To the south of T-Cell Park in Seattle sits a storage lot, a sports activities bar and a strip membership. One thing, sometime, is prone to take their place, however the query of what has as soon as once more roiled Seattle Metropolis Corridor, agitating two of essentially the most energetic fault strains in metropolis politics: housing and business.
A brand new invoice from Metropolis Council President Sara Nelson would rezone this space of land, making it attainable — possible, even — for builders to assemble residence buildings there. At the very least half the houses can be required to hire for beneath market fee.
For sure Sodo pursuits, together with the stewards of the ballpark and a prolonged record of “mild business” companies, including housing is a key step towards the creation of a long-desired small enterprise district close to the stadiums and a method to make the realm safer and extra full of life. It will additionally symbolize a small dent within the metropolis’s housing scarcity.
However for the Port of Seattle and its heavy business staff and purchasers, housing close to the freeway onramps is a nonstarter. Because the Port works to dig itself out of a cussed pandemic droop and negotiates with attainable new tenants for its underused Terminal 46, the proposed rezone is seen as each a barrier to its instant success and a slide towards gentrification.
The struggle over housing close to the stadiums has stretched on for years. Most lately, the Port of Seattle threatened to explode a 2023 settlement over land use in industrial areas if new housing was allowed within the stadium district.
Now, within the weeks since Nelson’s invoice was floated, the lobbying effort on each side has one once more been fierce, pitting unions in opposition to unions and companies in opposition to companies.
Return to a sticking level
The primary property in query has garnered one thing of a cursed popularity. Ultrarich proprietor Chris Hansen as soon as hoped to construct a brand new area there for NHL and NBA groups, however his plan got here up one vote brief in entrance of Metropolis Council.
With a brand new area now completed at Seattle Middle, the query of what to do with Hansen’s property has festered.
It was a sticking level throughout negotiations over a broad land use coverage for town’s industrial and maritime areas, which concluded in 2023. The Port of Seattle opposed zoning Hansen’s properties for housing — regardless of town’s personal research concluding new housing would have little influence on visitors and stream of freight to and from the realm — and threatened to stroll away from the desk over it.
Mayor Bruce Harrell agreed to strip the housing rezone from the plan to avoid wasting the deal, which had been underneath negotiation since 2019.
When that settlement went to Metropolis Council, Nelson mentioned she nonetheless needed the housing included but in addition feared tanking the tenuous deal.
“I actually didn’t wish to rock the boat at that time,” she mentioned in an interview this week.
For Joshua Curtis, govt director of the Washington State Ballpark Public Services District, which owns T-Cell Park, the exclusion of housing was a irritating late improvement. Housing close to the stadium is a precedence for him and different stadium district pursuits as a method to activate the realm and to create more room for “mild business” resembling breweries, clothes producers, bakeries and different “makers,” he mentioned.
Their solace was that the mayor’s workplace instructed him they might rapidly revisit the query.
“It was sort of like, we all know this isn’t the deal that everybody had agreed to, however you possibly can come again later, and it’s not a tough repair,” he mentioned.
Councilmember Dan Strauss, whose district contains maritime pursuits and who beforehand chaired the council’s land use committee, mentioned he doesn’t recall any particular promise to return to the housing query, and that maritime union representatives resent any suggestion the deal may very well be revisited.
“Now they wish to return on the deal they made barely a yr in the past — unbelievable,” mentioned Inlandboatmen’s Union of the Pacific Nationwide Secretary-Treasurer Peter Hart. “A deal’s a deal.”
Spokesperson for Harrell, Callie Craighead, mentioned the mayor’s workplace did, in a number of conversations, go away open the chance the ultimate settlement may very well be tweaked “in a yr or in 5 years.”
For backers of recent housing, that was taken actually.
“I used to be instructed level clean, ‘we left the breadcrumbs for you,’” mentioned Monty Anderson, govt secretary of the Seattle Constructing and Building Trades Council, which is lobbying in favor of Nelson’s invoice.
On the Port of Seattle, opposition has solely grown since 2023. Cargo quantity by way of Seattle in 2024 was nonetheless beneath its prepandemic ranges and Seattle has misplaced market share to different West Coast ports yearly since 2019, in response to inside cargo reviews. Officers there are negotiating for attainable new tenants on the sparsely used Terminal 46, due west of Lumen Area and T-Cell Park, which might be key to its restoration.
“That entire space could be very a lot in play,” mentioned Port Commissioner Fred Felleman. “And if we wish to be attracting new tenants, having this encroachment being mentioned is completely counter to our pursuits and for the financial good thing about the area.”
Why motels, not housing?
Nelson mentioned she launched the invoice to perform three priorities: “I need area for small companies, reasonably priced housing and higher public security.”
Town’s complete research of the assorted impacts of zoning modifications to the commercial space didn’t conclude that housing would have any main influence on visitors patterns.
For Nelson, the report’s conclusion made her query why housing can be thought of worse than different types of improvement which can be allowed, resembling motels or workplaces.
“Why not do that?” she mentioned.
The Port of Seattle declined to problem the ultimate report, as was its proper, however lobbyist Sabrina Bolieu however mentioned officers suppose it’s flawed. Housing, the Port argues, would pit extra pedestrians in opposition to freight. Resorts close to the stadium had been seen by business representatives as OK as a result of vacationers don’t complain to town about noisy vans, simply to the entrance desk.
Strauss is equally skeptical that visitors and the final industrial setting wouldn’t be worsened by housing within the space. “I don’t suppose that the transportation community is working right now, a lot much less with none modifications,” he mentioned.
Strauss mentioned he was “caught off guard” by the invoice’s introduction.
“We all the time made positive to have each side of each concern engaged within the dialog,” Strauss mentioned of the 2023 negotiations. “That hasn’t occurred with this proposal.”
Though he appreciates the intent of the Nelson’s invoice, he’s a “no” for now.
Within the days since Nelson’s invoice was first heard, the council president has agreed to tour port amenities and conduct extra outreach to affected organizations. She stays not sure why housing represents an existential menace in a means that different improvement doesn’t.
“I wish to be educated,” she mentioned, “and I wish to extra totally perceive or be satisfied that the impacts to port operations can be larger with housing than with a lodge.”
