Tag: industrial lands

City Council, housing, land use

City Council Proposal Would Repeal Law That Allowed Housing Near Stadiums

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle City Councilmember Eddie Lin will introduce legislation later this week to repeal a law that would have allowed apartments in the Stadium District just south of downtown, undoing a longstanding priority of housing developers and handing a significant win to the Port of Seattle and unions representing port workers.

The legislation, sponsored by former councilmember Sara Nelson, would have allowed more than 900 new housing units in the area (half of them affordable “workforce” units), which is largely occupied by warehouses, vacant lots, and businesses like the Showbox and a Showgirls strip club. It’s also home to the current (and future second) SoDo light rail station, which gets minimal use because the area has few businesses and very little housing.

Opponents of the bill argued it would irreparably harm the city’s industrial businesses, and said the city should not build housing near busy, polluted freight corridors; proponents countered that the stadium district hasn’t been in industrial use for many years, and said the city needs more housing everywhere, including near the stadiums.

The Port sued the city, and late last year, the state’s Growth Management Hearings Board invalidated the ordinance as written on both substantive and procedural grounds. Among other “procedural” findings, the board ruled that the city had done a sloppy job of reviewing the proposal, failing to conduct a separate environmental analysis and bypassing public feedback requirements to push the zoning change through last year. The city appealed on the substantive issues but not the procedural ones.

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Lin told PubliCola the ruling effectively gives the city no choice other than repealing the ordinance; to do otherwise, he said, could put the city at risk of being found out of compliance with the Growth Management Act, threatening transportation and housing funds as well as the city’s Comprehensive Plan. “In my opinion, we have a Growth Management Hearings Board order and there were procedural and substantive issues that they invalidated our ordinance on,” Lin said.

The city, Lin conceded, could try to fix the issues the hearings board identified by a May deadline for compliance. Lin suggested the current council has little interest in taking on that battle, which was contentious enough the first time. The council could also include language in the city’s ongoing comprehensive plan update that leaves the door open to more housing in areas with “urban industrial” zoning, a kind of mixed-use zoning that underlies the stadium overlay.

Lin, who chairs the council’s land use committee, said he’s “open to having that discussion later, although I’m not sure how much anybody else wants to have that discussion,” adding, “It’s not my first priority to put housing [in the stadium district.] I think we should be focused on centers and corridors.” The council will start working to upzone those two types of areas—”neighborhood centers” where lower-density apartments will be allowed within 800 feet of existing commercial nodes or frequent transit stops, and “corridors” where apartments can be built directly on arterial roads—this year.

City Council, Elections, housing, land use, Mayor Harrell, public safety

This Week on PubliCola: March 23, 2025
Mayor Bruce Harrell spoke this week at an announcement about the CARE team’s expansion into south Seattle.

Monday, March 17

Seattle Nice: Sound Transit’s New Leader, Katie Wilson’s Run for Mayor, and Ann Davison’s Challengers

On our latest episode of Seattle Nice, we discused King County Executive Dow Constantine’s likely appointment as head of Sound Transit; mayor Bruce Harrell’s first potentially viable challenger, Katie Wilson; and a new candidate, Erika Evans, who’s joining the race against Republican City Attorney Ann Davison.

Tuesday, March 18

PubliCola Questions: City Attorney Candidate Nathan Rouse

Nathan Rouse, a public defender who’s also challenging Davison, talked with PubliCola about his agenda for the office. If elected, he said, he’ll bring back community court, end Davison’s “high utilizers” initiative that targets repeat offenders for extra punishment, and focus more resources on prosecuting wage theft, protecting tenants, and providing resources to crime victims.

Wednesday, March 19

“We’re Gonna Throw It Away.” Dan Strauss, on Losing End of Stadium Housing Vote, Predicts Disaster for Industrial Seattle

After months of deliberation, the council voted 6-3 to allow a limited amount of housing near the city’s two stadiums south of downtown. Dan Strauss, a vocal adversary of the plan, dominated the five-hour meeting with increasingly dour speeches predicting the downfall of the maritime industry in Seattle, due primarily to traffic caused by people living in apartments in the area.

