Pioneer Square's Smith Tower made waves as Seattle’s original skyscraper in 1914. Back then, it was one of America's tallest buildings. These days, there's a different buzz around Smith Tower.
The historic building is home to a thriving colony of bees, known as an apiary, on its rooftop.
The Observatory Bar (with some of Seattle's best panoramic views) has an enticing fall menu that showcases the sweet liquid gold honey in its dishes and cocktails. Guests can also book private events and cocktail classes that offer a great view of the rooftop apiary.
Shane James, Director of Food & Beverage for Columbia Hospitality, explains that the Smith Tower apiary began as a collaboration between the building’s property management company and the Observatory & Bar team.
"As a LEED-certified building, sustainability is a key consideration in our daily operations, and the introduction of the new apiary is a wonderful way to connect the community and Smith Tower’s tenants to that mission in a tangible way," James said.
The project is a delicious teaching tool for guests. James said, "Honey-inspired additions to the fall menu will help bring awareness to the essential role bees play in our ecosystem."
Consisting of three colonies, the apiary can be found on the rooftop of Smith Tower’s 22nd level. There’s a viewing area in the lookout lounge so building tenants and special event guests can get up-close peeks of these essential pollinators as they come and go.
Benjamin Berrick, urban beekeeper with Alveole Seattle, has worked with bees for years. He started as an outdoor and garden educator with a couple of hives and now bees, like the ones he tends at Smith Tower, are his bread and butter.
"Bees are this super engaging combination of mystery and known entity," Berrick said. "Working with them means getting to work with so many passionate, talented people with the full gamut of life experiences."
Berrick explains that the bulk of the daily care is done by the bees themselves, "We use a three-week checkup system because it allows us to keep track of changes in the hive from generation to generation. Worker bees are the lifeblood of the beehive and take about 21 days to fully develop from egg to adult bee. When we do come, what we do with the bees depends on the season."
As long as it's warm enough, the caretakers open the hive and peer through to look for signs of a healthy queen, well-ordered egg laying (they want tight clusters and no empty beeswax cells inside the cluster) and the total amount of resources. Then, they make any necessary changes, additions or subtractions to get the beehive on track for the season.
"In spring, for example, we look for any signs of disease and remove frames that we see any warning signs on," Berrick said. "Then we look for the queen to make sure she is healthy and strong, as well as removing any swarm cells, which are special queen-making chambers that the bees make when the hive is doing very well and wants to make another hive. Swarms aren't a bad thing, but they can be hard to catch and we like to minimize how many we have in urban areas." (That strategy keeps neighbors feeling more comfortable living close to bees.)
In wintertime, a checkup could be as simple as lifting up the hive to see if it feels heavy enough to indicate the amount of honey necessary for making it through the coldest times, "Seasonality plays the biggest role in what we do."
Through it all, the Smith Tower team hopes to educate both tenants and visitors to its historic site and future plans.
The London Plane, a space featuring a cafe/wine bar, flower shop and market, is closing its doors in December. The announcement was posted on the business' Instagram Friday.
"Over the last decade, we have been so fortunate for the support of our staff, our community & our network of farmers, ranchers, fishers, & artisans," the post stated. "At the end of this run, we are looking back fondly on the time we've spent & the work we've done."
This announcement comes at the same time as the shop's 10th anniversary and as the holiday season approaches. The London Plane will be open through Saturday, Dec. 24.
"While there are many reasons for this decision, we feel it is the best time to make it as our lease comes to an end. We are sad to say goodbye to our staff, who have become our chosen family & to close the doors to our guests, who we have come to know as friends. We are looking forward to seeing you at the shop before we turn out the lights, so please come down for a visit if you're able."
Abby Luschei is the assistant editor of Seattle Refined and can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
But community leaders in the Chinatown-International District fear the neighborhood as they know it may not survive the next megaproject upheaval.
Sound Transit is currently planning the third phase of regional Link light rail expansion, a $54 billion, decades-long project. The expansion includes construction of a new line from West Seattle to Ballard that will require a second train tunnel underneath the city, including part of the Chinatown-International District.
