“Prostitution is dropping on Capitol Hill,” says Lieutenant Eric Sano, commander of the Seattle Police Department’s vice unit. He says that the neighborhood’s Pike/Pine corridor, between 10th Avenue and Ninth Avenue, has historically been a prostitution hot spot monitored by law enforcement authorities. But now, he says, “Our arrest statistics in the area are down. And 911 calls have also dropped.” Officially, the police department hasn’t pinpointed why prostitution trends are shifting, but Sano speculates that it may result from gentrification in the Pike/Pine neighborhood.
The trend comes to light as officials consider changing the boundaries of six so-called Stay Out of Areas of Prostitution (SOAP) zones, which municipal judges created in the 1980s to curb the illegal sexy times. When women are arrested for prostitution, they’re asked to sign a SOAP order. If they enter one of these zones afterward, they can be immediately arrested and charged with a misdemeanor. But now, it seems, Capitol Hill is no longer the sex destination it once was.
Meanwhile, about two miles northwest, police say prostitution is up near Seattle Center.
Judges have said that while the boundaries of the anti-prostitution zones may shift, the area of SOAP zones should remain even overall. So when one SOAP boundary is expanded, another must shrink, Sano says. “They don’t want to make the whole city a SOAP zone.”
Which is why City Attorney Pete Holmes, on behalf of the police department, is asking a Seattle Municipal Court judge to dissolve the long-held anti-prostitution area on Capitol Hill and expand the anti-prostitution boundaries downtown to encompass an area known by police as “the track.”
“The track” is a roughly one-square-mile section of downtown next to Seattle Center. It overlaps with a current SOAP zone that runs one block on either side of Aurora Avenue North from Denny Way to North 145th Street. The proposed perimeter of the new zone would be Mercer Street to the north, Fifth Avenue North to the west, Fifth Avenue to the southwest, Lenora Street to the southeast, and Westlake Avenue to the east. Last summer, a six-month police sting conducted in the area, called Operation Fast Track, netted dozens of pimps, johns, and prostitutes.
Holmes’s attorneys made their case for the boundary adjustment on May 27 before Judge Fred Bonner, who’s expected to make his decision in the coming weeks. 
Judging by the overkill of personals / lustlab ads on this page (and every other one), looks like The Stranger is the new whorehouse.
I am new to the area and do not know the history of Capitol Hill. Is it really a place that is going through gentrification? It seemed pretty hip to me already.
@3 How can you not know about male prostitutes?!? And your second sentence makes no sense.
Make a red district area and legalize it. Solved.
People call 911 for prostitutes?
I thought 911 was supposed to be for emergencies? Don’t they even answer with something like “911 emergency”?
As America is behind in all aspects of civil life and has been always since it whacked Indians and British and paid the Spanish off its of no wonder that a Internet Comment Forum would generate a multitude of pitiful spits. It should be legalized but it should only be written into law as a “copy” from a nation that has had legal prostitution for some meaningful amount of time.
Modern America is way to dysfunctional to take on a responsibility like legal Sex Jobs?
I am much more scared of a mad cop than a prostitute. I wish there were good looking prostitutes on Capitol Hill instead of all these mentally ill homeless psychos screaming and yelling and asking for money all the time…
@6: if you want a cop to show up, even just to roll by and check things out, you have to call 911. A couple of times I’ve tried calling the non-emergency number to report, well, non-emergency stuff, and both times I was told by the operator that I should have called 911.
@6 – What, you’ve never been THAT horny?
I had no idea there were prostitutes on Pike/Pine and I used to walk round there all the time.
Ms Madrid, to clarify a point in your second paragraph, S.O.A.P. orders prohibit certain people from being in certain areas without a lawful purpose. For example, if you check the S.O.A.P. map, you will note that the probation office to which all people convicted of prostitution-related offenses are required to report is in a S.O.A.P. area.