At a meeting of the City Council’s Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee on Feb. 27, chaired by Council President Sara Nelson, council members voted 3-2 to advance a bill allowing housing in a special zoning district encompassing the city’s two sports stadiums and the area just south. The zone is called the Stadium Transition Area Overlay District (STAOD). 

In a presentation to the committee on Jan. 24, Council President Sara Nelson unveiled a proposed “Maker’s District,” consisting of a mix of housing, retail, and light industrial projects, with a promise to add as many as 990 units of housing, 50 percent of them affordable. Okay, cool, yeah, we need more housing, especially affordable housing. Sounds good.

Not to everyone.

At a hastily organized press conference right before yesterday’s vote, Port Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa, flanked by members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 19, all holding “WE HAD A DEAL” signs, excoriated the proposal.

“Our city has significant needs that we must work together to address, but this is not the solution,” Hasegawa said. “It’s reckless urban planning.”

After her, Curt Nuccitelli, the owner of trucking company Spirit Transport Systems, laid into the plan, followed by John Wolfe, the CEO of the NW Seaport Alliance. Councilmembers Dan Strauss and Bob Kettle, the latter of whom was in attendance, have also cried foul. If the bill does pass full council, the Port has suggested it might sue to block it.

Why are these people so passionately opposed to this plan? It adds housing, it adds breweries, it looks cool—what’s not to love? Well, besides the fact that all of these people oppose anything that could impede commerce at the Port, where they make their money, there’s actually a lot at stake here in terms of housing equity and who gets access to power.

Let’s start with that bit about access to power. As far as the Port and its associated acts see it, the issue of whether to allow housing in the STAOD was settled in 2023 when Mayor Bruce Harrell pushed through his updated maritime-industrial zoning package. Now, suddenly, Nelson has reintroduced the idea, and has done so in a kind of sneaky way by immediately referring it to her own committee rather than Strauss’ Land Use Committee. 

“It could not be more clear that this bill should go to the Land Use Committee,” Strauss said in a phone interview. “This is an abnormal practice that I’ve never seen before. It’s very troubling.”

It’s also very sudden, Hasegawa said, and no one knows exactly why Nelson is bringing it up now. However, as Hasegawa pointed out over and over and over again yesterday, this deal looks real nice for Seattle-born, San Francisco-based billionaire hedge fund manager Chris Hansen, who bought up a bunch of land in the STAOD as part of his failed campaign to #BringBackOurSonics.

Hansen has been sitting on most of that land since 2016 when a key vote regarding the vacation of Occidental Ave stymied what was to be a new arena for a new Seattle Supersonics team. The buildings his WSA Properties holding company owns are home to a smattering of tenants, including Blazing Bagels, Pius Kitchen and Bath, and Tony T’s Sports Lounge. The Maker’s District, Hasegawa suggested in a post-presser interview, is Nelson’s way of helping Hansen get out from under a bad investment, all while handing out a major paycheck to developers and construction companies.

“People deserve consistent, thoughtful public policy that doesn’t make them sacrifice their time, effort and energy to make their voices heard when an out-of-state billionaire wants a new property,” she said during her remarks, before confirming she was referring to Hansen in a subsequent interview.

Now, even if it is a somewhat blatant case of favor-trading, what if team Maker’s District’s gain is also our gain? That is, of course, the agonizing truth about the YIMBY movement: It is often bankrolled by big tech and wealthy developers, but is also in favor of adding more housing during a housing crisis. Sometimes the worst guy (or councilmember, in this case) you know makes a great point.

That’s not what’s happening here, according to Hasegawa. Instead, during the Port’s press conference, she compared citing affordable housing in SoDo to redlining. How is that? Well, she argued, any housing in SoDo would be subject to serious environmental hazards, similar to those plaguing neighborhoods that mix industrial and residential zoning. In places like South Park, to name one of the most notable examples, average life expectancy is 13 years less than the city at large. SoDo in particular, she noted, suffers from horrible noise pollution, air pollution, and extremely dangerous infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians. Putting housing there, especially affordable housing, is akin to recreating all the environmental racism we’ve perpetrated against other neighborhoods.

“To say that we're earmarking [this land] for affordable housing almost makes it worse,” Hasegawa said.

Instead of putting it in the margins, we should be building affordable housing where it’s already nice to live, she contended. Proponents — who include the Mariners and the Housing Development Consortium, along with both Pioneer Square and the CID’s neighborhood organizations, by the way — say it’s actually pretty close to downtown, plus there’s light rail right nearby. 

Nelson responded to the Port’s criticisms of her legislation in a Feb. 27 blog that read, “More housing is needed in Seattle – especially workforce housing near light rail stations and jobs … Bringing all these pieces together will transform an area long associated with empty streets, vacant buildings, and public safety challenges while providing a much-needed solution to Seattle’s housing crisis. And we know we can do it without causing additional adverse impacts on nearby industrial activities.”

Another hot button issue here is truck access. This particular bill would create a special exception for the STAOD allowing residential projects within 200 feet of a “Major Truck Street,” which is not the case for any other Urban Industrial housing in the city. In her Jan. 24 presentation, Nelson argued that there were already plenty of Major Truck Streets with housing on them, Aurora Ave. and Rainier Ave. S among them, where trucks had quite literally kept on trucking. Maybe not the best examples, given what routinely happens to cyclists and pedestrians on those streets, but that wasn’t all her ammo.

The Eastern Washington agriculture industry also showed up in droves to argue against the bill, citing their need to ship fruit, grain, and all the other fat-of-the-land out of our port quickly and efficiently. In her slides, Nelson argued that none of the main routes used by agricultural producers would be affected, showing a map with highlighted routes bypassing the proposed Maker’s District. Another arrow in her quiver is the fact that a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on “Seattle Industrial & Maritime Strategy,” completed in 2022 by the Office of Planning and Community Development, said there would be no net impact to traffic in the area from allowing housing in the STAOD. However, Hasegawa was again not buying it.

Once you zone that for housing, then you're going to have to start building in the neighborhood amenities that [residents] deserve,” Hasegawa said. “They're going to need safety to be able to safely cross the freight corridor. It would look like incorporating bike lanes. It would look like incorporating grocery stores or an elementary school, or what have you. But once you start putting people in there, the city will be obligated to start responding [and] giving them the things that they need to be safe.”

Speaking of safety, Nelson’s other big pitch was that a big mixed-use housing and light industrial development would improve public safety in an area with a pretty bad recent track record on crime. No one really had an issue with that, and Jane Jacobs was probably smiling down on the dias from wherever urbanists go when they die (Holland, presumably). 

All that said, what do you need to do about this thing? What can you do?

Nothing, really. Before the bill goes to full council in March, you’ll have one more opportunity to comment on it, where you can tell the full nine to kill it and put more density into rich North Seattle neighborhoods instead— or build it, if that’s your bag. Just remember that this bill’s primary sponsor is up for reelection soon, and that there’s a lot to be gleaned here about who she’s legislating on behalf of.