When the mayor’s race began, neither candidate had an arts platform.
The city was forced to speculate about what Joe Mallahan and Mike
McGinn were thinking. How would they deal with music clubs and noise
complaints? Would they give the city’s arts offices more muscle?
Did they understand that bolstering a city’s culture attracts thinkers
and businesses, makes money, and improves life overall?
“No, they didn’t,” says David Brown, executive director of Pacific
Northwest Ballet (which just won a Stranger Genius Award). “Culture
was conspicuously absent from the early conversations.” So the
culture constituency began making noise, publicly and privately,
arguing that it mattered and could leverage money and votes (like the
city’s 21,000 professional arts workers). They asked that cultural
stewardship get a seat at the table.
The candidates responded: McGinn released a five-point
culture platform in late September, and Mallahan released his
four-point plan last week. “Eventually,” Brown says, “they told us what
we wanted to hear.”
The Mallahan plan: 1. Support the city’s Office of Arts &
Cultural Affairs (OACA) and the Office of Film + Music (refuting a wave
of negative press after Mallahan—allegedly—suggested
cutting OACA). 2. Deal with the noise wars between residential
developers and the preexisting nightclubs they’re building around. 3.
Replace the viaduct with a traffic tunnel to, uh, prevent traffic jams
(an irrelevant potshot at McGinn’s transportation
platform). 4. Involve artists in designing infrastructure projects;
push for incentives and zoning amendments so developers will
preserve/build arts spaces along with their condos.
The McGinn plan: 1. Protect the OACA budget and lift it when the
economy permits. 2. Increase arts investment from the city, including
targeted capital infusions. 3. Designate cultural districts and push
incentives for developers to preserve/build arts spaces. (More
specifically, support recommendations from the Cultural Overlay
District Advisory Committee, or CODAC, a group of arts and housing
folks from Liz Dunn to Michael Seiwerath to Pat
Graney—people worth listening to.) 4. Include arts and music
education in Families and Education Levy proposals. 5. Do more
research. That sounds boring, but we don’t fully understand how arts
funding improves the city’s life and economy. The more we know, the
better the policy.
Their platforms are similar, but McGinn’s is more grounded and
specific, and it shows familiarity with the work the culture
constituency has already done. And it doesn’t mention the tunnel,
though Mallahan is now adopting that albatross as his own. (My own
viaduct proposal: If and when it goes, keep a portion for open-air
concerts—sitting up top at sunset would be fantastic.)
The fact that the candidates launched these platforms at all shows
they’re paying attention. That alone is a small victory. 
The tunnel is extremely relevant to the arts. No tunnel, no viaduct (McGinn’s plan) = unbearably snarled traffic. Have YOU ever been stuck in a car in frozen traffic with a five year old, a two year old, and a trip to the zoo in the plans on a warm summer day? Take a bus? Are you KIDDING? Families will stay home in droves rather than deal with the frustration. The Aquarium, the zoo, the ballet, the Pacific Science Center– all rely on families coming in to partake of these experiences. When families come, they buy lunch and maybe a few souvenirs. McGinn’s militant anti-car plan has ripple effects far beyond reducing single occupancy vehicle usage. He would freeze the city.
@1 True. We will need to get really good stereos in our cars if McGinn gets elected, so we can still be part of the music scene in Seattle.
+! @ More Pie. It’s a HUGE failure to not recognize how important the tunnel is to the arts–especially given the vast number of arts groups clustered downtown.
Must The Stranger blindly side with everything McGinn puts out there? I’m an artist, and I’ve read both platforms. A few things make me side more with Mallahan, including his support of arts spaces as distinct business which need to be supported — so they can keep their doors open — rather than buried by regulations.
@3: with no offramps or onramps to/from those downtown arts (OSP, SAM and Benaroya are all I can think of in downtown proper; unless you mean the occasional Moore show and the (ha) Market Theatre…), how exactly would the tunnel plan serve the ARTS? An express tube past the waterfront serves art how?
In any case, VAST may be overstating it. The VAST number of arts groups (dance, theatre x 4, opera, shakespeare, sculptures, Vera) are arguably in lower Queen Anne [Cap Hill, quiet, you], which (if you argue it’s served at all) is served by a part of 99 that’s already OUTSIDE the TUNNEL/VIADUCT zone. Most access is to/from broad, denny, western and mercer, not 99.
@1; yeah, cause the RTE 5 to the zoo is sooo inconvenient from downtown now…
Not sure what a trip to the zoo has to do with ARTS though. That was weird. PSC?? Imax isn’t the kind of ‘art’ The Stranger is thinking about. The Aquarium?? Perhaps you mean EDUCATION or peripherally, CULTURE? Even then, what does a tunnel (or even the current viaduct for that matter) have to do with the ARTS?
Honestly though, the organizations you list would probably prefer visitors who take care of the environment (by not driving everywhere); you and your SUV aren’t exactly the ideal target market if you can’t figure out how to park at Pacific Place (or home) and take the #5. More likely, you’re the kind of ass who thinks these places are de facto daycare.
Please cite data proving that non-tunnel, non-earthquake-hazard plans for highway 99 = snarled traffic forever??? Better yet, just run a live surprise test: let’s close 99 one day and see what happens…, hmm? I bet , just bet, people …what’s the word…. adapt!
With proper planning, like light and one-way street coordination, they’d do better than that.
I’m a surface option person myself: Ms Moon’s plans were the best yet. Besides, that’s a plan that has real live examples, in actual cities, of success (SF) as opposed to tunnels of never-before-attempted scale and siting (Boston).