I have to admit, that would be awesome.

This is kind of neat, but until they bring back a streetcar through Pioneer Square, it's unlikely the foot traffic is going to pick up that much. It's too far for people to walk from the current light rail stations (people are lazy), and the bus service in that area is really really slow, especially on game days. As the years have gone by, when I'm south of say Madison I just hop off the bus and start walking, cause it won't get me there any faster.

Change that and you'll change the foot traffic dynamics.

Hmm -- this could be like the cluster of indie record sellers that have opened upstairs at Resolution Audio in Ballard (like Jigsaw. Pretty cool idea.

You have no idea what you're talking about, Will.

Yeah, Will - pretty off base.

I think this sounds like a neat idea, but I don't necessarily think Pioneer Square needs more book stores. If anything, it needs more diversity of retail to appeal to a broader spectrum of buyers. I've always thought that an Oddfellows Hall-type establishment would do well here. Or perhaps some type of alternative clothes store. That's all I got.

I'm guessing that the landlords would prefer to collect a single, large rent check every month rather than trying to get two dozen "small but crafty" tenants to pay up every thirty days.

But hey, maybe I'm wrong.

@7: I addressed this in the last paragraph. Gigantic non-chain retail stores are fast becoming a thing of the past, and if landlords want tenants, especially in Pioneer Square, they're gonna have to get creative.

Look, it's all about perceived safety. Streetcars make it feel safer, even if they do nothing to change the reality. Slow bus service degrades the perception of safety.

People are sheep, marketwise. You can argue how neetso keeno it is and you'll still be looking at failing stores, until you change the perceptions.

Landlords are notoriously uncreative in their thinking when it comes to rent. I'm betting that these landlords would rather have a giant Quizno's in there if it meant a reliable monthly paycheck. Also - wasn't this landlord uninterested in negotiaitng with EBBC in the first place?

Someone with a big, BIG wad of cash could pull off an interesting retail mix like the one you're talking about, Paul, but I don't see a lot of people interested in creative retail solutions in the current economic environment.

but i do like the clothes store thing - if done right.

God help us. WILL: TAKE YOUR PILLS.

a whorehouse would be more popular & historically accurate. is moon temple lady available to lease?

It always amazes me that someone will open a restaurant in a building where the previous restaurant (or even several in a row) has failed. I guess they talk them into thinking that it's not the location, it's the product, even when the former tenant vacated it for another location.

@15 - a lot of restaurants fail, so it's not normally seen as that much of a black mark.

You'd think they'd look at the long term track record, though.

Good Lord, Will, I walk from the Pioneer Square light rail stop to Feet First offices (Nord Building, one door-stoop past EBC) all the time - it's a four-block walk which you can take about eleven-dozen different ways to make it interesting each time. Five minutes. You're saying people won't walk five minutes - I call horseshit.

@17: On one hand, you're more likely to be accosted by pharmaceutical purveyors by the "sunken ship" parking garage than on many other 5-minute walks.

On the other hand, I can name about a dozen stretches of Belltown, the I.D., and Capitol Hill where you're even more likely to encounter affronts to urban civility.

Seattle, while statistically safe(-ish), is a sketchy city in which to be a pedestrian, and psychological obstacles to walking really do deter pedestrians from otherwise walkable locales.

I think The Stranger's outrage over the Burgess proposal is disproportionate. On the other hand, I've never understood why those who practically wear "I'm-dealing-drugs-and-accosting-passers-by-and-violating-any-number-of-laws-as-we-speak" sandwich boards around are all but ignored by Seattle cops. We've handed huge swaths of urban space over to them.