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Thursday, March 20

CARE Crisis Response Team Moves into South Seattle As Council Complains It’s Ineffective

The city’s CARE crisis response team—a team of social workers that responds, accompanied by police, to certain 911 calls—announced this week that it’s expanding citywide. Last week, the city council complained that the the team has not produced visible reductions in misery on Seattle’s streets; in response, CARE’s director noted that the team is limited under an agreement with the police union to 24 responders.

Friday, March 21

When a Top Mayoral Staffer Was Accused of Sexual Assault, These Women Decided It Was Time to Come Forward

Mayor Bruce Harrell’s external affairs director, Pedro Gomez, was accused of raping a woman he met through the mayor’s office last year. After she came forward, several other women spoke to PubliCola about their own experiences with Gomez, including a coworker who said she never reported her own assault. Harrell’s office said there was never any indication that Gomez had any history of inappropriate behavior with women.

 

City Council, housing

“We’re Gonna Throw It Away.” Dan Strauss, on Losing End of Stadium Housing Vote, Predicts Disaster for Industrial Seattle

By Erica C. Barnett

On a 6-3 vote yesterday, the Seattle City Council approved legislation sponsored by Council President Sara Nelson to allow new apartments in the area immediately south of Seattle’s two stadiums, after weeks of often acrimonious debate between supporters of the bill (including affordable housing developers, community groups, small manufacturers, and the Building Trades union) and opponents (representatives from maritime industries, the Port, and housing advocates who argue it’s unhealthy to allow apartments on arterial streets near an industrial zone.)

Councilmember Rob Saka, considered the swing vote, voted “yes,” as did Councilmember Joy Hollingsworth, who voted against the bill in committee.

The new law will allow a maximum of 990 apartments, half of them affordable to people making less than 90 percent of median income (smaller units would lower income limits). Under amendments adopted yesterday, renters would have to affirm in their lease that they know they’re living in a “geologic hazard” area that’s vulnerable during earthquakes; building owners would have to post several prominent warning signs saying the same; and housing would be prohibited along the west side of First Ave. S., the main artery through the area. The amendments also prohibit building owners from seeking any public subsidy at any point, including for future environmental remediation.

Without belaboring the five-hour meeting (which I covered in real time over on Bluesky), one key dynamic jumped out: Councilmember Dan Strauss, who opposed Nelson’s legislation from the jump, dominated yesterday’s meeting, first by attempting repeatedly to delay the vote, and then by reiterating his arguments against the proposal long after it was clear that the vote wasn’t going to go his way. In about three and a half hours of deliberation, which included nine amendments by other councilmembers, Strauss spoke for well over an hour, returning to the same points again and again and suggesting repeatedly that if his colleagues had only done their homework, they would be voting with him.

It’s common for city councilmembers to speak out in vociferously when they know they’re going to lose (as Bob Kettle, who also opposed the bill from the beginning, did yesterday, even accusing his colleagues of being “aligned with the Trump administration” by voting to put housing near a polluted area). It’s unusual, with the notable exception of former councilmember Kshama Sawant, for a council member to use every opportunity for comment to make the same repetitive points long after it’s clear they’ve lost.

Strauss returned more than a dozen times to the fact that hotels are already allowed around the stadiums, suggesting at one point that his colleagues probably weren’t even aware of that. (There’s a Silver Cloud Inn right next to the stadiums, so it’s hard to imagine they aren’t). Strausswas chair of the land use committee when the city adopted an updated industrial lands policy that was changed at the last minute to allow hotels and offices in the stadium district, but not housing, a decision Strauss characterized as a maximalist and permanent compromise. (Proponents of housing in the area have argued that the deal was actually the opposite—the city would approve industrial lands without the contentious housing element, then revisit the housing question later.)

“Again, say it with me now,” Strauss intoned, some four hours in. “This proposal could be built today, if the units were hotels.” Since one of the main arguments against housing in the area is that renters’ cars would jam up traffic to and from the Port’s freight terminals, it’s hard to see how hotels would be much better—unless the idea is that tourists would use transit and renters would not, a conclusion that isn’t borne out by Seattle’s own experience with parking mandates, which have shown that renters in areas served by transit are far less likely to own cars than other Seattle residents.

