SEATTLE — The Seattle City Council quietly killed a proposal to build up to 900 housing units in a part of town that has been impacted significantly by chronic houselessness.
It leaves some key stakeholders, including the stadium authorities representing the Mariners and Seahawks, and union leaders scratching their heads, and has united former foes in the discussion about the future of industrial lands.
Multiple stakeholders had been pushing the city to build a so-dubbed ‘Makers District’ along 1st Avenue South and Occidental, between Edgar Martinez Drive and Massachusetts. It hinged on a rezoning of the land, as part of a city-wide industrial lands rezone, which has been years in the making.
But a late push by the Port of Seattle and International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 19 appears to have squashed the idea for now.
“It’s just a challenging environment. It’s hard to properly manage because of the deferred maintenance, and it is even harder because of all the crime,” said Bill Vipond, who manages multiple properties south of Edgar Martinez for the SODO Arena investment group. “I think it’s going to stay like this and urban blight until we do something like some type of development.”
Vipond signed a letter in March, along with multiple stakeholders, to create the so-dubbed “Makers District” in the Stadium Overlay area of SODO. At the time, it appeared like the city’s preferred alternative, and an environmental review was set to green-light the idea to create artist and craft spaces and open up the possibility of building up to 900 units of housing. The letter was signed by the Washington State Public Stadium Authority and Washington State Ballpark Public Facilities District, as well as community leaders in the Chinatown International District (CID) and Pioneer Square. The Mariners, who were once at odds with the SODO Arena investment group, quietly signaled their approval.
The letter read in part:
The preferred alternative called for allowing a limited amount of housing, half of which will be affordable, to be added near Lumen Field and T-Mobile Park. This approach represents a real opportunity to address our housing crisis and to create a safe and vibrant maker’s district in North SODO. It emerged from years of study, collaboration, and compromise, which should not be ignored. We know you are committed to preserving our industrial economy and keeping well-paying blue-collar jobs in Seattle. We share your commitment to preserving our industrial economy, but also understand that the transitional area immediately adjacent to the stadiums has changed so much that it simply no longer makes sense to consider it exclusively industrial.
Then the unions got involved.
The Seattle King County Building Trades, Unite Here Local 8, and the Electrical Workers Local 46 all submitted letters of support or testified in support of the proposal, citing the need for workforce housing.
But the ILWU held firm and enlisted the Port’s help.
Last week, ILWU Local 19 Vice President Matt Ventoza testified, “Freight corridors are crucial to a working waterfront, changing the zoning and industrial lands to build housing or hotels that would impact the functionality of the working waterfront is detrimental to the working waterfront. We already have housing vacancies in Seattle, and adding more does nothing to keep the living wage jobs related to our industry, and we’re against building housing, and we’re not against building housing, but just not in this area.”
That was enough to prompt a ‘grand bargain’ of sorts and keep the issue from getting out of committee.
“This has been a seven-year process, looking at our industrial zones and making changes,” said Seattle Councilmember Dan Strauss, who leads the Land Use Committee.
When asked about the elimination of the zoning change, he said, “If we had proceeded with that, we would have lost the support of important stakeholders, and that would have tanked the entire bill” He continued, “We can’t let that one decision hold up all of the benefits to our city.”
Strauss instead, said he had achieved concessions from maritime interests and that the package will lead to the creation of 3,000 units of housing spread out across the city. He also said that the Port and ILWU would be happy because of the zoning change that eliminates future Costco, big box retailers, or storage facilities in light industrial areas.
The ILWU has long claimed that development, whether it be an arena or a housing development, would restrict freight movement in the corridor. None of that has been proven, and there have been multiple studies that have shown otherwise. The port asked for proposals to turn Terminal 46 into a cruise ship terminal before the pandemic derailed those plans, and now the U.S. Coast Guard is looking at expanding to the site.
But that uncertainty over the future of T-46 is a factor in the rezoning decision, said Strauss.
“What we know about the stadium district overlay is it is the pinch point between I-90 connecting the heartland of America and Boston, all the way to our port, and it’s the last mile there,” he said, “We need to have decisions made about those places before we make final decisions on the stadium district overlay.”
In the meantime, he said the rezone will allow for hotel construction, and the Mariners have plans to build one across the street from T-Mobile Park. When asked if that would create the same kind of foot traffic as housing, Strauss answered, “I put it in another way. When we put hotels in industrial zones, and somebody has a noise complaint, they call the front desk. If somebody lives there in their home, if they have a noise complaint, they call the police. This creates a different type of tension between the industries.”
Vipond dismisses the idea, saying, “I doubt we do it anyway because they’d be cannibalizing each other. You’ve already got (the Silver Cloud) expanding. You’ve got Embassy Suites, the Courtyard, and Mariners are talking about a hotel. I don’t think that’s the highest and best use of the land here.”
Instead, he says, he’ll try to fill the neighborhood with temporary tenants like the Stranger Things or the Van Gogh Experiences.
But he said those venues are temporary. The other issues remain after years of decay after the pandemic that took a toll on the neighborhood.
“Just kind of putting lipstick on a pig with that stuff because after hours, It’s dangerous again,” he said.
Strauss encouraged his committee to forward the legislation to the full council without further amendment and pending an environmental review of the rest of the housing rezones. The full council will vote on the package on July 18.
