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July 2023 was a month to remember in Seattle.

Taylor Swift, the All-Star Game, the usual flood of cruise ships and various community celebrations all adding up to 3 million visitors.

But is the crisis in the streets over?

Or does Seattle still need saving?

It's a classic glass half full dilemma.

Tonight, the downtown Seattle Association's view on what they see as the city's comeback, with reporter Steve Higgins taking us inside the numbers.

Modern Seattle's reputation took decades to build and months to destroy.

And that's part of the discussion next on Northwest.

Now.

A federal survey recently showed that about 11% of the population in Seattle wants to move.

Why?

Crime Stoppers reports that Seattle is on track for an all time high number of murders this year.

One of only ten cities reporting an increase in 2023.

The Police Officers Guild says Seattle lost 600 officers since the defunding effort started in 2020 as a result.

A Suffolk University poll shows that fewer than 40% of residents think police are doing a decent job.

Small but visible parts of Seattle are open air drug markets.

Seattle Fire responds to 15 overdoses a day.

And leaders in the international district say they're losing the neighborhood to crime, drugs and vagrancy.

Let me be clear about this.

Seattle's problems are not just public relations.

The problems are real.

They're resulting in harm and resulting in the flight of both businesses and residents who can find a way to do it.

But as Steve Kitchens tells us now, there is some evidence that Seattle's bottom may be behind us, at least according to those whose job it is to see the glass as half full.

Tourism officials say the warm and sunny ones are pretty good.

But it's those rainy and cold months where the tourism industry is kind of lagging behind.

Meanwhile, the downtown Seattle Association dashboard suggests another challenge might be those office workers still yet to return to the office.

This summer was a good a good test case for for what we can we can pull off.

Tourists scramble for a picture perfect snapshot in their visit to Emerald City icons and after big name concerts in major league sports spectacles, 2023 might be the heavy pendulum swing Seattle needed to get back into the spotlight.

We are, you know, a world class city, but we're still in that sweet spot of, like, not taking it for granted.

Downtown Seattle Association's Kelly Road says one of those sweet spots is highlighted in the nonprofit's downtown recovery dashboard, including stats showing a 21% decrease in violent crime year to year.

The city values in the data shows how absent visitors have been rebounding, showing feet, beating a path across the city.

Some of the more hotel rooms in July of this year, since August of 2019.

We've got great numbers happening.

We have a new convention center open and we've got lots of great collaboration going on in our community.

Just feels really, really good when it comes to romance.

A little rain can be a pretty great thing.

Visit Seattle says it's been busy selling Seattle secrets in clever ways, like this cool kissing booth meant to lure overheated visitors in Phenix.

What we really need is, is a mix of of different kinds of business here.

So we're very aggressively pursuing conventions and meetings.

That has been the slowest segment to come back.

Lagging behind, according to dashboard data, is hard to miss when one can see emptied out offices inside downtown Towers.

But with more conventions on the horizon and a soon to be completed waterfront restoration, many see the lure for new residents and visitors might be inevitable.

We're hopeful that more employees I think September will be kind of another sea change month in terms of return to office.

We've heard anecdotally a lot of employers that are kind of using that as their their start time, too, to bring people back.

And then we're also seeing a return of business travel and convention traffic.

So I think that those two things, as long as they keep trending in the right direction, we'll be able to maintain that that progress through the fall and winter in Seattle, Austin, Cairns, Northwest Now.

An in-depth conversation about the situation in downtown Seattle continues on the Steve on the Street podcast streaming now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify Joining us now is downtown Seattle Association Media Relations and issues management director James Szeto.

I want to start with something, though, that's a little fun, a little tongue in cheek.

And you've probably seen this meme on the Internet.

I'll put it up where we go on the Seattle dog.

He's a very nice golden retriever retriever.

Uh huh.

Next to him is this Hellhound who looks like he's from a horror movie.

And it says Seattle in the news.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know if you've seen that or not.

The implication is that there's a PR problem here.

I would like to suggest that Seattle's problems are very real, but one of the results of them is most certainly a PR problem.

So I don't want to brush aside the actual problems and I'm sure you don't either.

Yeah, but how do you how are you dealing with that?

