Partners with Purpose

In 1994, downtown Seattle was in critical condition. The departure of the Frederick & Nelson department store, closed and boarded up for two years, was followed by the shuttering of I. Magnin. Downtown streets were empty after dark.

As luck would have it, Jeff Rhodes, a veteran shopping center developer who helped create Bostons Copley Place and who happened to retire to Seattle in the early 1990s, diagnosed the disease and came up with a cure. Partnering with local developer Matt Griffin, he approached Seattles business and political leaders with a plan to revitalize downtown: construct a new $400 million vertical mall called Pacific Place. Prominent local families helped launch the venture, investing $10 million to help revive their hometown.

For the deal to work, Nordstrom had to give up its existing location and move into the former Frederick & Nelson building. Nordstrom would agree only if the city was willing to open a segment of Pine Street in front of Westlake Center that had been closed to traffic.

Many Seattleites opposed the project. They didnt want the city to spend $73 million on a parking garage that would effectively subsidize Pacific Place. There was also opposition to opening up Pine Street. But citizens voted for the plan because they wanted to save downtown.

The effort was a resounding success. A good thing, because when the dot-com bubble burst in 2000 and Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago a year later, Seattle was strong enough to survive the beating. The increased popularity of downtown triggered a boom in condo and apartment development that doubled the core resident population in just a decade. The region has completed other developments critical to the local economy, including a third runway at SeaTac airport in 2008, the first leg of Link Light Rail in 2009 and, most recently, the creation of the South Lake Union high-tech hub.

In the coming years, we will continue to see dramatic improvements (page 34). The Alaskan Way viaduct will come down, reconnecting the city with the waterfront and offering Pioneer Square a chance to revive itself. A light rail extension will connect downtown, the commercial heart of the region, with the University of Washington, its intellectual center. And Amazon.com will start building a headquarters campus that will assure downtowns role as a major employment center well into the future.

Much of the developments that have made the city such a great place to live, work and play can be traced back to the public-private effort to build Pacific Place. But a few key pieces are needed for Seattles success to be sustainable. Among the big challenges are overhauling our public schools, addressing growing traffic problems and controlling crimetough challenges that can be addressed by a robust partnership forged between business and civic leaders.