As the meeting neared its 7pm conclusion, Strauss went so far as to imply that the 990 proposed apartments would actually obliterate the city’s maritime and industrial industry. Gesturing toward the “orange cranes” on the waterfront outside City Hall, he wondered aloud, “how much training does it take to get a skilled operator? How much investment does it take? And we’re gonna throw it away. We’ll keep the picture of it, though, in the conference room.”

Strauss repeatedly suggested shadowy forces were at play in some of his colleagues’ yes votes, fixating on a comment from Cathy Moore about a walking tour she and Maritza Rivera took at which, they said, a neighborhood group member suggested vacating South Occidental Street near the stadiums so it could become a pedestrian-only zone.. “The package of amendments today clearly demonstrates that council members have good intent, and that they know that housing in this area is a bad idea, but feel compelled to vote on this proposal or for this proposal,” Strauss said. “Today, for even me, new information has come to light, which further leads me to believe there were commitments or things shared in private.”

“If the next step from here as an alley vacation, this isn’t about affordable housing or union-built anything—this is back to 2016 about a whole different conversation,” Strauss said. The apparent implication was that the owner of much of the property rezoned for housing yesterday, Chris Hansen, had cut a side deal with other council members to bring back his 2016 stadium proposal without Strauss’ knowledge; that proposal died after the council narrowly rejected a proposal to vacate Occidental. Rivera and Moore denied this and said they regretted bringing it up.

Strauss said the zoning change, if approved, would “possibly be the first decision before this council that cannot be taken back.” While it’s true that once a building goes up, the council doesn’t have the power to tear it down, the city does change zoning laws all the time. It seemed like what Strauss wanted to say is that he didn’t like the way his colleagues were voting. But that’s sometimes just part of the job.

City Council, Parks, Transportation, Trump

SoDo Housing Plan Advances, Republican City Attorney Says Trump Immigration Order Violates “Local Control,” Saka Says No to Restrooms, Yes to Cars
The city’s most deadly areas for people walking, biking, and rolling are in South Seattle, including Rob Saka’s West Seattle district.

1. A proposal from Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson to allow up to 990 units of housing near the city’s two stadiums as part of a new “makers’ district” passed out of Nelson’s committee last week, but it faces an uncertain future at the full council, where two staunch opponents—Bob Kettle and Dan Strauss—will make their case that allowing apartments in a historically industrial area will decimate the city’s maritime industry.

The Port of Seattle and maritime industry unions have argued that allowing people to live near the stadiums—primarily on First Avenue South—would add so many cars to the area that trucks moving to and from the industrial waterfront would get stuck in traffic, making Seattle less competitive with other port cities. They also argue that the proposal reneges on the city’s promise to preserve existing industrial zoning in perpetuity, and that it’s a dangerous and environmentally unhealthy place for people to live.

In a 13-minute speech, Kettle hit all the highlights of this argument, saying the area is vulnerable to a Love Canal-style environmental disaster, that the Port itself is vulnerable “in a cutthroat shipping industry,” and that the geology of the area, which was built on unstable “fill,” would leave residents vulnerable to liquefaction in an earthquake, even if the new buildings were built according to modern earthquake standards.

“How about if you’re walking your dog in this little area, in this little neighborhood, you know, what happens?” Kettle said. “You’re trying to play catch with your kid, or you’re trying to bring in your groceries—a code-enforced building is not going to help you when you’re out there walking the dogs.”

Proponents argue that the area hasn’t been industrial for years (besides entertainment businesses like the Showbox SoDo and a strip club, it’s mostly abandoned and underutilized warehouses), and note that hotels and offices are already allowed in the area under the industrial lands update the council passed in 2023. (And, of course, the maritime workers who oppose housing also work every day in the same liquefaction zone).

“If thought this would this was going to damage irreparably the port, or put it into a position within 100 years where it would not be a strong, viable entity, I would not be doing this,” Nelson said.

