Mayor Bozeman's Seattle slapfest: returning the favor
Turning Seattle's waterfront into a bourgeoisie theme park is the worst thing you can do for a port city's economy
Wonderful urban spaces are indeed a delightful and necessary thing, but they don’t necessarily pay the bills. Current Bremerton and former Bellevue Mayor Cary Bozeman, who apparently wanders around the state so he can be lead B towns (Burien, Bucoda, Bellingham — beware!) has decided that Seattle needs a “quiet” waterfront, where children can play and all is happy. And you people of Aurora: you’re apparently garbage. And ditto for Pioneer Square.
It’s a particularly elitist conceit that somebody else’s neighborhood must be trash if it doesn’t conform to the upper-crust standards of the ignorati — that class of civic leaders who seem to believe that money grows on trees, and that you don’t even have to cut the trees down to get the money, just gaze at them. Ergo, Aurora’s grimy work-a-day stretch is undeniably inferior to the sterile, concrete canyons of Bellevois. The latter is the Miracle Mile; the former the Tragical History Tour.
Mayor Bozeman says he means his Seattle slapfest in the nicest possible way. Seattle needs to live up to its destiny as the Emerald City so that our descendants don’t talk smack about us, and so that King County, which subsidizes the rest of the state with its wealth, keeps up the good work. And that’s why Bozeman’s broadside is so utterly quixotic. Our descendants will not thank us for the lack of decent jobs that will be the legacy of turning the waterfront into a carnival sideshow.
Seattle’s is a working port, generating more than 100,000 jobs, few of which require the job holders to say, “Do you want fries with that?” And that’s the potential problem with Mayor Bozeman’s grim fairytale vision. The kind of development he’s talking about will make a prettier port, but generate less long-term wealth. Gentrifying the port will generate short-term profits for developers and boost construction. But once that’s gone, you won’t see the kind of industrially flavored jobs that actually provide more family-wage sustenance than do parks, high-end salons, and high-rise condos.
In the curious counter-spin that is post-modern economics, turning the waterfront into a bourgeoisie theme park will drive up land prices, making it harder for industrial activity to stay there, and leaving us with fewer and fewer jobs that pay enough to let someone live in relative comfort. This has already happened at many other ports, such as San Francisco. Fisherman’s Wharf is a great place, but I wouldn’t want to work there.
The bottom line is there’s no particularly good reason why we need to become the San Francisco of the North, or the Paris of the West, or the Venice of the Pacific. Seattle’s success hasn’t been based on its weather or its views or its metropolitan ambience. It’s been based on generations of blue collar and middle class workers grinding out timber, ships, aircraft, and whatever else.
Parks and public spaces are wonderful and truly essential to a livable city. But they can’t always go where we want them to. What makes a city great is its people, and the people are at their greatest when they don’t have to claw and scrape to get by. Show me a city with a strong middle class, and I’ll show you a good place to live.
But that will never be enough for the ignorati, who seem to delight only in harping on the notion that Seattle isn’t what it should be. Theirs is a curious conceit, complaining endlessly about the place where you live even though you can’t imagine living anywhere else. But this is the post-modern malaise of our time. No nation on earth has ever had as much, or complained about it more.
Knute Berger wants Bozeman for mayor, and the pressure on the port will only grow from the many who already got theirs. We might as well erect the billboard now: Will the last stevedore leaving the Port of Seattle please unplug the crane?
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Comments:
Posted Fri, May 1, 3:29 p.m. inappropriate
Although you make good points about jobs, little of what you wrote has anything to do with what Bozeman said.
The Central Waterfront doesn't have industry. You're thinking south of that. As for truck traffic, that's covered by the 99 solution, despite what you hear on talk radio.
He didn't say the people in Pioneer Square or on Aurora sucked. (Well...I'm skipping a joke about Aurora.) He did point out real flaws in both. Pioneer Square could do with more activity and some dispersal of the concentrated services provided there (a positive example of dispersal is the place about to break ground near where I live in Belltown).
Posted Fri, May 1, 3:31 p.m. inappropriate
Gee. I think Mayor Sell has a nice ring to it.