The agency is considering two locations for where to route the tunnel under the district: Fifth Avenue or Fourth Avenue. If built under Fifth Avenue, the nearly decade-long tunnel construction will take place in the heart of the neighborhood — something community members say will devastate the Chinatown-International District’s Asian businesses and residents. The Fourth Avenue alignment is not without impacts, but construction would largely take place on the edge of the district, on the west side of Union Station.
“This is our third and final Chinatown,” said Betty Lau, one of the lead organizers with Transit Equity for All. “The original Chinatown was forced from the waterfront onto Second and Washington. Then Chinatown was forced to move to the current location. If we're forced out again, where are we going to go?”
Transit Equity for All is a large coalition of neighborhood businesses, community institutions, residents and other supporters lobbying Sound Transit to build under Fourth Avenue. It includes representatives from United Chinese Americans, Chinese American Civic Organization, NW Association of Chinese Language Schools, Friends of Chinatown, King Apartments, Panama Hotel & Teahouse, Washington Trust for Historic Preservation and many others.
The coalition is led by Lau and Brien Chow, two longtime community leaders and board members for the historic Chong Wa Benevolent Association, a Chinese community and cultural center on Seventh Avenue and Weller Street. Lau is a retired public school teacher and has spent decades doing neighborhood advocacy. Chow’s mother was restaurateur-turned-politician Ruby Chow, the first Asian American elected to the King County Council. His sister was former Seattle City Councilmember Cheryl Chow.
The choice between Fifth and Fourth
Sound Transit’s proposed tunnel options and their impacts are spelled out in a document called the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. In the Chinatown-International District there are proposals for either a deep or shallow tunnel under both Fifth and Fourth avenues. Construction is expected to last upwards of eight to 10 years.
Chinatown-International District's core business area sits between Jackson and Weller streets to the north and south, and Fifth and Eighth avenues to the west and east. Those eight square blocks contain Oasis Tea Zone, Shanghai Garden, Kau Kau, the Uwajimaya grocery store and many more of the neighborhood’s anchor restaurants and shops as well as residential buildings.
Hing Hay Park has been a positive example of public investment in Seattle's Chinatown, but history is also rife with examples of disruptive projects, such as I-5 splitting the neighborhood, and disinvestment. (Photo by Doug Trumm)
According to news reports, it is difficult to walk into Chinatown without seeing urban blight and homelessness. The city’s pre-eminent ethnic neighborhood is difficult to navigate without stumbling over drug debris and tents. Videos of people sleeping unsheltered and photos of litter in the curbs are interspersed with concern editorials about the impact of turmoil on elders and tourism. Officials are elected to be tough on crime.
Unfortunately, it’s not clear which Cascadian city we’re talking about. That “Chinatown Ruined” commentary has been made in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC. All three have large traditional Chinatowns that have been the focus of increased crime and the speculation that goes along with it. Too-liberal policies and decriminalization of misbehavior have drawn the ire of opinion writers looking for targets to blame. Trite assumptions morph into racist stereotypes and hate crimes.
In some ways, the Chinatowns have outgrown the cities. With 465,000 King County residents claiming heritage from many different parts of Asia, neither the space or the blanket term “Chinatown” can cover them all. Neighborhoods and very good restaurants headed north along SR99 or out towards Redmond are testament to new generations decamping to the suburbs. The same can be said for Richmond outside of Vancouver and the Jade District in Southeast Portland. Frankly, the more we say about the dim sum in Richmond, the less we can eat. That’s just tragic.
You didn’t think you’d get out of this article without a dim sum picture, did you? Dim sum at Kirin Seafood Restaurant, Richmond, BC. (Ray Dubicki)
But the close-in, traditional Chinatowns are the consistent focus of media coverage about crime, homelessness, and drug use. Given the very general nature of the complaints and the very different specifics of crime rates and drug policy in each city, perhaps it is time to consider how the traditional Chinatowns are experiencing similar trends for other reasons. Not based on ethnicity, but on the very similar structural issues that formed them and kept them as enclaves.
