More than 1,200 business and civic leaders gathered Tuesday afternoon for the Downtown Seattle Association’s annual “State of Downtown” event.
The bright sunny skies and spring-like weather that greeted attendees as they entered the sparkling brand new Seattle Convention Center seemed to highlight the DSA’s upbeat theme of the day: “Optimism & Opportunity.”
But there was a more direct call to action that emerged during the 4-hour event: What’s it going to take to get office workers back downtown?
Fewer than half of downtown Seattle workers have returned to the office, one of the slowest rates of return in the U.S. Meanwhile, office vacancies rose to 14% in downtown Seattle last year, nearing a highpoint not seen since the financial crisis of 2009.
The slow rate of return to the office is driven in part by Seattle’s strength as a technology hub, where many companies — like F5, Zillow, DocuSign, Qualtrics and others — can more easily rely on remote work.
The lack of office workers is creating headaches for Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and DSA President Jon Scholes, both of whom spoke on Tuesday about public safety and community efforts they’re driving to rekindle downtown Seattle.
Scholes admitted that he’s biased on the issue of whether workers should work remote or in-person. And while he said he supports efforts to convert office space to residential units, that’s “not a vaccine to the remote work affliction that afflicts our downtown right now.”
Scholes applauded Amazon’s recent decision to require workers to return to the office three days a week starting in May. The company employs 75,000 people in the Seattle region, many of them corporate and tech workers.
“That gives us all something to rally towards,” he said.
Even still, he noted that more work is needed to create a vibrant downtown core full of office workers.
“There’s a lot at stake. We built a physical economy, not a virtual one,” he said. “And it has fed this tax base that has been so important to the quality of life that we’ve created in this city.”
Scholes readily acknowledged that public safety issues — namely a fentanyl pandemic that he said has killed more people in the city than COVID-19 — need quick action.
“We can have a revitalized, thriving downtown with retail and restaurants and arts and culture,” he said. “Or we can have a fentanyl market. We can’t have both. We must act on this crisis, and we must act with urgency.”
Follow-up: As tech companies bring workers back to downtown Seattle, Zillow holds firm on ‘Cloud HQ’
