Within the late Nineteen Sixties, Pike Place Market was saved by a band of native residents led by Allied Arts of Seattle. They rejected the gleaming sketches of city redevelopment in favor of the gritty actuality of the Market: A jumble of previous buildings, knit collectively by Pike Place, internet hosting farmers and fishermen and serving an area public. In 1971, Seattle voters accepted the Pike Place Market Historic District Initiative.
Immediately, Seattle’s distinctive residing landmark, Pike Place Market, thrives in a downtown struggling to recuperate from pandemic closures. Not just a few polished pedestrian shopping center, its energetic and gritty mixture of pedestrians, automobiles and supply vans has existed since its founding and was deemed important to the Market’s continued well being and survival within the authentic Grasp Plan guiding the Market’s redevelopment.
Now, as soon as once more, a well-liked concept, “an incredible pedestrian expertise,” threatens to break the distinctive operate and character of the Market. Whereas the continued pilot undertaking closing Pike Place to vehicular visitors has been a boon to pedestrians, it threatens each the native farmers who present the Market’s wealthy bounty of native produce and the native prospects whose purchases they depend on.
The smallholders have restricted storage capability and require common resupply deliveries all through their day, whereas native prospects depend on fast and inexpensive vehicular entry to the Market, together with free parking. Not solely does closing Pike Place to most vehicular visitors disrupt this successful components, but it surely creates a brand new hazard, provided that supply and emergency autos should usually entry Pike Place day by day.
Earlier than the road closure pilot undertaking, Market pedestrians have been ready to come across autos. Now, some pedestrians mistakenly consider that the undertaking bans all visitors. Consequently, they act shocked and confused when encountering autos, rising the potential for accidents. It could be useful to offer enhanced signage alerting folks that the present visitors experiment means fewer autos on Pike Place, not zero autos.
Allied Arts Basis shouldn’t be against increasing pedestrian entry on Pike Place, particularly in the course of the busy summer time season. Nevertheless, we urge the Market’s Preservation and Improvement Authority to steadiness the general public good thing about expanded pedestrian zones with the important aim of supporting the wants of native farmers and buyers, sustaining the combo of visitors that has characterised the Market since its founding. That visitors has sustained the Market as a real market serving not solely summer time and cruise ship vacationers however the whole metropolis of Seattle.
Our understanding is that the PDA has not submitted an utility to the Market Historic Fee for (retroactive) approval of the pilot pedestrian undertaking. That’s unlucky, as a result of the distinctive governing construction of the Market, created by the 1971 residents initiative that saved it from the wrecking ball, assigns the MHC the last word authority to approve or reject any adjustments proposed to the Market’s design, planning and land makes use of.
Lately, the historic fee’s authority has been eroded by different businesses, together with the Division of Neighborhoods. We urge the event authority to behave shortly and search the MHC’s approval for the road closure. Furthermore, the MHC’s authority have to be totally restored, going ahead, to make sure that the Market’s subsequent 100 years will likely be as important and profitable as its first 118 years.