These are the continent’s oldest Chinatowns located in very young Pacific Northwest cities. They are facing problems because they do not succumb to the same fast, disposable expansion the metro areas have become accustomed. If the cities stop throwing the same nonsensical ideas around, Cascadia’s Chinatowns offer the cities lessons in neighborhood preservation and the failure of trying to bulldoze one’s way into the future.
Enclave Encircled
Structurally, Cascadian Chinatowns are remarkably similar. Due to their age, they are appendages of the oldest part of each city. At the same time, each is curtailed by highway and transit infrastructure.
Chinatown in Portland is unfortunately the least cohesive of the three and the only one between the downtown and the city’s waterway, sandwiched north of downtown and east of the Pearl District against the rail and surface highways that run along the Willamette River. Combined with the historic Old Town neighborhood, there are 3,600 residents. The city’s One Point of Contact campsite report showed almost 50 campsites in the neighborhood, where the city has engaged in sweeps.
Headlines from Global News (Vancouver), KOMO (Seattle) and KGW8 (Portland) repeat the refrain that each city’s crime and homelessness has reached new heights in each city’s traditional Chinatown area.
In Seattle, the Chinatown-International District is up the hill from Elliott Bay and the historic Pioneer Square, separated by rail and the wide 4th Avenue corridor. It is the consolidation of Chinatown, Japantown, and Little Saigon, which are roughly separated by I-5 and Jackson Streets. The community of 4,600 is 43% Asian, 20% Black, and 27% White. The city’s absolutely garbage homelessness dashboard consolidates all the Downtown Neighborhoods together, showing 168 campsites were closed across downtown through September 2022. Clusters are apparent in the CID.
In Vancouver, rail runs along the south side of Burrard Inlet, with the historic Gastown adjacent, then Chinatown to the south. The neighborhood extends around Andy Livingstone Park to the Georgia and Dunsmir Viaducts marking the southern neighborhood boundary. There are between 1,500 and 24,000 residents of Chinatown, depending who is counting. Five of the city’s 18 shelters are located within two blocks of the neighborhood.
Seattle’s Chinatown International District (outlined in red) with location of rail and fixed transit. (Google Earth edited by Ray Dubicki)Vancouver’s Chinatown (outlined in red) with location of rail and fixed transit. (Google Earth edited by Ray Dubicki)Portland’s Old Town Chinatown (outlined in red) with location of rail and fixed transit. (Google Earth edited by Ray Dubicki)The location of Cascadia’s Chinatowns, highlighted to show their location near water, rail, transit and downtowns.
Highways present significant barriers to each of the enclaves. Portland’s Chinatown receives ramps and traffic from the Steel Bridge, Burnside Bridge, and Broadway Bridge, as well as being bounded by the broad Naito Parkway and Burnside Street. Vancouver’s Chinatown is bordered to the south by the Dunsmir Viaduct and Georgia Viaduct, just as they lift off from surface highways to wrap around Rodgers Arena and into downtown. Seattle, of course, went above and beyond by driving Interstate 5 through the heart of the district.
With cars comes parking. An entire block of 4th Avenue between Couch Street and Davis Street in Portland is a surface parking lot. If you can’t get into the surface parking in Seattle’s King Street lot, Uwajimaya around the corner validates for its 100 spaces. Vancouver’s city-owned Chinatown Plaza hosts some ground floor retail under four stories and 930 parking spaces.
The oddity is that, for each of these neighborhoods, transit is not lacking. Due to their proximity to downtown, each city’s Chinatown is a hub of buses and fixed transit. The stops are just designed to move a lot of people through. Portland’s Max light rail has four stops in the district, three as the Yellow and Green lines serve the train station; one on the Blue and Red lines before those tracks head out of town. Vancouver’s Chinatown is served by a Rapidbus stop just before the downtown loop, and one Sky Train stop that it shares with the Stadiums. Seattle’s CID Link stop is a current point of contention as plans to expand it for new lines will either tear up 4th Avenue for a decade or bury a station in the center of the Earth. Alternatives on 5th Avenue have been pulled out for being too disruptive to Chinatown businesses.
