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As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

seattletimes.com

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Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#161

Post by solid_fuel »

hitekker wrote: post #151
lukeschlather wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're looking at national politics, and on that score, yes, the ST is liberal. When it comes to local politics the Seattle Times is conservative. Your objection is a bit like people who object that the Democrats are conservatives, from a European perspective, except this is about the city itself. The current mayor is liberal, the previous mayor was conservative. They're both Democrats and would be defined as libera…

Using local labels to communicate to an (inter)national audience is a bit foolish, I think. In SF, we have a wealthy clique who are locally labeled as “progressives” and who are also contradictorily against new housing. They even veto’d building a new apartment complex on a parking lot! I’d personally call that clique “NIMBY” since their “progressive” label is essentially designed for propagating denialism among the…

> In SF, we have a wealthy clique who are locally labeled as “progressives” and who are also contradictorily against new housing.

Right, but a lot of those folks are probably supportive of gay marriage and women's bodily autonomy, which does make them progressive compared to huge swaths of America even if they have regressive politics on housing. I don't know if the national labels would really be any more useful in this case.

The Seattle Times is the relatively conservative paper in Seattle, but it's still "liberal" in the sense that it happily criticizes Trump and isn't calling for a "straight pride" month.

Realistically the local labels probably paint the clearest picture of the dynamics at play. Seattle Times was pretty strongly opposed to Katie Wilson in the run-up to the mayoral election, and I think that still affects their coverage.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#162

Post by bragr »

siren2026 wrote: post #139
lukeschlather wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're looking at national politics, and on that score, yes, the ST is liberal. When it comes to local politics the Seattle Times is conservative. Your objection is a bit like people who object that the Democrats are conservatives, from a European perspective, except this is about the city itself. The current mayor is liberal, the previous mayor was conservative. They're both Democrats and would be defined as libera…

As a European, Democrats are absolutely not conservative from a European perspective. There are multiple dimensions but at least socially they push everything further to the left than in Europe. (Which is also in my opinion why they are losing elections) Almost every social topic is pushed to the extreme left by the Democrats. Simply look at how many weeks abortion is allowed in blue state and compare with most Europ…

I think you have a particularly poor read on American politics.

>they push everything further to the left than in Europe. (Which is also in my opinion why they are losing elections)

No, the democratic electoral base is consistently and loudly complaining that after the primaries, most democrat candidates become moderates in the general election (even actively courting Republicans) and do not follow through on the primary election promises when elected. This has resulted in major democratic voter apathy and low turnout.

>Simply look at how many weeks abortion is allowed in blue state and compare with most European countries.

This is true, but you have to contextualize it to America, where people have poor or no sex ed, no access to socialized medicine, no time off from work for medical appointments, likely no public transport to the appointments, and very possibly now needing to travel out of state.

>Economically yes, they are more conservative but even that is now changing as well (see: New York and AOC).

That's very much TBD. First, NYC is not very representative of America as a whole. Second, while there has been a small wave of recent democratic socialist victories that has been well covered in the news, it is too soon to say that's a long term trend or just a Trump induced aberration. Mandani is making a splash currently, but he's just a mayor. I like AOC's politics, but she's too much of an outsider to have any real influence in Congress. She probably has more influence on social media than she does in Congress. I'm not aware of any legislation introduced by her actually becoming law. Maybe if this trend continues, there will be enough to form an influential caucus in Congress. However, as of now, no one is really listening to the extreme left in Congress and we've never had an extremely liberal president during my lifetime.

If you disagree, I'd be happy to have you point out some counter examples from party members with actual power (presidents, governors, state legislature leadership, senators, house leadership, committee chair persons or ranking members), but they all tend to be moderate.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#163

Post by solid_fuel »

operatingthetan wrote: post #107
vessenes wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live west across the Salish sea on sunny bainbridge island, natch.

Nice attempt at recovery but your comment still doesn't make sense. You were talking about Seattle, and then suggested Bellevue was "greener pastures." Not that Seattle was "greener pastures" from Bainbridge lol. Also you just admitted that you don't live in Seattle. So I rest my case.

It always plays out like this.

"Downtown seattle is a war zone, if you don't live there you can't understand!"

Then it turns out they live in Enumclaw.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#164

Post by carljungslabtek »

edg5000 wrote: post #137
Schiendelman wrote: post #67

Seattle here, and a real estate nerd. This is almost entirely an artifact of the financial instruments used to pay for these buildings, regardless of any Seattle policy changes. The Seattle Times has always been a conservative rag, and their editorial board hates the new mayor, so they hit the "Seattle is dying" story as often as possible. They've got a long history of this whenever there's leadership they don't like…

Your argument is that it's simply because of dropping prices. Maybe that does explain the bulk of it. But the article seems to suggest it's the WFH transition. How much of the vacancy rate would be explained by that?

I can tell you specifically that Indeed dropped its footprint because of WFH. They moved into that building during covid, then shortly after introduced permanent work from home / hybrid.

