great pic

I agree with Professor Daub's overall point but if you know anything about Sparky's closure, it probably isn't the best example. Thank god Orphan Andy's lives on.

Eventually a glut of empty storefronts will encourage a saner level of rent for restaurants. Or the restaurant boom will continue after a pause.

Apparently this is a real-world phenomena, much as first-wave gentrification was.
I wonder if air b&b plays a role in this as well?
It would seem so but I have nothing to back that up with.
Perhaps Seattle needs to get ahead of the curve and enhance air b&b regulations?

My guess is unlike the usual Portland following Seattle, Seattle will follow Portland in this case. Food trucks will become the norm for "new restaurants" and even food cart pods and the goal of every food truck will be opening a brick and mortar location. Skillet already did this in Seattle (are there others)?

I've only been in Oregon for (slightly) less than 5 years and Portland restaurants open and close at a whiplash inducing pace and while a good number of food trucks have found brick and mortar locations (that are pretty much just slightly larger than their food truck, because rent in Portland is just as obscene as Seattle), many others just go away. There was a KEXP DJ and her husband who had a food truck in Portland for 7 years and now they are gone (they've been gone for a few years).

Portland's also already coming full circle in that they have begun decimating and destroying the food cart pods in order to build more buildings (not restaurants - hotels and high end condos).

Brilliant analysis and spot on. George Monbiot (who I don't agree with on all things) helped pen a manifesto on housing for the Labour Party that makes a lot of sense:

https://landforthemany.uk/

Unfortunately people voted in Boris Johnson again anyway. But still the "land for the many" is a brilliant combo of capitalism and socialism, individualism and communism. Basically: you allow private ownership and/or renting of the bricks and mortar but communal ownership of the land for the common welfare. A land lease treating land as a public good, to maintain moderate prices for residents.

You could do the same with commercial property so small businesses can thrive. All over the world we see how the current model is broken just as Mudede points out, shining empty towers owned by absent billionaires, rents unaffordable for both residents and small businesses alike. World cities are becoming places where only tourists and flagship chain stores can exist. Manhattan has become a sea of Applebees, Apple stores, and H&Ms.

@1 kristofarian: I agree, but wish that smoked gator was still alive instead to chomp down on Trumpty Dumpty's fat, ugly ass in Moron-a-Lago.

Zoning. You forgot to talk about zoning. Zoning is the problem. The thousands of acres of underutilized land south of the stadiums are wasted in parking lots, mini storage, and tile stores. Up-zone and allow multifamily residential projects that add to the volume of housing and put downward pressure on housing values.

I’ve been a past critic Charles but as someone who spent the last decade in Seattle and the Bay Area, this is an excellent analysis and well cited. I don’t believe in “souls” of a city, but I do believe that people -not architecture or landscape or job markets or political reputations- are the primary reason for vibrancy in urban areas. This sort of social desolation is what I hated about Seattle and areas of the Bay, although CA is more social in my experience and has more places for that social vibrancy to occur. Thanks for this piece. I don’t like Seattle but I wish better for it.

@8: They voted for Boris Johnson because Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party leader, and a passionate opponent of ALL forms of bigotry, was falsely accused of abetting antisemitism in the party-there was no actual increase and only a tiny incidence of antisemitism as all-the vast majority of antisemitism in the UK comes from the right, everywhere from the British National Party and the English Defense League to the Brexit Party to Boris Johnson himself. Boris Johnson wrote a book in 2004 titled 72 Virgins which asserted that the world was run by a series of Jewish conspiracies(his book echoed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion). The groups who falsely accused Corbyn of making Labour "Institutionally anti-Semitic" said nothing about this. The real reason Corbyn was smeared with this despicable charge-the term "racism" was used, even though Jewish people are NOT a race and the idea a "Jewish race" exists is itself an anti-Semitic trope-was that he was the first leader of a major political party in the UK who spoke out in solidarity with the people of Palestine and did not take the Israeli "side" in the Israel/Palestine conflict.