All three enclaves are designated Historic Districts and zoned for mixed downtown commercial uses. In Vancouver, that includes specific bylaws designating historic zoning that allow for ground floor retail and mixed residential uses in 5- and 6-story buildings. For Portland, the district is on the National Register of Historic Places and covers an area that is zoned Central Commercial like much of the downtown to the south. Seattle’s CID is also on the National Register and zoned IDM, a downtown mixed use designation, but is capped between 75 and 85 foot heights in the neighborhood.
But it’s those zoning maps that really drive home a point. These neighborhoods are the fringe of downtown just before a massive industrial district. Portland’s industry is on the other side of the Willamette. Seattle’s is on the other side of the stadiums. Vancouver has the Strathconia community between. But the Chinatowns are pinched between some of the priciest of downtown real estate and commercial towers, and the edge of highways, rail, and warehouses.
There is a good case to be made that, if the Chinatowns in Cascadia were not protected and cohesive ethnic enclaves, they would be swallowed up by one or the other of these two sides. There’s another argument that suggests it’s already happening with gentrification. The roles of workers in these neighborhoods defined a good amount of their built form. The Chinatowns have a history of worker housing and single room occupancy (SRO) buildings due to itinerate workers and single males immigrating ahead of larger families. Such buildings are targets for conversion to luxury apartments.
Zoning of Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. (City of Seattle GIS notation by Ray Dubicki)Zoning of Vancouver’s Chinatown. (City of Vancouver GIS with notation by Ray Dubicki)Zoning of Portland’s Old Town Chinatown. (Portland City GIS with notation by Ray Dubicki)The zoning maps show how Cascadia’s Chinatowns are at the boundary between each city’s downtown and industrial lands.
Enclave Ethnic
And that’s where it stops being possible to separate the Chinatown enclaves from the fact they formed around an ethnicity. Even that is trite, as most of these places were an amalgam of cultures from Southeast Asia and China, but consolidated through other-ness, and left to fight other non-White groups for space at the edge of town. The SROs formed because Chinese immigrant men had no where else to stay as they were building the continent’s infrastructure.
In all three cities, Chinese enclaves date concurrently to the municipality itself. Many immigrants from China found themselves in Cascadia during gold rushes of the 1850’s and stayed through the end of the century railroad boom. Portland claims the nation’s second oldest Chinatown (after San Francisco), founded in the early 1850’s when the city itself was founded in 1851. In 1880, Vancouver boasted 99% of Canada’s total Chinese population of 4,400 people. The city itself was incorporated in 1886. Seattle’s first Chinatown was near the waterfront Yesler Mill, from which Chinese immigrants were driven out of the town of Seattle in 1886, three years before incorporation as a city.
From there, the history of anti-Asian sentiments and fortification of an enclave run very parallel between the cities. Seattle’s Chinese residents faced racism progressively expelling them from the city’s expanding boundaries. Canada passed a $50 per person head tax to prohibit immigration in 1885, increasing it to $500 by the turn of the century. Portland received many Chinese workers who were driven out of other towns in Oregon, but blamed them for everything from job loss to prostitution. Each city saw riots as white laborers threatened and assaulted Chinese immigrants under the guise of reclaiming work.
Both countries incarcerated and forcibly relocated West Coast Japanese-descended families during World War II. Both countries identified poorer neighborhoods for demolition and highway construction in the 1960’s, in an effort to move cars in and out of downtown.
These communities have existed for the entire lifespan of the cities they are a part apart. The cities’ histories are irrevocably linked to their treatment of the Chinese and Asian immigrants. Unlike East Coast cities that had three or five generations of immigrant assimilation and governance before the 1850’s, Chinatowns have always been in Cascadian cities. It is a unique relationship to any on the continent. Even San Francisco existed as a city for a century before the first groups of Chinese immigrants settled in town.
Enclave Immovable
In cities that have spent their entire century-and-a-half existence as fast growing, boundary shoving growth machines, the line between Cascadia’s downtowns and Chinatowns has been slow to move. The cities are used to pushing unwanted uses to the fringe. That’s what put these enclaves where they are in the first place.