Posted Fri, May 1, 9:29 p.m. inappropriate
Ca Ching
Posted Sat, May 2, 8:13 a.m. inappropriate
I read Mayor Bozeman's comments and I think he's missing the point. His comments about Aurora in particular are redolent of urban renewal, which many African Americans in the '60s and '70s referred to as "N" removal. Not-very-attractive neighborhoods may in fact contain a lot of life and economy. And isn't it truly odd that in the middle of the Great Recession, here's a leader who's apparent first thought is about parks?
Posted Sat, May 2, 3:50 p.m. inappropriate
Has anyone in decades talked about 60s-style urban renewal? No. Discussions these days, even top-down ones and even ones about more intense neighborhood transformation, tend to be about infill within the existing.
As for parks, what's the harm in planning for when the viaduct goes down in 2015 or whatever? Downtown lacks parks and some green space will be very welcome, though I'm sure the arguments will be intense about the form it takes. As for the "great recession," surely a PhD like you knows that we don't know what the economy will be like when the viaduct right of way is rebuilt in six years.
Posted Sun, May 3, 8:36 a.m. inappropriate
You over-value "100,000" subsidized jobs associated with an organization renown for fraud, waste and abuse. The Port couldn't muster self-sufficiency despite it's perch at the high-tide of an international trading order. As the nation struggles badly to maintain the very apparatus that girds the order, apparently it's far more important to spot-light an attention-seeking retread, and dismiss critics as ignorant. Is that the type of discourse you cultivate in the class room?
Posted Sun, May 3, 9:07 a.m. inappropriate
The Pork of Seattle has been a real world class leader all right. I especially like the imaginative way in which the Pork symbolized Pacific Rim trade and Seattle as the Geneva of the Pacific by erecting its Japanese-themed "World Trade Center" on the east side of Alaskan Way. I also get a dysphoric thrill every time the Pork graciously accommodates enormous fat-ass cruise ships at the dinky little pleasure boat marina the Pork built a few years ago. Back in 1990 the Pork crowed the way its new dockside offices and meeting rooms at Pier 66 would turn the waterfront into an extension of downtown. All we got was the Pork's crappy sheet-pile covered view blocking headquarters.
Cary Bozeman is right. Seattle has no grand public outdoor spaces anywhere downtown. Westlake is NOT Central Park. Seattle Center could have been a contender, but what has happened to it is a joke that is only going to get worse as the City of Seattle knocks down the existing buildings and replaces them with even larger towers that it will sell to the highest bidder.
Posted Sun, May 3, 9:47 a.m. inappropriate
Mr. Sell, you should visit the Seattle waterfront sometime. If you did, you'd discover the port is about a mile south of downtown Seattle. Given that fact, you're essay makes absolutely no sense.
P.S. Funny how a public park becomes a "bourgeoisie theme park" in the minds of Seattle's cranky "no to everything" crowd.
Posted Sun, May 3, 12:19 p.m. inappropriate
Mud Baby, you do know the Port's offices are at the renovated pier 69, not pier 66? Pier 66 has the conference center, the cruise terminal, and a museum that didn't make it and is now being marketed as event space.
Regarding cruise ships, what a huge success that's been. Say what you want about tourists and the wage rates at the hotels and restaurants where they spend their money, but they've been a huge economic boost. I also have to admit I find it flattering when people visit Seattle, and I like how they increase the Downtown activity level.
Posted Sun, May 3, 4:50 p.m. inappropriate
It seem pretty obvious that mhays is safe in his Belltown condominium and knows nothing of what the City attempted in SE Seattle a few years ago. While he may dismiss Hizonner's CRA proposal merely "infill within the existing", this proposal would have destroyed the lives of countless indivivuals and families all to make SE a little more attrcative. This says nothing of the big give aways to developers.
Posted Sun, May 3, 5:34 p.m. inappropriate
I know something of the CRA issue, though not a ton. I liked some of its goals but it was too heavy handed with eminent domain, etc. PS, yes I do know a few things about SE Seattle.
Either way, nothing I said was wrong. If you want so slam people, do it with intelligence and integrity.
Posted Sun, May 3, 8:53 p.m. inappropriate
mhays, you are correct. POS' HQ is indeed at Pier 69. Re the cruise ship thing, certainly each cruise ship docking triggers a "kaching," but it can hardly be claimed that POS has its act together in terms of providing a dependable facility for cruise ships, which seem to get tied up willy nilly at Pier 91, the central waterfront (where they totally hog the short-stay marina), and the industrial piers south of Jackson St.
