop supermarkets from gouging poor people with what amounts to surge pricing for groceries.

15,288 > 7,327, 11,085, or 6,635

In more evidence that we aren’t looking at a reversal of 2025’s progressive sweep, those are the number of votes cast for the winner of each District 5 council primary, in reverse-chronological order going back to 2015 (the first year of district elections.) That’s Nilu Jenks’ vote total this year, followed by Cathy Moore in 2023 and Debora Juarez in 2019 and 2015.

In addition to getting more votes than any previous primary winner, Jenks also got the highest percentage of any primary winner, and is the first D5 candidate to ever come out of the primary with a firm majority of the vote—currently 54 percent to her more conservative challenger Julie Kang’s 33 percent. (Not all ballots have been counted).

Granted, the field in D5 was smaller this year than previous primaries, with four candidates rather than the six, eight, or ten that showed up in previous elections. But this year’s D5 turnout was higher than usual, too—around 29,000 voters so far, more than any previous primary in the district—and Jenks’ vote is larger than the combined total of the top two contenders (Moore and Christiana ObeySumner) in 2023’s 10-way primary. Jenks ran in that primary but only got 19 percent, so her showing this year represents a real and significant growth in support.

Jenks was endorsed by council member Rinck, while Kang has support from the council’s centrist bloc—including Maritza Rivera and Bob Kettle alongside former conservative council president Sara Nelson.

Progressive Challenger > Longtime Incumbent

We can also look to South Seattle for evidence of progressive primary results. In the race for Position 1 state representative in the 37th District, newcomer Kelabe Tewolde is leading 28-year incumbent Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos 51 to 48 percent. Tewolde—a progressive, density advocate, and current member of the Seattle Planning Commission—was endorsed by Tech for Housing, The Urbanist, and Rinck.