Pike/Pine Isn't Dying - It's Just Going To Be...Different

We read the Stranger's article on the death of Pike/Pine yesterday. Hm. Yes, it does suck that the Cha Cha et all are going to be replaced by what we're promised will be a gross condo building soon. To say that the character of the neighborhood is going to change is like saying that Three Gorges changed the character of the Yangtze. Then we read the Weekly's jeering "now choke on it" post on their blog which argues that after advocating for density for years "now that said density threatens to shutter some of the Stranger staff's favorite walking-distance watering holes, the paper has done a 180 of sorts." Hm. Well, kind of. Previous density has come at the expense of nothing. Belltown, Downtown, Bellevue; these aren't really places that inspired a lot of passion from anyone before they were densified. We're probably somewhat wrong there in the case of Belltown. Some people did like it the way it was.

The big exception is Fremont, though. People loved Fremont. Sure, they were hairy and crunchy and they didn't own any newspapers, but there were a decent amount of them and they were passionate as hell. Who knows where they all went to --Ballard maybe-- because you rarely see them in the wild anymore. From time to time you spot a "Fremont sucks now. Thanks Suzie" bumper sticker on an art car, but there's not really a unified voice for that crowd. Much more vocal and visible and likely to buy a 2br condo are the frat boys and Adobe employees that displaced them who seem to think Fremont's just fine as it is, and if it was ever a quirky art enclave that referred to itself as the Center of the Universe, well, that's cute and should probably be factored into the resale value of their units and mentioned to visiting in-laws. You goin' to the Ballroom tonight, bra?

We read an article from a Toronto paper this week that talked about condo developments in that city encroaching on a previously-bohemian neighborhood. The way the writer spun it the condos were killing the very environment their marketing materials were selling, and, yeah, that happens. It's no doubt about to happen on Capitol Hill, as the Stranger article alludes to. The same thing happened in Fremont. A friend of a friend moved into one of those condos above the PCC and sold almost immediately. "It's like a dorm in there." She bought into the marketing-hyped neighborhood energy that her condo helped kill. She didn't have any trouble selling the place, though, and the next guy knew exactly what he was getting: a condo just off Pioneer Square 2.0 minus the homeless guys and the long commute to campus and you goin' to the Ballroom tonight, bra? He's not the only guy who lives in, or goes to, Fremont, though. There are still some great bars and restaurants and music stores and there's a lot of character. It's different. Some people would say it's better, some people are sure it's complete crap now ("Thanks, Suzie"), but it's just different. And it costs a lot more. And it'll be the same with Pike/Pine. You can dig up the old Fremont hippies and ask if you can borrow the "____ sucks now. Thanks, ___" sticker template or you can visit a mortgage broker. Or, like Seattlest, you can visit a mortgage broker, hear that you can't afford a studio above the used-to-be-Bus-Stop and Sharpie your own "Pike/Pine sucks now" shirt to wear proudly to Bus Stop 2.0 on Beacon Hill.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@seattlest.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Dan in News on December 1, 2006 9:30 AM

Comments [rss]

Barney

Well, you can move to Spokane and live in the dark.

Seattle is Neat

Well at least you can always count on the fact that Aurora will always be there for you with its unchanging atmosphere. Even better is the fact that all these great strip clubs will be opening up there inviting anyone looking for a job to cash in!

MichelleBee

The one bright side to these new-style condos is that they are built for mixed use. So you will be able to live and work in a downtown area. I neither work downtown, nor own a new condo, but I would rather have new development in the form of mixed use space as opposed to urban flight. McMansions are the real evil.

We can't stop development, but we can at least shape how it is taking form.

Adrienne

um, hasn't ballard already started this slide? just because there aren't "high rise" condos yet, it doesn't mean that gentrification of the neighborhood hasn't been in full force for the last 8 years or so....

as for pike/pine - i'm sad that many of these establishments are on the way out, but i guess it's inevitable. increasingly, people want the hip without the grit.

Lola

>Or, like Seattlest, you can visit a mortgage broker, hear that you can't afford a studio

Lord Almighty, is that ever true for me. Who the HELL is buying these places? Not people in social services.

Nate

This is precisely why we need to reevaluate our building code. When the allowable building "envelope" is stout and bulky a lot of real estate is required to achieve the density we all want. But if the building envelope were tall and skinny, the density gained by that project (pictured) could have been achieved by displacing just one or two businesses, instead of wiping out an entire row of treasured storefronts.

COMTE

This is the inevitable price of gentrification - and yes, it did happen in Belltown as well, back in the mid '90's (remember the Jello Mold Building?), when the neighborhood was pretty much the exclusive enclave of artists, boozers, panhandlers, and junkies.

Then, at the height of the dot.com boom the area became attractive to condo developers who marketed B-town's "funky, artistic, creative ambiance" to employees of Amazon, and all those other now nearly forgotten venture capitalized e-commerce startups, while at the same time escalating real-estate values to the point of driving out all the funky/artistic/creative people who were responsible for the ambiance in the first place.

It's an old story, one told in Greenwich Village, The Mission District, The Pearl District, and scores of other former low-rent artistic neighborhoods, now upscaled for the so-called "creatives" who, like the people now snapping up the overpriced cookie-cutter "vertical cubicles" in Belltown & Freemont, believe that working as a sub-assistant Marketing Manager for Corbis or Adobe gives them "artistic cache".

Such is occuring now on lower CapHill, and such will no doubt occur in Ballard & Wallingford in 10-to-20 years or so.