The proposal, which passed 3 to 2 (with Mark Solomon and Maritza Rivera supporting Nelson and Joy Hollingsworth joining Kettle in opposition), will go to the full council on March 18.

 

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2. City Attorney Ann Davison put out a statement last week denouncing efforts by the Trump administration “to coerce local authorities and to commandeer local jurisdictions into carrying out the duties of the federal executive branch, while punishing those who dissent.”

Davison is a Republican who was active in the “Walk Away” movement headed up by “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theorist Bradon Straka, one of the January 6 rioters who was later pardoned by Trump. She ran for City Council against Debora Juarez, lost, ran for lieutenant governor as a Republican, lost againagain, and became city attorney after defeating a police abolitionist in the backlash election of 2021.

Davison issued the statement after joining a lawsuit that accuses Trump of violating the Constitutional separation of powers by unilaterally directing the government to withhold federal funds and take legal action against “sanctuary” jurisdictions, like Seattle, that bar police and other officials from assisting with federal immigration enforcement.

Davison’s statement stuck mostly to the strict legal questions raised by the federal order (although it did take a moment to praise “our diverse, vibrant, and invaluable immigrant communities.”) “This is an issue of federal overreach into areas of local control,” the statement said.

The statement marked a departure for Davison, who has not previously weighed in on partisan politics. Whether Davison voted for Trump, Harris, or another candidate in 2024 is unclear; her office did not respond to a question about whether she supported Trump. Her past campaign donations include small contributions to former Republican secretary of state Kim Wyman and Joshua Freed, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for governor who went on to head the King County Republican Party and condemned Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment after the January 6 riots.

3. City Councilmember Rob Saka took a couple of strong stands in the past week.

First, during a presentation about an audit that found deficiencies in the Seattle Parks Department’s cleaning and maintenance of park restrooms, Saka argued against expanding public restrooms.

“[M]embers of the public always want to expand the number of restrooms, not just in Seattle, but in LA and across the country … and I don’t—I’m not sure that’s the best approach here in Seattle at this point, at this juncture, unless and until we’re in a better position to make better progress on addressing the cleanliness and accessibility [and] properly maintaining our existing restrooms,” he said.

Had Saka been around five years ago, he might have been aware of a different audit from the same office—this one recommending that the city open more 24/7 restrooms, specifically to help people living unsheltered who have “extremely limited options to avoid open urination and defecation, especially during the night.” Had he been on the council the following year, he might have taken part in a debate over  whether homeless people deserved access to restrooms and running water during the pandemic (the city decided they didn’t, and homeless Seattle residents experienced repeated outbreaks of hepatitis A and shigella.)

Then, during a presentation on traffic violence earlier this week, Saka apparently felt compelled to respond to a comment made by Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck about her decision to live car-free. “I appreciate Councilmember Rinck’s point of view,” Saka said, but noted that even in dense San Francisco, where he vacationed recently with his family, people still have cars.

“As vibrant as their transit system is, I was struck by the fact that nearly every street, arterials and non-arterials alike, on both sides of the road, there was there was parking!,” Saka said. “Parking! Available on both sides of the street! [Which] again, highlights the importance of choice! These modes are a choice. And even in San Francisco, the second most dense city in our in our country, people still choose to drive.”

One thing Saka may not have noticed, especially if he wasn’t driving, is that it’s incredibly hard to find a parking space in most of San Francisco. There are simply too many cars for the limited number of spaces, and most neighborhoods have residential parking zones, restricting visitors to no more than a couple of hours. Except in areas with heavy car traffic (like downtown, where some parking lanes convert to driving lanes at rush hour), Seattle also generally has parking on both sides of the street.

housing, land use, Uncategorized

Opponents of Stadium-Area Housing Say “Core Tenet” is “No Net Loss of Industrial Lands”
Port Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa speaks at a meeting on potential changes to allow housing in the stadium district.

By Erica C. Barnett

Back in January, Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson convened a panel to discuss legislation that would allow affordable “workforce” housing in an industrially zoned area just south of downtown.