As for the waterfront west of Alaskan Way, except for the Edgewater--a monstrously non-water-dependent use if there every was one, the entire central waterfront is publicly owned by the POS, City of Seattle and WSDOT, with some aquatic lots owned by WADNR. Given that public ownership, the hodgepodge of existing uses is disappointing, with some notable exceptions such as the new Aquarium complex.
The gated condo developments east of Alaskan Way were very much developed in lockstep with the Pork's self-ballyhooed HQ and World Trade Center developments in the late 1990s. The also ballyhooed maritime museum was on the ropes financially for years, and it is at best a marginal attractiont. Here is the way a development flack beat the drum for all of this in the Seattle Times, going so far as to call Seattle the new Sydney (LMAO):
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19960623&slug;=2335881
I stick by my case that Seattle has not grand downtown public spaces. Maybe when the trees mature in the Sculpture Garden it will be a more inviting place; right now it little more than an asphalt/concrete bike trail with a killer view.
Posted Mon, May 4, 8:48 a.m. inappropriate
I keep forgetting that Seattle still has a working waterfront. Every time I read about it, it's because another of its tenants is moving to Tacoma.
Posted Mon, May 4, 9:14 a.m. inappropriate
Mud Baby, the cruise ship move from Pier 18(?) to Pier 91 can be debated as to its merits, but it's certainly planned in great detail and not "willy nilly". Long story short, the Pier 18 site came into demand as a container shipping terminal, which the Port considers a higher use than cruise ships; meanwhile cruise ships are an economic engine, and worthy of the cost of a replacement terminal, so they built one.
Our waterfront is no Sydney, but the central waterfront project took a dumpy, dysfunctional Port HQ complex and some very underused property across the street, and turned it into a positive part of Downtown. Offices, hotel, and condos were about helping pay the bills while adding a good mix of uses, and directly/indirectly supporting the uses on Pier 66. PS, the museum has closed, except much of the content remains in place as part of the rentable conference space.
PS, disclosure, my employer had a consulting role on Pier 66, Pier 69, and the WTC.
Posted Mon, May 4, 12:22 p.m. inappropriate
“The bottom line is there’s no particularly good reason why we need to become the San Francisco of the North, or the Paris of the West, or the Venice of the Pacific. Seattle’s success hasn’t been based on its weather or its views or its metropolitan ambience.”
With much of the US facing climate change induced hurricanes, water shortages, and third-world refugees flooding the borders, the panicked rich will need somewhere to flee…why not the safety bubble of Seattle and the pacific northwest? Quality of life is commodity that will become much more expensive in the coming decades.
Posted Mon, May 4, 2:15 p.m. inappropriate
I went through the museum at pier 69 once a few years ago when you could tour the Kalakala if you bought admission to the museum. There wasn't much there that I remember except a big video screen on the floor and a gift shop. Like so many museums of recent years, it seems to have been designed by someone more adept at department store window displays than in presenting history or science. The State History Museum next to Union Station in Tacoma is another of that ilk. If we had a museum in Washington half as good as the Provincial Museum in Victoria we couldn't keep the crowds away.
Posted Mon, May 4, 7:51 p.m. inappropriate
Funny you should refer to the Royal BC Museum. I was just in Victoria, visiting the museum, last weekend. The Inner Harbour is of course much smaller than Seattle's waterfront, but so much more inviting, traveled, and just pleasant. I can't help thinking a lot of that has to do with the close proximity of hotels to the waterfront, whereas all Seattle has is the Edgewater.
And yes, having the Royal BC Museum a block or so away helps. I wonder if there's ever going to be a way for the Burke to move off campus and expand.
Posted Mon, May 4, 8:30 p.m. inappropriate
Victoria's waterfront has narrow streets, well-kept greenery, a nice geographic setting, and probably our region's best collection of architecture viewable from one spot in the Empress, Parliament, etc. It's nirvana, or the small city version.
Posted Mon, May 4, 8:32 p.m. inappropriate
Since that'll be attacked soon, let me point out that I believe a city also needs better-paying blue collar industry, which is a Victoria weakness.
Posted Tue, May 5, 12:39 a.m. inappropriate
How can you compare the Victoria waterfront with the Seattle waterfront? When was Victoria EVER an industrial port? How much international trade goes through Victoria? Yes its pretty, and its a nice place to waste a few days, but comparing the two as a port?---- I have to stop, this is hurting my brain.