Comments

1
I spent most of 2003 walking up and down Boren from First Hill down to Cascades (now called South Lake Union) to my shitty warehouse job. At that time, the REI flagship store was there, but nothing else. It was a decrepit neighborhood; unmaintained streets breaking way and revealing the old streetcar lines, georgetown-level rents, and plenty of tweakers and crackheads.

Even then, it was highly apparent that things were changing. Paul Allen's park idea had flopped, but he'd owned most of that land for nearly a decade by '03. People were clamoring that Georgetown would be the new Capitol Hill. Construction cranes were abundant, both in that neighborhood, and throughout downtown Seattle.

Instead, Cascades became the new Belltown, and Georgetown never quite popped off.
8
We all get nostalgic for certain periods in a city's life, and it's usually nostalgia for that time that you first discovered it. I can bore the hell out of people reminiscing about how amazing the Seattle of 1976 was to an eleven year old, but I try to restrain myself.
9
@4 A forgotten truth. All those newly minted millionaires did what they were supposed to do with that money, which is to sock it into real estate. Unfortunately, having that many people with excess cash hitting the market totally perverted values. The easy lending that came later just made things even worse. The boom from 2013 was started on a still distorted market.
10
I think you're painting with an awfully broad brush, Sir Vic. I have quite a few associates who became wealthy by buying real estate in the cash-strapped 70's, mostly for themselves as housing. I do have one friend who bought up a good chunk of the West Seattle Junction and downtown Burien while working at the old packing house. He was just thrifty and never expected to make much off of it, and now he's a multi-millionaire.

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