When people talk to you at a cocktail party and they say, oh my gosh, what's going on in Seattle?

How do we answer that?

Well, I first asked them the last time they were in the city, the last time they went downtown.

And sometimes I will get oh, I haven't been there in six months, seven months, a year.

And I think that when people have a headline that sticks and the ones that stick are the ones that are negative.

Seattle is dying.

Seattle is dying.

The the burning police car by Nordstrom in a 2020 protest in and the subsequent damage.

Those things stick.

And so how do you take something that has the ability to sort of penetrate somebody's memory and really take root there?

And really some of those have lasted for years now.

And we've seen that that's that's held that sort of meanness generated.

Right.

So you've got to find a way to sort of deploy program that with a lot of the good news that is happening and sort of and I don't like the phrase, but flood the zone, you don't want to do spin.

Right.

People are too smart.

Now, if you tell them there's no problem.

Everything's great.

You have immediately lost your credibility.

No.

And you can't provide the solution.

Right.

So how do you get that message right between.

Listen, we acknowledge this.

We're we're the downtown Seattle associates.

We're not saying there's no problems here.

Yes, but there's another side of the story.

How do you get that balance right?

So people don't accuse you of just blowing it off?

Yeah.

And that is the daily or the weekly or the monthly battle is that you are trying to be realistic and truthful about what people are experiencing.

Something like safety, for example, is a very personal thing, right?

And their own someone's own relative feeling about their safety is something that they take with them.

And you can't totally discount their concerns.

Right.

But what you can do is you can take whatever that concern might be and provide data, provide facts.

That's a great segway.

You guys have a dashboard that that displays some of that data.

Steve Kitchens did a piece on that.

But refresh us, if you would, where that data can be found, what it is you're tracking.

Yeah.

So go to downtown Seattle dot org and we've got a monthly economic recovery dashboard that we update.

And what we're tracking is a handful of key metrics that tell really the economic vitality story of downtown, where we are coming out of the pandemic because we're we're all still comparing ourselves to what we were in 2019.

And that's maybe a little bit different conversation because I don't know that we need to be comparing that.

But for the sake of metrics, take return to office or return of workers, take visitor accounts, take hotel demand, take residential numbers, all of these things, tracking them to see really how we're performing.

And if you look at those trends, the ones that you want to go up are going up and they've been going up.

In fact, our August data is coming out shortly and August will be the fourth consecutive month that we're at 50% or higher on return to office.

when September comes and more companies are instituting their three day per week minimum, that you'll see that number climb even more.

And then you look at the residential side, 106,000 people living in downtown, which is a record set on our track.

That's a that's a new high.

Yes.

And that leads me to the question, Can downtown Seattle be what we want it to be?

If back to work doesn't happen as much as we think it needs to?

In other words, can can some tourism and residential fill the bucket where back to work may not necessarily because like we talked before this program, the good news is we're a tech based economy.

Yeah, the bad news is we're a tech based economy.

I think the reality of the old Monday through Friday, 825926925, whatever.

I think everybody understands that those are done right, that that day is over.

And I think that everybody that is that is clear eyed about the situation understands that there is flexibility.

Hybrid model, those are starting to be baked into people's daily rhythm and routine.

And I think we all understand that and that's fine.

But that does not, I think, disprove the principle of the importance of bringing people together, of things that you can't experience via Zoom, via Google meetings, whatever platform this is.

The foot traffic piece.

Yeah.

Be it for work, be it for residential, be it for tourism, be it for coming off a ship, whatever it may be.

Yeah, I frankly, I think we have foot traffic in helping small business, but also for the actual core function of of the business or the work itself.

I mean relying on, on being able to catch somebody and bring them up on Zoom or catch them by email and have a a similar sight to us type of conversation as you would when you're you're going by their desk or you're quickly collaborating on something.

I think there's a there's a real benefit to that in-person connection.

And I think that more employers are starting to see that.

There was a recent CNBC story that indicated that that 90% of employers believe that by 2024 that a majority of the week they're going to be back in office.

So I do think that the tide is turning in that regard.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

With foot traffic at about 54%, that's what your dashboard the last time I checked it out for, for, for worker for truck.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Was, was showing.

Yeah.

