11 Mar Street Vendors, Public Safety and Revitalizing Pioneer Square

The monthly Revitalization Committee was last Friday, where the committee discussed the current draft of the Pioneer Square Economic Development Plan.

Here are the five main goals of the plan:

1. Engage Businesses and Support Business Growth
2. Improve Public Safety and Civility
3. Improve the Built Environment in the Square
4. Marketing, Branding, and Promotion
5. Organizational Development and Advocacy

It’s interesting to sit through this process — mostly because Pioneer Square is made up of such diverse interests. When I was working on the banners, they neighborhood wanted one for each of their “districts” which included: Arts, Sports, Nightlife, Residential/Living, Retail, and Historic. That makes for an extremely diverse group that all have vested interest in the future of Pioneer Square.

And you can imagine that this is a group that doesn’t agree on all of the same issues. A person that owns an art gallery and is a resident felt that bars are too loud for residents and don’t take enough responsibility for the area right in front of their bar. A owner from one of our neighborhood bars chimed in about security measures that they’ve added recently to help with the problems.

But also imagine sitting in the room when we came to the topic of street vendors. Just like the clash between art galleries and street artists surrounding the First Thursday situation, there was a divide in the room between groups that were supportive of street vendors and groups that felt the city needed to do more work before rolling the program out.

One of the main concerns was that a street vendor could come down and park here, and wouldn’t be responsible for paying into the BIA, whereas an established business who had committed to the neighborhood, has that extra “burden” of taxes. A proponent of the situation said that it brings a lot of people down to the park/neighborhood and that it’s extremely successful down in Portland, and that a solution is to require a contribution to the BIA of the neighborhood they’re in.

A local resident said that it’s a powerful trend that we will miss if we don’t get on board (and that she goes rain or shine wherever skillet is).  However, because we had no representation from DPD in the meeting, the street vendor conversation will be revisited next month.

The majority of the time, however, the group agreed on many topics, including ideas like

• reaching out to interesting, specific retail to move here
• partnering with the cruise industry to send more tourists here to “shop local”
• also connecting with the transit hubs where more than 6 million locals travel and encourage them to come to the neighborhood
• marketing Pioneer Square as “edgy” or “not stuffy” (followed by laughter) and a place where a lot of technology companies are relocating (or are already here)
• reevaluating the boundaries (see our map of too many boundaries here)

Leslie Smith, Interim Director of PSCA also took 20 minutes to talk about what programs they do in the neighborhood (coming up in a follow up post) and the idea that it needs to go away and programs be dispersed into a new Economic Development Committee, Community Council, etc.

At the end of the meeting, we went around the room and everyone had the opportunity to say a few things — it’s hard to explain it in words on a blog, but most of the comments created a  positivity and excitement about Pioneer Square. Whenever I get discouraged about the loitering and drug problems in front of my building, I remember all of the incredible people that are working really hard in the neighborhood and the positive attitude that they have for what’s coming in 2010.

To see more info on the draft and announcements for upcoming Revitalization meetings, go to OED’s Pioneer Square revitalization website.