(The Center Square) – Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell signed two bills on Tuesday to address the downtown area’s vacant storefront challenge and extend permits to prevent the potential loss of thousands of planned housing units.
Council Bills 120771 and 120948 help with Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan, which implements strategies to revitalize downtown by filling empty spaces and converting the historically commercial district into a more residential neighborhood.
“This suite of legislation will remove regulatory barriers and create more opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses to call downtown home while also keeping thousands of units of critical housing awaiting construction afloat,” Harrell said in a statement on Tuesday.
Council Bill 120771 adjusts Seattle’s land use code to allow more variety of street-level uses than retail, bars and restaurants.
Street-level uses now include health, food, and arts-focused businesses like medical offices, art installations, community centers, and commissary kitchens.
Previously, only retail and community hubs were allowed at the street-level to keep sidewalks lively. But those businesses have struggled to return after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Council Bill 120948 amends the 2021 Seattle Building Code to let stalled housing projects move forward for two more years without having to apply for a new permit. The city estimates that the code amendment prevents the potential loss of 29,000 planned housing units amid the region’s affordable housing crisis.
During the press conference on Tuesday, Harrell noted that the affordable housing projects planned for downtown produce about $13.4 million in sales tax and $75 million in “Mandatory Housing Affordability” fees.
According to data from the Downtown Seattle Association, the downtown area averaged nearly 101,000 daily workers last March – the highest daily average since March 2020 when the pandemic started. However, the rate of office workers downtown is still around 55% of the number of workers in an equivalent week in 2019.
In March, the number of occupied apartment units downtown continued to rise to more than 59,000, which is a 4% increase compared to quarter one of 2024 and a 26% increase compared to quarter one of 2019, showcasing progress regarding Harrell’s goal of making the area more residential.
