21 Oct Elliott Bay Book Co — moving??

From the Seattle Times this weekend:

“Elliott Bay Book Co. is considering moving from its iconic 36-year home in the city’s historic Pioneer Square, the store manager confirmed Saturday.

Tracy Taylor said a move “is a possibility. We’re looking into it.” She declined to elaborate and referred other questions to the bookstore owner, Peter Aaron.”

To read more of this article, click here. For a second article talking about how bad it would be for other Pioneer Square retailers, click here.

I think that if they made the decision to leave Pioneer Square, it would be disastrous for so many reasons. First of all, no one would get confused about a store in Pioneer Square Seattle being called Elliott Bay anymore. I think that has some serious consequences.

In all seriousness, though — this is exactly what would lead to more problems in Pioneer Square — if stores that bring traffic to P² aren’t there anymore, it’s just going to open up the square to having more bars = rowdy people = other people not wanting to come to P².

The second article that I linked to talks about people not feeling safe down in Pioneer Square, as well as a general lack of parking, and too many panhandlers. The reporter posed the question, even if the city helps to make that area better, will it encourage people to go down there to shop?

I think it will help to increase the residential population. Compare Pioneer Square to Belltown: Belltown has 11,000 residents, while Pioneer Square only has about 2,000. We need more residents, more retailers, more foot traffic. We need less panhandlers, less drug dealers, less problems.

Now how does that happen?