The boundary around the ever-present Chinatowns is itself difficult for the cities to understand. Pushing development up to the edge of Chinatown imposes a lot on the enclave, while pulling back fails to maximize development downtown. In the end, the cities’ reticence allows the line to become its own fringe and fills with uses unwanted by elites, like homeless shelters and transit hubs. Which brings us back to the threats on the Chinatowns.
More detailsSeattle’s new Chinatown gate (formally “Historic Chinatown Gate”), International District, Seattle, Washington. Looking east on S. King Street. Photo taken about two weeks before its formal 8 February 2008 unveiling. (Joe Mabel, Wikimedia Commons)The entrance to Chinatown in downtown Portland, Oregon. The second oldest Chinatown in the United States. (Cacophony, Wikimedia Commons)Millennium Gate on Pender Street in Vancouver’s Chinatown. (MRDXII, Wikimedia Commons)For the record, the iconic Chinatown gates in each neighborhood are somewhat new additions to the landscape. Portland’s opened in 1986, Vancouver’s in 2002, and Seattle’s in 2007. (San Francisco’s famous Dragon Gate only opened in 1970.)
In reality, the Chinatowns’ consistency is a contrast to the boom and bust of the central business districts. When the corporate towers are flying high, the enclaves look like bargains for gentrification. When downtown’s business is slow, Chinatown looks healthy and vibrant and ready for assimilation. When offices are empty due to Covid, the residential neighborhood attracts attention from people who have nowhere else to go.
These neighborhoods are great places because they are historic, and residential, and actively changing. Take any of those out of the equation, and you end up with shiny vapid tower, desolate office park, or boring suburb. Increase the rate of actively changing, and that would allow for the wholesale demolition and construction that occurs in much of the city.
Chinatowns in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver have a lot to teach us. Not because of some ridiculous (and kinda racist) trope about ancient Eastern wisdom. The lesson is how hard Cascadia’s cities are struggling to not bulldoze a problem out of existence. Our very young cities have not yet figured out how to rely on ourselves to address current urban problems. We have taken rules like historic districts from much older East Coast cities and dropped them onto places expecting some city magic to happen. It hasn’t. It won’t. City magic is the hard work of countless people, building and caring for places we grow to love. Like the region’s Chinatowns, in spite of it all.
Ray Dubicki is a stay-at-home dad and parent-on-call for taking care of general school and neighborhood tasks around Ballard. This lets him see how urbanism works (or doesn’t) during the hours most people are locked in their office. He is an attorney and urbanist by training, with soup-to-nuts planning experience from code enforcement to university development to writing zoning ordinances. He enjoys using PowerPoint, but only because it’s no longer a weekly obligation.
In the spring of 1980, journalist Doug Honig interviewed Seattle architect and preservationist Victor Steinbrueck for the Seattle Sun newspaper. Honig's interview appeared in the May 14, 1980 issue and is reprinted here with permission from Sun editor Carol Ostrom.
"A Conscience of the Movement"
In prefacing his interview with Victor Steinbrueck (1911-1985), Honig wrote: "Steinbrueck's vision of saving Seattle's past comes from no textbook. Born in 1911, Steinbrueck grew up in Auburn and Georgetown and graduated from Franklin High and the University of Washington. He helped design Yesler Terrace, Seattle's first public housing project, before joining the UW faculty in 1946. He won a city-sponsored design contest with his plan for redeveloping Pioneer Square in 1954 and was a leading proponent of establishing an historic preservation commission for the area. A founder of Friends of the Market in the mid-'60s, Steinbrueck was an initiator of the successful 1971 initiative that scuttled city plans for massive redevelopment of the Market, and has been an unrelenting foe of plans for redeveloping Westlake Mall in its present form. He is currently collaborating on the design of Market Park for the Pike Place Urban Renewal Project. In recognition of National Historic Preservation Week, the Sun checked in with Steinbrueck, not only Seattle's best-known preservationist, but a conscience of the movement" ("Planning For Lovers ...").
Seattle Sun: How did your passion for historic preservation develop? Steinbrueck: Not in any blinding flash. Architectural history, as I have studied it, came from the East Coast and stopped in Chicago. It was taken for granted that the older stuff out here wasn't important, that it was all blah. I began to suspect it wasn't true. I found I could learn a lot from old buildings to help in my own work -- even obvious stuff such as covering entrances for protection from the rain. So I started having my architecture students do theory projects by examining local neighborhoods, in contrast with the typical projects at imaginary sites. Consequently, I became much more interested in common buildings.
