As his city tries to emerge from the pandemic, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell is excited about learn how to revitalize downtown amid long-term changes in work habits that pull people away from the urban core.
Re-thinking the role of downtowns is the “best opportunity” for mayors across the country, said Harrell Wednesday on the Brookings Institution during a discussion with Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, “Governing the post-pandemic city.”
Seattle is amongst a bunch of cities participating in meetings hosted by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank to “exchange ideas on re-envisioning the long run of their downtown business districts,” the Latest York Times noted last month.
The pandemic affected downtown centers across the country, and a few are still battling the rise of hybrid work policies and ongoing safety concerns, amongst other trends.
A recent evaluation from the University of California Berkeley and University of Toronto ranked Seattle No. 27 in a listing of 31 large cities measured by economic and social activity downtown in comparison with pre-pandemic levels.
Many firms in Seattle — including large and small tech firms — are ditching or downsizing their downtown space, and office demand stays a “big query,” noted a recent report by real estate firm Kidder Mathews.
In line with Harrell’s recent 2023-2024 budget proposal, a return to the standard five days within the office “seems unlikely for a lot of.”
Meanwhile, firms are trimming headcount. Amazon, headquartered near downtown Seattle, is cutting at the least 2,300 Seattle-area jobs, and is pulling about 2,000 employees from a downtown office constructing. Facebook parent Meta, which announced a 13% layoff late last 12 months, said this month it’s subleasing a 6-story constructing near downtown Seattle.
The town can be grappling with the shift towards e-commerce and away from brick-and-mortar stores, said Harrell.
Harrell is excited about how the urban core can adapt. His ideas include bringing in additional arts, music and culture; improving the built environment, equivalent to with Seattle’s latest waterfront projects; and supporting educational institutions and even day care centers. He can be excited about learn how to best get services to people on the streets and learn how to leverage the faith-based community.
“All of us are redefining town at once, we’re going through a change we didn’t anticipate,” said Harrell, a former city councilmember who took office at the beginning of 2022. “There’s no playbook on this.”
During a keynote speech at Downtown Seattle Association’s annual luncheon last 12 months, urban expert Richard Florida argued that a contemporary urban downtown needs to be about community and connectivity greater than only about working.
He said downtown must work on the amenities present in other neighborhoods where people linger equivalent to parks and open spaces mixed with retail. The long run of downtown is to make it a spot where people stay, he said, and never a spot where people only work.
“Seattle is perfectly placed to make this variation,” said Florida.
Harrell highlighted endeavors to cut back blight, equivalent to programs to pay for window repair and efforts to bring businesses into vacant storefronts and unused areas. “Plywood is my enemy,” he said. Public safety and addressing homelessness are also priorities.
“Every major city appears to be grappling with the problem of a subclass of poverty after we’ve also created a subclass of wealth,” he added.
He’d prefer to create “entry points” for people to support civic life, including helping to offer solutions to homelessness. Harrell envisions community centers or golf courses as places where youth can interact with mentors within the tech industry, and said town’s parks department recently hired a frontrunner for the nascent effort.
Speaking on the GeekWire Summit in October, Harrell said he was nervous concerning the impact of individuals working at home on town’s retail businesses and potential lack of tax revenue.
“I cannot mandate people to return downtown unless there’s something to drive them there,” he said on the GeekWire Summit.
Harrell’s office recently outlined its accomplishments for 2022, including investments in reasonably priced housing; renovating and maintaining parks; and efforts to bolster the police force, including a latest recruitment and retention plan and securing latest funding from town council to rent more officers.
Downtown is becoming more full of life for the reason that depths of the pandemic, according to data from the Downtown Seattle Association. There are 55,000 occupied apartment units, an increase over pre-pandemic levels, and hotel room occupancy in September was at 95% of the extent in 2019 prior to the pandemic.
In December, 2.2 million people visited downtown, a rise of greater than 8% from the prior December, but lower than 2019 levels. Employee foot traffic can be increasing, but in November was still at 44% of pre-pandemic levels.
Cleveland’s Mayor Bibb sees opportunities in among the trends. He goals to “poach” staff from Chicago and Latest York drawn to more cost-effective housing and Cleveland’s Lake Erie waterfront. Said Bibb: “I feel that is going to be the era of the midsize city.”
Harrell said he is worked up to work with the Brookings Institution on a path forward.
“Now we have to be daring enough and inventive enough to comprehend that the nine-to-five downtown isn’t any longer going to happen,” said Harrell. Positive change, he said, “starts by saying that the nice old days are gone.”
