In response to your question "will any spendy restaurants survive in Belltown?":

My husband and I went to Belltown for a spendy dinner on the occasion of his birthday a couple weekends ago. We are not suburbanites who are scared of the city, or wealthy people who only dine at chi-chi restaurants. We live just off Capitol Hill and spend most of our free time there and downtown. We went to XX restaurant (name removed to protect the innocent), a longtime favorite that we reserve for special occasions once or twice a year. In the parking lot around the corner (yes, we drove, horrors!) we were nearly assaulted by some tweaked fuck that first wanted to read us "poetry" and then got all aggro because we didn't want to listen. We had to scoot to a nearby restaurant to escape and then call the cops, who informed us that it would "be a while" before they could address our situation. We waited a minute until he disappeared, and then, since we were early, went in search of a drink before dinner. We made it fine to another place for a drink, but upon leaving for dinner, were again harassed by a complete freak demanding money from us, who followed us for a block, screaming at us the entire way. On our way into the restaurant, there was feces smeared all over the sidewalk. I'm guessing it was human by the size of the pieces and the smell. While at the restaurant, there was a parade of indigents up and down the sidewalk, including a man who passed back and forth in front of the window with his shirt up around his face, scratching his scaly and obese belly, numerous drug deals, a fight between two women on the corner across the street, and a crazy woman who smeared a booger on the window of the restaurant.

We've been going to XX for years, and this is the first time we'd been that it was mostly empty, and also definitely the craziest experience in the neighborhood. And this is coming from someone that worked in Belltown for almost a decade, and has seen it all.

Belltown is in need of some help if it expects the spendy restaurants to stay. If it doesn't want them, then it's doing a pretty good job of shooing them out. I could care less either way, really. Like I wrote, we only go to spendy places a couple times a year, and I'm sure we'll find them in other, calmer more enjoyable neighborhoods for future special occasions.

Also I should mention that my husband and I are both men, and both work out, and are both 6 foot and 170 pounds. It takes a lot for us to be intimidated, but goddamn, Belltown freaked us out this last time.