Hotels, retail stores, bars and restaurants, and offices are already allowed in this area, but housing is not; although a 2022 Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) found that a plan allowing up to 990 “industry-supportive housing” units would be compatible with the surrounding industrial area, the housing was omitted in a last-minute compromise to get the proposal past the finish line.

During the January meeting, Councilmember Dan Strauss accused Nelson of convening a panel that wasn’t “balanced,” because it only included proponents of her proposal to allow housing. Strauss has also made it clear he’s sore because Nelson is hearing the the legislation in her governance committee instead of sending it to the land use committee, chaired by Mark Solomon, where it might not get a hearing.

Echoing Strauss, Councilmember Bob Kettle said he hoped Nelson would give the other side a formal opportunity to speak against her legislation.

On Monday, Kettle and Strauss got their wish, when Nelson invited representatives from the maritime sector to explain why they see the housing proposal as a non-starter. The basic debate is about whether land with industrial zoning should be kept strictly industrial in perpetuity, as the Port and longshore union argue, or if some of that land should be repurposed for other uses, such as housing to support smaller, public-facing manufacturing businesses, as the building trades union has argued.

Currently, the two blocks just south of the stadiums are a mishmash of entertainment businesses (including a strip club) and bars, small manufacturers, underutilized retail spaces, and parking lots.

The first panelist, Port Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa, came in hot, blasting Nelson’s plan as “a Humpty Dumpty approach to break apart our industrial lands piece by piece, year after year, to the point where we can’t put them back together again.” If the city wanted to open up the debate over the land around the stadiums, she continued, they would have to first satisfy the Port’s “core tenet—no net loss to industrial lands—and [provide] certainty that this isn’t going to come up year after year after year, because a trail of bread crumbs does not exactly exude transparency or confidence.”

The panelists (who also included Dan Kelly from the Freight Advisory Board, longshore union rep Dan McKisson, and Northwest Seaport Alliance deputy CEO Don Esterbrook) argued that housing in an industrial area would harm residents and lead to pedestrian deaths, and potentially drive port traffic to Canada or California as increased car traffic slowed down trucks trying to get out of Seattle.

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Nelson and Councilmember Maritza Rivera pressed the panelists to explain why they believed 990 new apartments would create enough traffic to cripple the Port, given that the maritime industry signed off on hotels, offices, and bars and restaurants in the area around the stadiums, which also create significant traffic.

“I don’t know why allowing for limited workforce housing is really going to have much of an extra impact than [what’s] already there, with the commercial use that includes hotels, entertainment and office space, and the sports complex,” Rivera said.

Hasegawa responded that new housing would bring “additional foot traffic” in an area that’s unsafe for pedestrians, then resumed talking about the potential impact of pollution on residents living near an industrial area. OK, Rivera said, but “we have residents in Pioneer Square, which is right there too”—why is it okay for people to live there but not on the other side of the stadiums? When no one answered that question, both Nelson and Rivera pressed: If allowing housing around the stadiums is such an obviously bad idea, why didn’t the Port or other maritime groups appeal the environmental impact statement that said a limited amount of housing was okay?

When the panelists didn’t really answer that question either, Strauss and Kettle stepped in. First, Kettle reiterated his comment from the previous meeting that the “F” in “FEIS” actually stands for “flawed,” and predicted lawsuits from residents harmed by “noise and air” issues in the area, along the lines of the lawsuits filed by residents of Whidbey Island over noise at a naval air station near their homes. Then Strauss said that in his recollection maritime and industrial unions didn’t like the final agreement to begin with, and only agreed to hotels as a compromise.

“We were furious,” McKisson confirmed, and said they still don’t know “how the non-industrial uses [have] impacted that area.”

After the meeting, Nelson said she hopes to hold a final vote on the legislation by March 18.

City Council, Economy, Guest Contributor

The City’s Maritime Industrial Area is No Place for Housing
Image via Port of Seattle.

By Lars Turner, Gabriel Prawl, and Chris Voigt

Seattle’s trade-based economy operates like a beating heart at the center of a regional circulatory system that pumps sustainable family-wage jobs, growth opportunities, and economic prosperity into the city as commerce flows out across the US, from Edgar Martinez Way in Seattle all the way to Boston.

