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Seattle seems to have its own particular issues (somewhat shared by SF in my experience): there's no longer any compelling reason to go to downtown. There are p
by dboreham 1y ago
Seattle seems to have its own particular issues (somewhat shared by SF in my experience): there's no longer any compelling reason to go to downtown. There are plenty of reasons to avoid downtown. Restaurants in Woodinville seem very busy. Similarly restaurants in Sonoma are also very busy. I think the customers went elsewhere.
Online shopping has removed some proportion of the reason people would visit a city downtown. Remote working has removed some proportion of the reason people would be in a city downtown. There has to be some unreproducible draw to get people to go to a city: The Vatican/Mona Lisa; food and culture not available elsewhere, etc. Conversely the city has to be not a s.hole.
- alexose 1y agoPortland, too. The neighborhoods are doing OK, but downtown still feels empty. It’s interesting to me that it hasn’t depressed commercial real estate prices all that much. Rents are still crazy expensive, with many vacant storefronts and even entire buildings along the light rail lines. The market forces around commercial real estate seem disconnected from reality in a surprising and unintuitive way. Still, downtowns can be cyclical. NYC in the 70s is a prime example. The days of Taxi Driver are long gone. I guess the question is what stimulus needs to be applied to kickstart the turnaround process.
- FredPret 1y agoI’m far from a commercial RE expert, but I know they do tend to have very long leases. That would make it less responsive to sudden changes like 2020 and the subsequent changes
- com2kid 1y agoThere was never a reason to visit DT Seattle outside of Pike Place Market. The restaurants there if anything have gotten better over the years, I'd say a decade ago most of them closed after lunch because everything catered to office workers.