04 Dec Pioneer Square retail + an ice skating rink

The Seattle Times just came out with an article titled “Fashion boutiques try on Pioneer Square.”

The article goes into detail about different retail business already in Pioneer Square, and others thinking about opening shop down here. Businesses include:

• Gems Sneaker Shop
• Elliott Bay Book Co
• Deli
• Neodandi House of Couture
• an unnamed Vintage Clothing Boutique

The boutique said that “she sees Pioneer Square’s problems, including too many empty storefronts, and wants to be part of reviving it.”

I hope that other shops that are willing to help “revive” our neighborhood include ones that will be open past 5pm. It’s fantastic to have more retail businesses opening up down here, but we also need ones that serve the residential population. It seems like a vicious cycle; residents won’t move down here because it feels unsafe and the bad reputation, and retail businesses don’t open because there aren’t enough residents to shop there (and the bad reputation).

Last year, an RFP (request for proposal) went out from the City of Seattle looking for interested developers who might partner with the city to open up a winter ice skating rink in Occidental Park. Their goal was to “bring people downtown during the winter and to activate the space.” The space would be 80′ x 80′ and would hold around 120 people at a time. If successful, it would have become an annual event.

Something like this would be incredible for the neighborhood — having a destination in P² for people to come to in the evening, especially in a park that has well known drug problems.  I did have a (small) chuckle at a comment posted on the PI regarding the ice skating rink:Obviously, security would have to be set up to keep everyone off the ice when it’s closed, but I’ve already contacted the city about trying for this again next year. Apparently they had no response to their request last year. When I asked Charles Ng, manager of contracts for Seattle Parks why not, he said the following: “some of the concerns we heard were the location, that it was in an area with a high transient population, that there may not be good traffic, lack of support facilities” etc.

Hopefully this next year will have a better chance of succeeding. Victoria Schoenburg, Manager of Center city Parks said that the two challenges for the City are the following:

1. Most cities that have a temporary rink get it by paying a significant amount up front and then trying to recoup as much of that as possible through ticket sales. The cities get some fairly significant sponsors to help pull this off. The ice rink companies that considered our proposal last year all felt that, without established sponsors, the operation was not worth the financial risk. The Downtown Seattle Association, felt that it was not a good year to get into the project given the economy and the fact that many institutions that normally provide various sponsorships were withdrawing that support.
2. The City has an ordinance that allows advertising signs to be erected only on sites where the entity being advertised is actually conducting business. This kind of signage includes sponsorship recognition that is of any significant size (such as names of business on the fencing around the rink, or a logo in the ice, or that sort of thing). We are in the process of investigating whether it is possible to make some changes to this ordinance, but as it stands, it puts a significant crimp in our ability to sell sponsorships in exchange for public recognition of the sponsor.

If anyone else has interest or contacts that might help or are interesting in pursuing this further, please let me know.