I think your analysis should include two more factors: the decline of 'bricks and mortar' and people retreating to their 'bubbles' (at home/in their cars, stuck to a screen - or just stuck to a screen). the future of wealthy cities like SF and Seattle will be dense, high-price real-estate, serviced by amazon/food delivery/uber drivers. additionally, the dual horrors of Trumpism and impending climate catastrophe are traumatizing people, giving them more reasons to stay in their safe bubbles. some recent research found that people expect interactions with strangers will be unpleasant (so they avoid them), but when these interactions occurred, people were surprised at how well they turned out. it serves the .001% to have people scared, staying inside - and consuming. foxnews wants people to think it's a 'third world hellhole' out there. don't fall for it. as local 'bricks and mortar' disappear, people will need to make the effort to get out and create community if they aren't doing it anymore by default via shopping, going to church, what have you.

This article is missing 2 words: money laundering.

I live in one of Seattle’s less fashionable older neighborhoods, close to downtown. In this neck of the woods the high concept, famous chef, more expensive places favored by the foodies with deep pockets seem to have very short runs. On the other hand, the neighborhood eateries that feature a more modest ambition and price structure and serve the locals are very stable. On our somewhat rare outings to “fine dining” places I am usually disappointed by the meal and shell- shocked by the bill. The analysis in this article appears to focus on the churn in the high end of the market. I think this paints a distorted picture, and does not really portend the collapse of Western Civilization.

As a CPA who had represented MANY small businesses, you can thank the idiots in Seattle for the closures. Many of these owners considered their business a passion and did not make a lot of money, many times barely enough to survive themselves. I believe you will see many more as these wonderful people are forced to close.

The only problem with this is the author doesn’t address the issue with restaurants. 60% of new restaurants fail within the first year, and that number increases to 80% in first five years. This is all around not just Seattle or San Francisco. The failures often are management and owner driven to begin with.

I don’t doubt the author is in the right path, but they left that hole mechanism out of the calculation.

Once again the idea that rich people are buying condos/houses and holding them off the market is getting tossed around as part of the explanation for the high cost of living here. I see this argued over and over again in articles about Seattle, but no one ever cites data. I don't doubt that it has happened some places, for various reasons ($$ fleeing Hong Kong to Vancouver, etc.). Not sure whether those reasons would apply here or not. Has there actually been a study that shows how many of Seattle's housing units are actually vacant?

My brief experience with Beacon Hill corroborates this - in just a short time here a BBQ place closes (one I visited twice a month), and elsewhere a wine tasting shop will open (where I will almost certainly never visit).
Expensive housing is slated for approval everywhere - while the retail goods and services for walk-in customers disappears.

There will always be Canlis and those nice Canlis boys.

@6 The city has already enhanced AirBnB regulations. The regulations went into effect in December 2019.

Jeremy Corbyn lost because he was a horrible campaigner with a message that just didn't sell. That's all.

Jeremy Corbyn lost because he was a hardline ideologue who couldn't sell ice water to somebody in hell. The anti-semitism charge certainly didn't help, but wasn't the primary reason for his failure.

I mean, drop the fucking 'comrade' thing already. Who cares?

sorry for doublepost. the commenting system login system could use work.

Perhaps clean up the Chinese owned buildings being used to offshore income through llc set up by their kids here going to UW with SA cards from working a few weeks of work study.

I don't understand. Why would a landlord set her rent so high that she can't find a tenant to fill it? Eventually, she'll either find one or lower her rent.

If it's true that speculators are driving the price higher than current tenants can afford, then eventually that price will either be born by new businesses filling the spaces left by the old, or it will cause a crash, and then a return to equilibrium. Either way, those spaces will be put to use again. Why would we assume that this is a "terminal" situation, when it looks more like a cyclical one?

@ 27: It is "terminal" because, of course, the sky is falling. Perpetually.

Want to know why restaurants close?

The experience, food, or value sucks. They fail because they don’t have a viable and desirable product. They fail because the way they are coming to market is not successful. Seattle has grown a lot lately but it has issues with change. That’s the simple fact.

Let’s hope those with ideas on how to entice consumers in new ways get their chance to innovate and let’s quit making every reason they don’t less buzz words soup.

Evolve or die.

