Durkan outlines plans for downtown Seattle recovery

SEATTLE — Seattle is hardly jam-packed, but there are signs of recovery.

To welcome both visitors and office workers back to downtown, Mayor Jenny Durkan on Wednesday said the city will spend $9 million of federal COVID-19 relief money on downtown recovery, holding “welcome back weeks,” cleaning up trash and graffiti and filling empty storefronts with pop-up businesses.

“This was a hard, hard 16 months. There’s no business, no worker, no family that wasn’t touched,” Durkan said.

The Downtown Seattle Association is spending another $3 million on events, park activations and beautifications.

The push comes at a time of public safety problems, including street crime, a fatal stabbing in City Hall Park, and someone throwing rocks off overpasses at cars traveling on I-5 near downtown.

Because of that, KIRO 7 asked Durkan if encouraging people to return downtown would be a tough sell.

“I think the best sell is what’s behind me now. It’s the people here. People are coming to Seattle,” Durkan said as she stood at the entrance to Pike Place Market.

To keep people coming, business leaders said the city government needs to take both public safety and homelessness seriously.

“We need to step up those efforts because we still have tent encampments in parts of downtown and people suffering in doorways, and that’s harmful to them and also harmful to our ability to reopen,” said Jon Scholes of the Downtown Seattle Association.

“Because we’ll probably run out of boats again,” Johnson said.

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