13 Nov Pioneer Square police to begin wearing kilts in support of local business

… was just one of the suggestions brought up at our Public Safety Meeting last night.

The meeting was fantastic — it was set up charette style with the goal for each table to come up with as many ideas as they could to save Pioneer Square’s future.  Today, 2 representatives from PSCA are meeting with the (soon-to-be former) Mayor’s committee to talk about revitalization efforts in P2.

Some of the best ideas that we talked about were:

1. Moving the Lazarus Day Center to a new location

2. Increasing the residential population — but how do we do this? It’s tied in with #3:

3. Change the reputation of P2. It’s really not as bad as people think it is — but how do you change over 100 yrs of history in a few short years?

4. Open a Farmer’s Market on Saturdays and Mondays (to attract both locals and people who work in P2)

5. Get a grocery store!!! I would love this.

These are things that residents can try to do. Things that we can’t do that will make a WAY bigger impact are:

1. Change the laws so that police are more empowered (this whole 9x arresting thing before real prosecution is ridiculous).

2. Change the laws / systems so that services for the homeless are NOT FREE. I cannot emphasize this enough. How much better would our neighborhood be if homeless people were required to do service for the neighborhood before they received services from it. When I was going to work the other day, I saw this sign:

And it made me so angry — this leads to another problem solving idea:

2a. Make homeless shelters / services accountable for what they give out for free. This includes the blankets that are given out (Philip, our Occidental Square Concierge says that he cleans up so many of these every day), meals given out, places to stay, etc. I don’t count the Bread of Life in this because their guys are required to pay per night for their service and are respectable and care about the neighborhood. But Lazarus, Union Gospel Mission, etc. all should keep track of who uses their services and require something in return. Go sweep leaves, spray down the sidewalk, pick up cigarette butts or trash, etc. something. anything. I’ll say it again: help the neighborhood that’s helping you.

3. Have the city fund and provide neighborhood toilets. Not those stupid self-flushing ones, but actual toilets. I was waiting for a bus to the airport at 5 am last week. A women walked past me to a doorway, squatted, and went #2. I think my jaw literally dropped as I whispered to the Husband what I thought she was doing. Grindle, local awesome guy, has similar stories of seeing people do it in between parked cars in Occidental parking lot, and Philip even saw it in the middle of Main street once! This is a problem. If there is no place for them to go to the bathroom, they will go wherever they see fit.

4. Make businesses accountable for drug problems directly outside of their store. Before anyone argues, as Philip said “they make us take care of tables outside of storefronts”, so why not the people, I ask? If there are people loitering, asking for money, doing drugs, etc., I think the businesses should be fined for not monitoring that behavior and keeping people away from their storefronts. I know that businesses are struggling, but can’t they see that it keeps “regular” customers away from their store?

5. Give incentives for retailers to come open shop in P2. Give them discounts, tax breaks, something!

Our little neighborhood needs help and we’ll change our reputation if we can get more destination retailers (I’m almost ready to boycott Elliott Bay Bookstore at this point for not accepting any help and trying to leave a neighborhood that needs them), and more residents that are willing to shop there, we can slowly move towards a better place.

And lastly,

6. Stop creating so much affordable housing! Give developers other incentives, but please don’t focus on bringing affordable housing to Pioneer Square. This is a problem. This doesn’t solve the problem of increasing the residential population (P2 has around 3,000 vs. Belltown, which has about 11,000) if the people can’t afford to shop at the local retail. These things should go hand in hand. We need more development, which will encourage people to move to a real neighborhood, full of character.

The sad conclusion that many of us reached after a long night is that not enough people who live in Pioneer Square actually care about making changes in Pioneer Square. Chances are, the rent is cheap, they like the character, and put up with the rest. There were about 12 – 15 people at the meeting last night. Contrast that with the 50 people who showed up at (ridiculously long acronym)’s town hall meeting mostly to complain and whine about problems in their neighborhood. Where were they when it was time to talk through solving these problems??

If you missed it, there are many more opportunities to come to these meetings and contribute to your neighborhood.

I have personally taken on three tasks:

1. Get Lazarus moved from it’s location. It receives city funding and is breaking so many of the rules under that agreement. I hear the archdiose’s is a pain to work with, but here goes.

2. Clean up the streets by Masins Furniture

3. Call the city nonstop until they make someone fix up the building on the corner of 2nd and Yesler (which is breaking so many codes, it’s ridiculous… this would not be allowed to happen in downtown Seattle)

What will you do for this neighborhood?