Religion
God has finally come to Belltown. Tabella, Mayor Greg
Nickels’s least favorite nightclub, has been purchased by the
God-fearing, homosexuality-curing, dinosaur-disbelieving folks at Mars
Hill Church. Tabella—often blamed for violence in the
neighborhood—had been the focus of Mayor Nickels’s war on
nightlife. The city has been working to revoke Tabella’s license
ever since the club received citations for five liquor violations in
September. Mars Hill, which already has campuses in Ballard, Shoreline,
Wedgwood, and West Seattle, will purchase the Belltown site for $3.95
million. JONAH SPANGENTHAL-LEE
Restrictions
Environmental groups including Futurewise, the Transportation
Choices Coalition, and the People’s Waterfront Coalition are supporting
Mayor Greg Nickels’s plan to limit commercial, retail, and residential
development in lands zoned industrial because, in the words of the
PWC’s Cary Moon, “Part of smart growth and density and compact
communities is keeping good jobs in the city.” Currently, the
city estimates that industrial businesses bring in $31 billion in
revenues every year; the vacancy rate for industrial land, meanwhile,
is a very low 5 percent. Pushing industrial uses out to places like
Kent isn’t the answer, Moon
says; building density in
underutilized residential parts of Seattle—where 75
percent of residential land is zoned single-family—is.
ERICA C. BARNETT
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