02 Aug Sally Clark checking in on Pioneer Square

Sally Clark and her legislative assistant David Yeaworth have been paying a lot of attention to Pioneer Square lately, including frequent walks in the neighborhood with Alliance for Pioneer Square staff, and supporting reduced parking hours, adding extra police patrols, and other initiatives listed here She also highlighted Pioneer Square in her monthly newsletter:

When Elliott Bay Books announced two years ago it was decamping for Capitol Hill, an alarm bell sounded for many of us. Many Pioneer Square residents and business people had heard the ringing long before, but it took a major loss to get the attention of others. Since then neighbors, business people and city staffers have been working hard to shine up the neighborhood’s image and deliver real progress on a list of community goals. There’s good news to report on many fronts:

• • If you’ve been down recently you’ve seen the “yarn bomb” art project in Occidental Park. I was down a couple of weekends ago for the annual Fire Festival and I’ve come across great music and performances at lunchtime on weekdays.
  • Mayor Mike McGinn announced in May that the City is laying conduit under First Ave. and issuing a request for proposals from companies who want to provide high-capacity fiber to the neighborhood through that conduit. This is great because Pioneer Square has become a hub for gaming companies. In order for the neighborhood to keep and grow these companies, they’ll need more bandwidth.
  • A new streetcar line will soon run up Jackson from Occidental, making stops in the ID, First Hill and Capitol Hill on Broadway. That’s actually great news for all of those neighborhoods. Construction starts early next year. Take a look at visualizations on the Seattle Streetcar site.
  • Construction will begin later this summer on 717 units of new housing, as well as shops and offices, on the parking lot north of the football stadium. Pioneer Square has long needed more residents to love it.
  • The Saturday Market in Occidental for arts and crafts that worked so well last year is moving to Thursday evenings. Combined with the beloved First Thursday Art Walk, this means Thursday throughout the summer becomes a full day of action in Pioneer Square.

There’s more to say about great performances, art and other events in Nord Alley and a possible new tenant for the Globe Building, but there are also challenges. Recently Councilmembers Tom Rasmussen, Tim Burgess and I met with a large pack of Pioneer Square business owners about on-street parking rates (they think they’re too high) and on-street drug dealing (there’s still too much).

One big challenge still on the list is the slated re-routing of Metro buses through parts of Pioneer Square after the Viaduct comes down. Metro plans to move 550 buses through Pioneer Square daily. Granted Pioneer Square is a gateway into downtown, but there are other routes that Metro could use to bring vehicles in from the south and southwest, like Fourth Avenue. That’s part of the reason why the state built the Edgar Martinez overpass and the Fourth Avenue South off-ramp from the Spokane St. Viaduct. I don’t believe Main and Washington Streets are going to be appropriate main routes for Metro in life post-Viaduct. We need a better answer that protects Seattle’s first historic neighborhood.