Before the council even has a chance to consider harsh new restrictions on Seattle bars and nightclubs, Mayor Greg Nickels has been moving forward on another front, gathering information on crime stats and 911 calls through a little-known program known as CLUBSTAT. The program, which parallels similar information-gathering systems for drugs (NARCSTAT) and gang activity (GANGSTAT) gives the city another tool to shut down or oppose the liquor licenses of bars and clubs it perceives as problems.

The mayor's pending club legislation will remain pending for a while, according to council president Nick Licata, who told me nonchalantly that he'll "take a look at it next year. I'm not necessarily sitting on it forever, but I do want to give it serious consideration." The legislation, club lobbyist Tim Hatley says, still has major problems. It still requires club owners to police their sidewalks for crime and littering; still punishes violators with long license suspensions; and still fails to explicitly eliminate good-neighbor agreements, legally binding documents that hold club owners hostage to long, often absurd lists of restrictions. (No open windows; no dancing?) Last week, mayoral spokesman Marty McOmber sent out a press release "correcting" a Seattle P-I story and insisting the legislation does outlaw good-neighbor agreements; however, the only reference to good-neighbor agreements in the law is in a preliminary "whereas" statement with no legal weight.

The mayor's PR team was also in full spin mode on November 13, when head communications officer Marianne Bichsel sent a letter to 82 neighborhood activists and business representatives warning them portentously that unless urban-planning committee chair "Peter Steinbrueck... act[s] on the mayor's proposal" to quarantine all the city's strip clubs to a single area near Georgetown, the city could end up with strip clubs "in inappropriate areas." Just one week earlier, Bichsel noted ominously, "an application was filed with the city to locate a new strip club on North 95th Street and Aurora Avenue North, and there are rumors of more to come." What Bichsel undoubtedly knew, but failed to mention in her fear-mongering letter: The applicant, Bob Davis, had already withdrawn his application, citing concerns about parking in the neighborhood.

A massive crowd of sticker-wearing union members and activists braved snow and ice the night of Wednesday, November 29, to voice their concerns to the council over a massive big-box development at Rainier Avenue South and South Dearborn Street, on the edge of the International District. The Target- and Lowe's-anchored development would include 2,300 mostly underground parking stalls, 400 to 500 new apartments, and roughly 600,000 square feet of retail space. For the project to move forward, the city council must approve an amendment to the city's comprehensive plan (the subject of Wednesday's meeting), upzone the land to 85 feet, change the zoning to neighborhood commercial, and approve the largest street vacation (a giveaway of what are now public alleys) in the city's history.

All those conditions have proved enticing for neighbors, who see them as leverage in their negotiations with the council and developers. Their top priority, according to Dearborn Street Coalition for a Livable Neighborhood member Mary Dzieweczynski: an "enforceable, legally binding agreement between the developer and the community" that would mandate living-wage jobs, affordable housing, open space, and improvements to transit. But Steinbrueck says it's not so simple. "Philosophically, I don't disagree with the issues that have been raised, but we can't use our land-use code to extract those kinds of benefits."