@5 that is what classical economics predict. Yet walk down 5th Avenue or SoHo in Manhattan, or even Park Slope Brooklyn. Empty stores stay empty for years, until a mega company pays the rent. The modern system that truly is an economy by the billionaires, for the billionaires, not a free market. The "usual" rules of economics don't actually apply if a few oligarchs are running the system for their own benefit.

This system creates a large class of overtaxed, overworked, underpaid people, who exhaustedly elect whoever seems like the strongest man who stirs up tribalism and nationalism. Ironic but expected.

A man who actually makes things ever-worse for most people and concentrates ever more wealth for the elite, whether "left" or "right" until it ends in fascism or on occasion misfires even for the billionaires and results in total meltdown: Johnson, Trump, Duterte, Putin, Chavez, Maduro.

The worse it gets, the less likely a democracy will elect a sensible government. Corbyn / Labour's actual policies were very sensible compared to the Tories.

Wake up sheeple! It isn't just high rents and empty storefronts. Read Thomas Piketty. Follow the money.

Oh, what? Are you saying this influx of development WON’T benefit the people who already live here, and in fact may destroy everything we loved about the city?

Too bad you and Dominic sold it so hard to people back when there was still a chance to do something about it.

This is the best article of yours that I have ever read. Very interesting and it is happening here. I hope we can head it off before all the old places that have character and are good for hanging out in, fall by the wayside.

Good article Charles, it's an interesting viewpoint and few can argue with the widening wealth gap in this city. Money follows money, less of a conspiracy and more of an economic principle and this city has few incentives to encourage risky bets on working class style development.

I blame cars.

“Adapt or die”
Funny, because @29’s sock puppets always whine about the adaption of $15 hamburgers in Seattle.

"Adapt or die" Jessie is Seattle's great innovator and restauranteur. He invented ketchup on pasta and mayonnaise on french fries. You should feel privileged that he offers his valuable time to comment.

@19 I have reservations about that idea as well. Even this UC Berkeley master's thesis, the most comprehensive current source I could find, doesn't uncover much evidence that foreign money parked in empty condos is a significant issue (in San Francisco).

http://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/CR_Final_2.3.19.pdf

@seattleexplorer “Underutilized” is how virtually every neighborhood that supports small industrial business, mercantile and artists is described before it is scraped clean and replaced with the upscale apartment gulag currently plaguing nearly every neighborhood in Seattle. What is underutilized for you is very utilized by the home builders and owners who go to buy tile, because they can actually see and touch it instead of getting a flatbed full of something they didn’t expect delivered via online “shopping.”

@ interested : I have asked this question about the empty storefront of architects and builders many times. What I have been told is that the loans that are granted through the banks are usually structured on a rent that is much higher than that being paid by the tenants who are evicted in an upscale gentrification move. What I am told, and I do not know if it is true, is that if the building rents out the spaces for less than what is determined on their loan agreement they can have their loan called in or the terms reset. I would love to know from developers and real estate people here if this is really true.

Eating out is expensive. Eating out at sit down restaurants is even more so. Throw in 1000% marked up alcohol and only a small % can really afford to eat out. Those who can't afford it go into credit card debt for the pleasure.

Or it could show that Seattle's population is generally getting a skosh older and wiser. When you're first on your own, the thought of actually cooking and eating a meal at home can be anathema (home cooked meals are Mom's domain and you finally escaped that). Freedom means you can eat out every night and nobody will be put out or hurt.

But as you gain a couple of years and become a bit more financially savvy, you realize that it pays to fix your own food and eat at home, at least some of the time. Being able to eat out daily (even if only fast food) is no longer such a big deal because it's costing you dearly (especially in overpriced Seattle). So eating out starts to get relegated to weekends and social occasions only.

Besides, with the high general cost of living in Seattle, many no longer have the disposable income to allow them to eat at restaurants on a frequent basis.

The market became oversaturated because the consumer base has been shrinking.

@40 Purris: I was going to comment on @39 (tempur_tempur's) post, but you summarized everything I would have said so beautifully already. Well said, agreed and seconded. While I feel fortunate to be able to dine out at all, I could never afford to eat out daily. Certainly not every meal. I can't imagine being able to afford the daily costs of living in Seattle nowadays.

Good article. Now bulldoze golf courses so speculators can build more luxury condos as investment vehicles, just like in Belltown and SLU.