The mayors reactivation plan seems like it really relies heavily on back to work.

And I guess I'm asking you this question for a second time.

Can we have the downtown Seattle we want even with can can residential replace that?

Is that practical?

Yeah, I don't think it can fully replace it.

No, I do think that those return to office numbers need to improve.

And I've I'm pretty confident that they will.

But I do think that we need to make sure that the downtown is living up to its potential for its its mixed use nature.

Right.

The idea that these districts can become more central connectivity districts rather than CBDs rather than central business district.

I think there is a a tremendous potential for downtown Seattle in that regard.

When you look at the mix of uses that we have, we have an arts and cultural center.

We've got terrific dining, we've got great retail that is starting to bounce back a little bit.

We've got residential.

We've got the office population, all of it centered in less than five square miles.

And it's set against as as we all know, in the northwest, a terrific backdrop.

So here's the pushback.

Yeah.

Scared to go down there.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

How do we address that?

So public safety and homelessness are really the top two concerns of voters with research that we've done consistently the last few years.

So there is no doubt that that should be priority one for our our city leaders is to make sure, in fact, it's in the preamble of the city charter that their responsibility is to ensure a safe downtown or a safe city downtown being the primary engine of that.

We do need more police officers.

I think that given our population size, we're probably the estimates are, what, 5 to 600 short in that regard?

Mm hmm.

And I think we do have city leaders who are focused on that right now, the mayor being one of them.

In fact, if you look at the the election that put him in office with Mayor Harrell, with Councilmember Sarah Nelson, and city attorney Ann Davison, Yeah, all three of them campaigning with public safety, being one of their top priorities.

And I don't think it's I don't think it's a coincidence that they happened to win, which is why I was a little surprised that the DSA supported Lewis in District seven downtown.

Well, DSA doesn't support candidates.

We rate them based on on how their their answers and how their views align with that with our priorities.

Yeah, you had a high alignment because you looked at Kettl and Lewis and I think that's the correct phrase.

So thanks for checking me on that.

I was still surprised by it.

Yeah.

You know, there were a lot of things that Councilmember Lewis has been really supportive on and been working with us well on over the last few years.

And downtown.

He has done a lot of things very well.

The the drug use ordinance vote was one of those moments that we were in alignment.

Fact, we were out of alignment with him on that.

Do you think that'll pass?

Do you think that there will be a gross misdemeanor charge for possession and use?

And I think an ordinance will pass.

I think in this will pass and we will see that in September.

Um, I don't I don't yet know what that's going to look like.

Right.

But but I do think that something will pass.

This gets us to a discussion we've talked about, you know, the role of business and some of the crime and safety issues, the hot term that's kind of being discussed right now out there when we talk about urban planning and what's going on in the nation's cities is the urban doom loop.

Yeah, some cities kind of you you end up with people leaving town.

So tax revenues go down.

That means more people leave.

You kind of have this spiraling downwards as opposed to being able to re-engineer a spiraling upwards.

Yeah.

What are the key elements?

We talked about foot traffic and the return to work.

Is tourism.

One of those things that helps that spiral get started upward?

In the case of Seattle, do what do we have that's unique to keep us out of the urban doom loop?

Yeah.

I'm glad you mentioned tourism because that is one of the components of our revitalization that is really catalytic.

There's no doubt about that.

I think when you combine tourism with a healthy residential population with a return to office that is trending upward, all of those things happening in concert, then I think you've got the ability to at least mitigate or stave off what that doom might be.

I mean, but the worker component is pretty key there because the the idea of that loop is that you can have all this empty space.

Right.

Right.

And I do believe that we will have a return to office this fall that hopefully will get us above 60%.

I think we will be trending in that direction.

And that is one of those things that I think can at least dampen the talk of that loop in Seattle, because we really yes, we are a tech based economy, but we're also a little bit more diversified than many of our counterparts.

So that helps us in that regard, too.

Mm hmm.

Yeah, I think about Amazon and, you know, kind of their rethinking of downtown Seattle.

Do you are you ultimately optimistic or pessimistic about Amazon's role in downtown?

What what's when when you get together again at the conferences and when you're talking to business leaders downtown, what's the feedback on Amazon and what you think maybe the future is there for them?