Seattle Sun: Why did you become an activist architect? Steinbrueck: I was raised with a fair amount of social consciousness. My father was an active union member, a machinist with the railroads and then the shipyards. My middle name is Eugene -- after Eugene Debs. I grew up in a working-class neighborhood with kids from low-income families as playmates. I always had this feeling that workers were being exploited. I felt that by designing better places to live, I could help people have better lives. I had been involved in political campaigns and other activities during the Depression, but always separate from my architecture. Then in the late '50s I became concerned about the outrageous locations where highways were being built -- through parks and neighborhoods. I felt I had a responsibility to be involved in areas such as this where I had experience, like a doctor would have responsibility for acting during a plague.
We saw the downtown business interests girding up for the Market deal as early as 1959. In fighting against the freeways, the bridges, the loss of buildings, we had been too late. The plans were prepared in secret, so you wouldn't know what was to be demolished until you saw the wreckers. We felt that if we got involved early, this time we could build an understanding of the urban values that needed preserving.
In politics I've learned to first study an issue carefully and be sure I'm right, then never give up. These urban struggles are an educational process for the public. Often I've felt that we might lose an issue, but that fighting it might help win, or even avoid, the next issue. Right now, the large-scale projects being done will change the face of downtown. They are produced and approved without public visibility. The developers suddenly present a full-blown model, and there is no chance for modification except through warfare. The environmental impact process helps, but it's done by an advocate of the project and with each project considered separately. Alternatives and overall relationships are not really considered. To me, it's chaos!
Seattle Sun: So, what is your alternative? Steinbrueck: Comprehensive planning -- a planning process conducted by professionals that democratically involves all parties concerned. The city needs to set priorities for what sorts of activities should happen where. We need an overall process that coordinates transportation, housing, energy, retail uses, and office development, and that presents the public with choices. I don't mean a rigid plan, but rather a flexible concept of the kind of city we want to have. If, for example, First Avenue is recognized as a necessary part of the city, then we don't allow things that modify it drastically.
Look at transportation. With the number of cars people could be expected to drive to all these new offices, I would guess they won't be able to get off the freeway – the traffic will be too jammed. The lack of planning may force us into one thing that we need, which is mass transit. During the ferry strike I noticed thousands of walk-ons – people getting by without automobiles. But I don't think you should wait for disaster to force you to do the right thing.
Seattle Sun: What kind of architecture would you favor for downtown? Steinbrueck: I'd suggest for our philosophy something Lewis Mumford said: "Plan for lovers and friends." We should design places that are attractive, comfortable, and pleasant for people living and working there. The barefaced concrete, glass, and hard material skins and ordinary shapes of the new buildings downtown don't do much for us. They seem designed for maintenance purposes mainly and with little regard for the people working there or the passer-by.
Seattle Sun:How do you now assess your preservation work? Steinbrueck: I appreciate that a lot of historic buildings have been saved and that Pioneer Square has acquired a cultural flavor. But I wanted to retain not just buildings, but a place for the people already there and using it. I especially wanted to keep residential accommodations downtown for the native "urban nomads," the Skid Roaders. But single people were always forced out of the area in order to exploit the properties. The single-room-occupancy hotels they lived in simply couldn't bring the same financial return as offices and boutiques.
The Market is still the most colorful people place in the city, but it has been upgraded to where most marginal businesses have lost out, as well as being overrun with crafts merchants. The Mint Dollar Tavern, for example, became the Mint Restaurant with a fancy menu; junk stores were replaced by antique shops. The urban renewal project paid a lot of people to go out of business. The weaker businesses took their relocation payments and just folded up. We need to keep the real character of the Market – as a place related to the lives of local people. A different quality comes from catering to the superficiality of tourism. If it goes too far, the Market will become a completely phony place. It's like fixing up your home for visitors, instead of for your family.
