From the sales brochure for Pike/Pine’s Harvard Market shopping center real estate listing
The current roster of Seattle BIA assessment areas
The effort to create a new Pike/Pine Business Improvement Area that would add a special assessment for property owners to pay for safety and cleanup resources in the area isn’t dead but the neighborhood’s leading chamber of commerce is no longer leading the charge to organize the zone.
CHS last reported in December on the campaign to create the new BIA as District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth backed the effort with a $50,000 grant to help continue the multi-year process led by a group of neighborhood business interests including the GSBA chamber of commerce working with the Seattle Office of Economic Development.
Officials say the campaign is moving forward but GSBA has stepped aside. Earlier this year, representatives for the GSBA informed CHS they would no longer be a point of contact for the proposed Pike/Pine BIA as the city has begun working directly with a stakeholder group that also has had a strong voice in shaping the policies around the Crisis Care Center being prepared to open in 2027 at Broadway and Union including Jill Cronauer of Hunters Capital, Liz Dunn of Dunn & Associates, and Don Blakeney, a property owner and part of the Cal Anders Park Alliance.
Erin Fried, a consultant who runs the 15th Ave E BIA, was hired as a project manager for the Pike/Pine effort.
Fried tells CHS the Pike/Pine BIA continues to make progress but remains in planning stages.
Determining the borders of a Pike/Pine BIA will be one of the challenges before any legislation moves forward. An effort at creating one huge BIA covering the entirety of Capitol Hill was a recent disaster.
Nearly a decade ago, the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce backed down after a years-long fight against smaller Capitol Hill property owners over a planned expansion of the 1986-born Broadway BIA that would have included the neighborhoods around Summit/Bellevue, Olive and Denny, Pike/Pine, 12th Ave, 15th Ave, and 19th Ave. The expended energy and flagging membership contributed to the chamber’s shutdown months later.
The effort around creating a Pike/Pine BIA has continued as the neighborhood has struggled with drug use and street disorder. Last month, CHS reported on tepid optimism that public safety conditions have improved as staffing at the East Precinct has strengthened and new policing strategies have been implemented. Other longer-term investments around improving and activating Cal Anderson Park may be helping. The Harvard Market shopping center’s new ownership has also shifted the way security, maintenance, and beautification takes places around the Pike at Broadway property.
Those new major property owners will also bring new voices to the BIA effort.
In May, CHS reported on a buyer emerging for the Harvard Market property as the two-level center and parking facility at Broadway and Pike was acquired for $14.2 million by San Diego-based developer Tourmaline Capital.
We don’t know, yet, what Tourmaline thinks about a potential neighborhood BIA and tax assessment on its newly acquired Seattle property. Representatives from the company haven’t returned CHS’s messages since the spring deal went down.
For now, there are no next steps to report for the proposed Pike/Pine BIA.
Subscribe to CHS to help hire writers and photographers to cover the neighborhood. CHS is a pay what you can community news site with no required sign-in or paywall. To stay that way, we need you. Become a subscriber to help us cover the neighborhood for $5 a month — or choose your level of support