Well, they've been pretty clear that they want their people back in the office three days per week.

Do you think they'll fill all their previous space, though, or are they going to be leaving some space behind them?

That's a good question.

I don't know what that what that calibration is going to look like.

But, you know, Amazon was an example of a company choosing to locate in an urban area where in the past they would have gone out to the suburbs and that would have made sense.

But they've shown the urban campus has a lot of benefits, not only to the employees there, but also to the surrounding businesses.

You know, they really provide a really healthy amount of foot traffic in that deadly triangle, South Lake Union area.

And the small businesses there benefit like when when they came back in May and started to come back through the summer, those businesses were really doing better numbers than they had in years.

Increased hours.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about small businesses.

I, I, this is just off the top of my head, I think.

I think in the past three years, five or 600 small businesses ended up shuttered in downtown Seattle.

Yeah, over that period, I think 300 or so of other ones have come in.

So I'm really not sure where the net where that nets out right.

But what is what do you think the future is for small business?

What what is the key?

We've talked we know the Fortune 500, they're kind of the headlines.

But when it comes to the small business piece of that, they're really kind of fills in a lot of those gaps down on the street.

Mm hmm.

What's what's important there as a crime?

Safety.

What do you think?

Yeah, I think I think safety is part of that is part it is one of the ingredients there.

I think that the small business owner needs to feel like they're supported by the city.

And I think that we have made some inroads there.

If you look at Westlake Park, which is the corner of Fourth and Pine in downtown, a one mile radius around there, we've had more than 45 or so businesses open in the last year.

I going to say talk about some of the green shoots, too, because Bainbridge has come back in Bainbridge.

Do you have a few others in your mind that have been kind of hit hits for you?

Yeah, You know, one that sticks out is Rainier Square.

Okay.

So eight, eight, the second tallest building in downtown that has pulled in new retail tenants.

PCC does very well, particularly during the daytime there.

Right.

They've got a new fancy coffee bar that opened their suit supply.

A retailer that left pre-pandemic is coming back to downtown Seattle, which is quite a victory.

And then Mendocino Farms just opened up.

That's a this is all in Rainier Square.

Mendocino Farms opened up their second location in downtown.

And so point being, if people have been down there in a while, there's some new stuff to see.

There's new stuff to see and there's confidence.

I think when you see these retailers or these small businesses coming online, there's a confidence in that place and being able to succeed there.

We still have a number of cranes dotting the skyline.

Now, granted, those decisions were made years ago on what to build, but I think that is another sign of confidence in what downtown can be.

It might not be what it was pre-pandemic, but it could be better.

It could be better.

It could have more people with a better mix of uses waterfront, city, waterfront waterfronts coming online.

And the waterfront is going to be fantastic.

That is going to be one of the sort of the crown jewels of Seattle, no doubt.

And I think probably a waterfront that will be the envy of many cities, not only across the country but around the world.

Had the head of state on this program.

We talked about the downtown circulator, which has been on and off and on and off.

I'm not kidding.

I think three or four times.

Yeah.

Where does DSA say on that project and how important do you think it is to get that connection with light rail from high to low in the city of Seattle?

Yeah, the center City Connector is an important project.

Yeah, it really is.

I mean, if you have two streetcar lines that don't connect, right, and they could that you're, you're not maximizing the potential of that line.

And I think being able to take that and make a usable network actually make a network out of two disparate lines I think would be enormous.

I hope that director spots likes to call it the the cultural connector because of all the different things that that line could connect.

Right.

And yeah, it absolutely could bring some of our best assets to more people because it's a very easy it's an easier thing to access and navigate if you if you pop into a city for the first time to to hop on that rather than trying to figure out some of the other ways you can sit around.

So, yeah, it seems so apparent to me that it's necessary.

But DSA is, is it's fair to say, is actively promoting that then as an idea.

And yeah, we are supportive of the streetcar.

Last question for you though, with the last area and I want to get back to crime and safety a little bit.

You talked a little bit about the the shortage of police officers in the city.

Do you think it'll ever do?

Will we add 600 officers, do you think, to the Seattle P.D.?

Do you think there's going to be a mix?

What is what is DSA?

And when you look out across the landscape, are you looking for more officers?