The other person’s point about rents probably explains the continued emptiness but WFH definitely drove the abandonment. And that newspaper does suck.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#165

Post by dualvariable »

solid_fuel wrote: post #161
hitekker wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using local labels to communicate to an (inter)national audience is a bit foolish, I think. In SF, we have a wealthy clique who are locally labeled as “progressives” and who are also contradictorily against new housing. They even veto’d building a new apartment complex on a parking lot! I’d personally call that clique “NIMBY” since their “progressive” label is essentially designed for propagating denialism among the…

> In SF, we have a wealthy clique who are locally labeled as “progressives” and who are also contradictorily against new housing. Right, but a lot of those folks are probably supportive of gay marriage and women's bodily autonomy, which does make them progressive compared to huge swaths of America even if they have regressive politics on housing. I don't know if the national labels would really be any more useful in…

If you just focus on capitalism, the apparent paradoxes dissolve.

The wealthy clique in SF aren't really left-wing.

Neither is the Seattle Times.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#166

Post by [deleted] »

solid_fuel wrote: post #161
hitekker wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using local labels to communicate to an (inter)national audience is a bit foolish, I think. In SF, we have a wealthy clique who are locally labeled as “progressives” and who are also contradictorily against new housing. They even veto’d building a new apartment complex on a parking lot! I’d personally call that clique “NIMBY” since their “progressive” label is essentially designed for propagating denialism among the…

> In SF, we have a wealthy clique who are locally labeled as “progressives” and who are also contradictorily against new housing. Right, but a lot of those folks are probably supportive of gay marriage and women's bodily autonomy, which does make them progressive compared to huge swaths of America even if they have regressive politics on housing. I don't know if the national labels would really be any more useful in…

[deleted]

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#167

Post by fzeroracer »

wenc wrote: post #70
vessenes wrote: post #36

If you haven't lived in Seattle, it's hard to understand the problem. It's multifaceted; business climate, generally poor quality of the city itself as a walking / working destination, extremely hostile to business city government, and greener pastures (literally) east across the bay, which happen to be closer to some very large headquarters. The die was largely cast when Amazon called Seattle's bluff during COVID an…

I've lived all over the country, both in big and small cities, and most recently in the Seattle area (across the lake in Kirkland) for 4 years. Seattle has trappings of a city, but socially it doesn't feel like one in the way Chicago and NYC are (ok they're bigger, but hear me out -- it's not the size, it's the people). To me, Seattle feels like Cleveland but with more money. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but…

> Lynnwood WA -- a suburb -- had more energy.

As someone that actually lives in Seattle, this is so funny to read. It comes across as someone that pretends to live in Seattle and there sure are a lot of people that love to pretend they live here.

Seattle has far more energy than Austin does for example and it doesn't really take much digging to get involved in the various scenes we have here. The food scene here does suck though, that's universally true.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#168

Post by scheme271 »

Animats wrote: post #50
skybrian wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article goes into this: > The city of Seattle estimates that, with aggressive incentives, conversions could generate up to 6,000 housing units over the next seven years. At a rough approximation, that would use around a fifth of the city’s present office surplus. > But “potential” is doing a lot of work here. > Newer, larger office buildings, like the U.S. Bank Center, are hugely impractical for conversion, thank…

There have been some attempts to convert office buildings with large rectangular floors into long, narrow apartments so every apartment has a window. It's possible, but difficult.[1] Plumbing and sewerage turns out to be a huge headache. Large office buildings often have all the plumbing and sewerage in a small vertical core. The rest of the building is just flat slabs on columns. Adding a sewer line means punching t…

Another issue is that a lot of those office buildings use post tensioned cables in the concrete slabs so making a hole needs to be done very carefully to avoid the cables. Not only do the cables provide a lot of structural support but breaking a cable is like cutting a stretched rubber band except with steel cables and with literally tons of force stretching the cables.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#169

Post by hitekker »

operatingthetan wrote: post #107
vessenes wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live west across the Salish sea on sunny bainbridge island, natch.

Nice attempt at recovery but your comment still doesn't make sense. You were talking about Seattle, and then suggested Bellevue was "greener pastures." Not that Seattle was "greener pastures" from Bainbridge lol. Also you just admitted that you don't live in Seattle. So I rest my case.

But couldn’t they have lived in Seattle before moving? I don’t follow your logic.

Re: As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers

#170

Post by twoWhlsGud »

dualvariable wrote: post #165
solid_fuel wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In SF, we have a wealthy clique who are locally labeled as “progressives” and who are also contradictorily against new housing. Right, but a lot of those folks are probably supportive of gay marriage and women's bodily autonomy, which does make them progressive compared to huge swaths of America even if they have regressive politics on housing. I don't know if the national labels would really be any more useful in…

If you just focus on capitalism, the apparent paradoxes dissolve. The wealthy clique in SF aren't really left-wing. Neither is the Seattle Times.

If you are bad enough at building coalitions you can lose almost any election regardless of how evil or corrupt the opposition, is too : )

"FRANCIS: Whatever happened to the Popular Front, Reg?

REG: He's over there.

P.F.J.: Splitter!"

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