Yeah, change is coming to the Pike-Pine corridor, just as it's always been changing. This time around, there are businesses worth preserving through the tumult of morphing. There are ways to help preserve them.
But first, some history. The Pike-Pine funk as we know it is an oh-so-recent phenomenon. The corridor had been known since the 1920s as Seattle's Auto Row, pieces of which are still with us (Phil Smart, BMW Seattle). In the 1960s, as the car showrooms had begun to disappear, the old Edison Technical School (previously Broadway High) evolved into Seattle Central Community College. In the early 1970s came the first wave of gay bars and bathhouses, a few of which are still with us (Cuffs, the Eagle). Bill's Off Broadway Pizza opened in 1980. Soon thereafter, the old Masonic Temple became the Egyptian Theater.
As I've previously recounted in this space, the corridor in the mid-1980s was a much "edgier" place than it later became. Drug dealers, aggressive panhandlers and straight and gay streetwalkers openly traversed the area day and night.
Linda's, one of the corridor's current straight-bar anchors, opened less than 13 years ago. Even then, at the height of "grunge" mania (spawned partly at the Squid Row bar down the street at the current Kincora site), a young-hipster bar on East Pine was a risky proposition.
But it worked out, due to a growing area population of young adults with bohemian aspirations but without starving-artist incomes. (Now, this same niche of KEXP-listening professionals is targeted by the condo developers.)
As Broadway became increasingly bereft of major retailers, Pike-Pine became a haven for independent merchants, restaurants and bars. Music, hip fashions, furniture, used books, handbags, futons, art, erotic toys and more. While some merchants (Confounded Books, Lipstick Traces) went the way of most startup businesses in America, others (Babeland, Travelers) have thrived.
But the gentrifiers, egged on by city rezoning policies, are on their way. Indeed, they've already been here for a while. The Press Apartments (recently condo-converted), the Braeburn, the Trace, and other projects have gone up in former parking lots and industrial sites and supermarkets.
But now, with Garage Billiards co-owner Alex Rosenast's plan to raze a pivotal one-block stretch of Pine Street storefronts (from Kincora to the Bimbo's/Cha Cha building), the path of high-end residential development is starting to eat away at the "vibrant," "hip" neighborhood culture the developers are invoking in their sales brochures.
Does this have to mean the death of funky shopping, drinking, and dining in the corridor?
I say no. But the developers will have to bring some extra care to their work. There are already examples of "funkiness" within new mixed-use structures around town. Of the three McMenamin's restaurant-bars in Seattle, two are in new mixed-use buildings (in Fremont and East Queen Anne). The Portland-based brewpub chain put a lot of artistry and planning into making those new spaces look old. (McMenamin's East Pike Street
outlet, Six Arms, is in an old Auto Row garage building.)
There's also the experience of that bountifully-condominiumed neighborhood known as Belltown, in which cute and fabulous and unique stores and nightlife spots have thrived alongside more hoity-toity places. Many of Belltown's hipper and less expensive nightspots are in renovated (Cyclops) or new (Belltown Pizza) buildings.
As someone who's lived a few stories above a rather loud bar, which I NEVER heard at night from my unit, I can assure you bars and residences can cohabit, if a building's designed and built properly.
Other things for developers to do to keep Da Funk: Keep retail rents low. Don't have too many disruptive projects under way at once. Invite all current retail tenants to come back-especially the types of fab boutiques and cool-stuff stores you're plugging as reasons for folk to buy condos here.
And arrange for temporary space for these retailers during construction. Is that big storefront space formerly used for The Seattle Independent Mall still available? If not, how 'bout the ex-QFC on north Broadway?
And if the Pike/Pine condoizers don't want to help preserve their top selling point, let's just move the funky-retail party up to Broadway, or to 12th Avenue.
Clark Humphrey's column appears in the first issue of each month. He has more local-history material in his new book, "Vanishing Seattle," out Dec. 11 at a bookstore near you. He can be reached at editor@capitolhilltimes.com.
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