Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell officially rolled out his “Downtown Activation Plan” on Wednesday, providing more details on a series of initiatives aimed at helping the city’s urban core bounce back from the pandemic.
The overall purpose of the plan, according to the Mayor’s Office, is to “stabilize and transform downtown into a place where residents, workers, and visitors want to spend time.” A new website called DowntownIsYou.com offers information about goals, timelines, stakeholders and more.
The plan comes as foot traffic downtown spiked in recent weeks, buoyed by the return of thousands of Amazon workers to office buildings in South Lake Union and the Denny Triangle. The tech giant’s three-days-a-week mandate for in-person work, which kicked off May 1, likely helped boost downtown foot traffic, which was up 9.5% from the prior month and 38.7% from a year ago.
The data, provided by the Downtown Seattle Association and calculated by Placer.ai, counts worker foot traffic from Tuesday to Thursday. New data for June will be released next week.
Seattle still lags behind other U.S. cities in regard to its downtown recovery, and worker foot traffic is only about half of pre-pandemic levels.
Harrell released his plan at a news conference at Westlake Park on Wednesday, during which he had to contend with “Stop the sweeps” shouts from those protesting action taken against homeless encampments.
“Our Downtown Activation Plan is a comprehensive approach to build a downtown of the future that lives up to our One Seattle values, revitalizing our city center rather than trying to recreate the past,” said Harrell, who released the first phase of the plan back in April.
Harrell plans to call on the City Council to advance a suite of legislative proposals, including some that would allow for the creation of more affordable housing downtown.
One of those proposals is to update zoning policies to allow for taller residential buildings along Third Avenue from Union Street north to Stewart Street and east on Pike Street and Union Street toward Fourth Avenue.
“This will allow for high-rise residential development with incentives for providing childcare and education facilities,” the mayor’s plan says.
Harrell has also called for changes that would allow the potential conversion of downtown office space into residential space, as the city’s commercial real estate market has been hit with increased vacancies. Layoffs and hiring freezes began last year during a broader tech downturn, and many companies are downsizing their real estate footprint given the headcount reductions and shift to hybrid work policies.
Three top ideas for office-space-to-housing conversion were revealed earlier this month by the mayor and the Office of Planning and Community Development.
The Downtown Activation Plan is broken into three timelines:
- Bold Actions Now — Initiatives that are underway or starting soon.
- Near-term Initiatives — Efforts that will happen over the next three years.
- Space Needle Thinking — Visionary possibilities for the future of Downtown Seattle.
And there are seven stated goals focused on everything from public safety to retail to sustainability:
- Make downtown safe and welcoming.
- Transform downtown into a lively neighborhood where more people can afford to live.
- Create a unique downtown retail experience.
- Make downtown a place where people want to work and that reflects the future of our economy.
- Celebrate downtown Seattle’s arts, culture, sports, and entertainment.
- Make downtown a top destination for Seattleites and visitors year-round.
- Create a healthy, resilient, and green downtown.
A variety of stakeholders are listed on the Downtown Is You website, including Amazon, Washington Technology Industry Association, Pioneer Square Labs, Tableau, Vulcan Real Estate, Starbucks, the University of Washington and more.
Downtown’s vibrancy will rely heavily on the return of office workers who in turn support the many small businesses in the area. 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.
Amazon has more than 65,000 corporate and tech employees in the Seattle area, and Harrell has previously praised the region’s largest employer for getting people back in the office — and back to a downtown he is desperate to reinvigorate.
Hundreds of Amazon corporate and tech workers protested the company’s return to work policy in a walkout on May 31 that also targeted bolder action on climate initiatives. The walkout came amid a broader power struggle between workers and major tech companies that have been bringing employees back to the office, in some cases against their wishes, after collectively cutting tens of thousands of jobs.
“Return to office, the number of residents, visitor traffic and hotel demand are all moving up,” DSA President and CEO Jon Scholes said in a statement. “And with continued attention and dedicated resources called out in the plan, we hope safety will continue to improve in downtown. An overwhelming majority of Seattle residents clearly understand the important relationship between downtown and the rest of the city. This plan will bolster the health and vibrancy of both.”