The arteries of this system are freight mobility corridors that facilitate ingress and egress around Seattle’s bustling port district. This system will be compromised if the Seattle City Council approves a bill that would allow housing development in the midst of incompatible industrial land uses. The upzoning effort threatens to erode our local maritime economy and would put future residents in harm’s way.

Local governments have invested billions of dollars into our unique deep-water ports, rail corridors, and road infrastructure to ensure transportation networks operate efficiently to supply dozens of trade-dependent sectors, both large and small, with reliable freight transport to and from the Port of Seattle. Our status as a leader in international trade was made possible thanks to forward-thinking industrial land-use policies, which preserve industrial land for a diverse array of industrial uses.

The legislation the council is considering would lift the prohibition on residential properties development within 200 feet of designated Major Truck Streets in the “Stadium Transition Area Overlay District,” (STAOD) which comprises several blocks of land around the SODO arenas. Permanent residents will send more traffic into a small area, with limited transportation capacity, that is already overcrowded during regular stadium events.

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City leaders are on the cusp of putting 58,400 jobs across Washington state at risk—including on the Seattle waterfront. Marine cargo operations along the waterfront create $4.5 billion in annual business output, $1.5 billion in labor outcome, while supporting an additional 30,600 secondary jobs.

Pinching freight thoroughfares in Seattle would impair our state’s thriving agriculture producers as well. Washington’s potato industry, as an example, has the highest yield in the nation—producing 93 million pounds annually. Washington potatoes flow through the Port to major export markets like Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan. This activity produces an economic benefit to our state of more than $7.3 billion , and the production supply chains support approximately 32,000 direct jobs.

Although industrially zoned lands make up only 12 percent of the city’s total land, they contribute about 30 percent of the city’s annual tax revenue. It’s clear that maximizing maritime uses in these areas pays off. Port jobs provide sustainable economic benefits that have supported family-wage careers across generations. Maritime workers can still afford to live in the city where they work—an increasingly rare quality in Seattle’s downtown core.

City leaders must also consider the urgent public health and safety issues that would face future residents seeking affordable housing in SODO. In 2022, Seattle’s Industrial & Maritime Strategy Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) outlined potential harms that could result from siting housing in areas that are adjacent to maritime industrial lands.

The EIS explicitly highlights Seattle’s history of redlining as a motivating framework for the analysis, noting the detrimental impacts of prejudicial land-use policymaking on city residents over time. The SODO subarea where the city is now contemplating residential development is rated lowest on the city’s “Access to Opportunity Index.” By moving forward with this bill, city leaders would be doubling down on residential land use policies that have already failed low-income communities and communities of color.

As the city decides whether to place affordable housing next to a very busy working waterfront, they must be clear-eyed about the significant risks that will face future tenants. Permanent SODO residents would be placed right in the middle of inhospitable maritime industrial land uses. SODO is one of the hottest areas of the city with constant noise and light pollution, complete with a 24-hour average decibel rating that exceeds federal standards for residential noise levels. The proposed development would house residents on top of an earthquake liquefaction zone that could be subject to catastrophic collapse when disaster strikes.

Existing maritime economies and future SODO tenants can’t afford the high-risk tradeoffs inherent in this proposal for the stadium overlay district. Fortunately, city leaders can look to the negotiated alternative that stakeholders, including land developers, agreed on in 2023. Opportunities for mixed-use development in Seattle could be found in the Georgetown neighborhood, where an affordable “makers district” could thrive without similar impacts on residents, or to local maritime operations.

As family-wage jobs and affordable housing opportunities in Seattle continue to contract, we need legislation that invests in the long-term wellbeing of all city residents, not just a few wealthy landowners in SODO. This proposal is a bad deal for Seattle’s working families, and our thriving maritime industry. It risks the viability of scarce maritime industrial lands that we cannot afford to lose.

Lars Turner is the International Secretary-Treasurer of the Masters, Mates, and Pilots, AFL-CIO. Gabriel Prawl is the President of the Seattle Chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute. Chris Voigt is the Executive Director of the Washington State Potato Commission