You're looking for more social workers mixed with officers.

What do you think the recipe is for this sort of maybe slightly more residential revitalized downtown Seattle?

If we look off into the future, what does the police force look like?

Does that have to change?

Yeah, I think it is a yes and situation.

I mean, yes, we do need more officers and we need social workers or the people who actually are the best ones to approach people in crisis.

The response maybe doesn't always need to be an armed officer.

And I think that you've got a lot of people who are behind that line of thinking for public safety.

And I don't know that we're going to fill that 600 officer gap.

I would like to think that we can.

We've got a terrific city.

And I think that I know that police officers, police departments across the country are recruiting in other markets.

I'm sure we're doing the same.

But we need to make sure that the right response is made when it comes to public safety.

It doesn't always need to be the armed officer, but there does need to be that social component I think, that can connect with somebody in that crisis.

I think the answer from business and tourism interests about the need for policing is, you know, fairly obvious.

Yeah, I guess the other question I would have is do you feel that the pendulum is maybe swinging a little bit?

Do you feel like law and order?

Not to an extreme, but law and order is an idea that we still have to persuade Seattleites of, you know, the voting block?

Or do you feel like this pendulum is maybe do you feel like we're going to get a little moderate maybe here in the next cycle, politically, for the next foreseeable future?

Well, the research we've done indicates that people really do still care about public safety and they want to see improvements and they'll vote that way.

And I think we saw that with the election of an Davidsen Mary heroine, Sara Nelson.

And I think that the candidates that made it through the primary for the city Council races, many of them the ones that were highly aligned with us, they also care about getting public safety right.

And I think that's that's a key the key point there is getting it right.

Right.

That mix between too much.

And that's why I wanted to bring you out a little bit.

A little bit, because that's a throttle, you know, between, you know, Chief Gates in Los Angeles.

Yeah.

And what we had with the, you know, the the Summer of Love, the right answer is in between.

Right.

And that's what that's what makes it difficult.

Last bit here for you, a little bit about outreach outside the city limits of Seattle.

We talk here about things that Seattleites are familiar with and and know about when you're talking to business and tourism interests, those who are out of state, maybe even out of country, does that message change?

Do they even do they even perceive are there problems in Seattle?

What's he talking about?

What's what's the perception outside of our little bubble here?

It's funny when I so DSA manages and activates two parks in downtown Westlake Park and Occidentale Square, and we're adding some other pieces, but we can get to that at some other time.

But when you talk to people who are in these spaces in the summer months, they're from out of town.

They feel that we're getting a lot of things right.

They'll remark about how clean it is downtown.

You know, we've got downtown ambassadors that are out there seven days a week and they're picking up 1.2 million gallons of trash in a 12 month period.

So we've got people who are trying to take care of that environment and make sure that when we do have people from out of town that hopefully they're remarking on, oh, this this downtown area is welcoming, it's clean, it's vibrant, and maybe tell them this way, it's safe, and I'm going to go back home and I'm going to tell you know, my boss, tell my boss, tell my friends in in Des Moines, Iowa, and in Philadelphia that this is a great place to be.

So, you know, not only do we need to make our visitors feel welcome, but we're going to make our residents feel welcome and safe, too.

And one of my colleagues at Visit Seattle had a recent conversation with her on her Seattle city maker's podcast.

Shameless plug there.

But she said that that when when Seattle lights are are being evangelists that that's really when the message starts to hit home Yeah good well James great conversation everybody here in western Washington likes downtown Seattle and wants to see it succeed.

And I appreciate you having that conversation with us.

Thank you.

I'm with a.

Here's an interesting tidbit.

Research shows that political worldview actually is the most important predictor of the perception of the safety of Seattle.

The right sees it as a combat zone.

The left as a family friendly playground.

The bottom line the truth lies in the middle.

It is not a failed state.

But leadership puts their collective head under the sand about crime and livability at their peril.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking to watch this program again or to share it with others.

Northwest now can be found on the web kbtc.org and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Northwest.

Now a streamable podcast of this program is available under the northwest now tab at kbtc.org and on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

That is going to do it for this edition of Northwest.

Now until next Time.

I'm Tom Layson.

Thanks for watching.