The people who opposed us – downtown developers, banks, property owners, city officials and bureaucrats – later became in charge of urban renewal. Some have been good, conscientious people, but it reminds me of a South American revolution where the same police stay on to administer it.
Seattle Sun: How do you see decision being made downtown? Steinbrueck: Mostly by large developers such as Weyerhaeuser who have been making money as their sole goal and maybe to do some good for the city. Aided and abetted by City Hall, partly because any development sounds good. Building new buildings means business and financial return for investors and the construction industry, and increased city taxes. But I'm really very concerned about they city's lack of long-range considerations.
I'm not a lover of high-rises – I think they're inhuman. I'd like to see a building limit of six stories, or about 60 feet. It's possible to walk up six floors, and it's a reasonable height you can comprehend; anything above that becomes towering. A city should be a friendly place to walk around, to explore, to observe, and to mingle with people from all walks of life. You should be able to see necessary human activities, people actually producing things – like in the Market, where you see real farmers, people cutting meat, maybe baking. The experience of the city as a community is what I'm most concerned about, and I want the architecture and open spaces to accommodate these things. Of course, there would have to be free public transportation: it's the most economic, efficient way to get around. I'd like to see the city as available to everyone as a village used to be.
Seattle Sun: Why fight to save marginal areas? Steinbrueck: Because they serve a strata of society that needs to be accommodated. The kind of things that happen on First Avenue, for example, are not available or don't take place anywhere else in the city. Frederick & Nelson and Nordstrom serve a segment of society in their lifestyle. So does First Avenue. It's still the hangout, the living room for urban nomads, Indians, and people working in hard-labor jobs. When the new waterfront projects wipe out First Avenue as their social area, no one knows where they'll go. It's our economic and social system that produces the people on Skid Road. And if I were down and out, I'd have to go there, too. Society has a responsibility for Skid Road – we can't just sweep those people under the rug.
Seattle Sun: You've talked mostly of downtown. What have you seen happening in the city overall? Steinbrueck: The weakening of neighborhoods – the loss of a sense of community. As boys, my brother and I explored the city a lot by bicycle and streetcar. I remember Seattle as being much more neighborhood oriented. Our area of Georgetown, which is now industrial, had an active retail center, with grocery stores and small department stores, and nearby South Park was almost like another town, centered around a school, playfield, and its own shopping center. I don't recall much community organization, but there was more sociability. People were on foot more, so they were more likely to say hello when they passed. Neighborhoods had a small-town quality; my family was acquainted with a lot of people and I knew what was going here and there. Now community councils are drawing some people together, but mainly in defense against various outrages.
The loss of schools especially hurts. In my own neighborhood (Eastlake), I'd like to see Seward School, which has been slated for closure, used for general community activities. It could be kept open with extra rooms rented out to a lawyer and an architect, a printing press, maybe three or four artists, and a real-estate firm. It would be educational not only for the children, but also for adults to see different kinds of people than themselves.
Seattle Sun: What does the future hold for Seattle? Steinbrueck: Development pressures won't be as localized. I'm afraid the residential area of the Cascade community will be wiped out, though some expensive apartments may move in. I believe neighborhoods such as First Hill, the Central Area, Fremont, and Wallingford will become much higher density and higher cost because of their convenient location and relatively cheap existing single-family houses.
Seattle is being recognized as one of America's most livable cities, but I have a feeling it used to be a more comfortable place for a person to be with more opportunities for life. In the guise of development and economic expansion, we're fast wiping out the human qualities that have made the city livable. A reporter once asked me during the Market fight, "Do you dream often?" I think you have to. I think things are getting so bad that when all the planned projects become a reality, there will be a reaction. People – and even politicians and developers – will see the need for comprehensive planning. Then we'll have some positive political movement with broader people participation.
Thanks to a partnership between the City of Seattle and Friends of Waterfront Seattle, Seattle’s newest waterfront pier has finally opened.
Pier 62, located on Seattle’s future Waterfront Park, is a “revitalized historic pier offering flexible, active community space.”
It’s being promoted as a cultural hub of the waterfront, which bridges Pike Place Market and the Seattle Aquarium with space for activities and sweeping views.
