After weeks of pitched debate over the future of housing and industry in Seattle, the Seattle City Council voted Tuesday in favor of allowing new apartments on the edges of the city’s industrial district.
The vote represents a bruising victory for Council President Sara Nelson, who brought the proposal over fierce opposition and accusations of betrayal from many in Seattle’s maritime and industrial sectors, while also splitting the moderate council into factions, for and against.
The final vote was 6-3, with council members Maritza Rivera, Rob Saka, Joy Hollingsworth, Mark Solomon, Cathy Moore and Nelson voting in favor. Councilmember Dan Strauss, Bob Kettle and Alexis Mercedes Rinck voted against.
In Nelson’s telling, the bill is a boon for housing and business in an underused part of the city and could be a necessary conduit to establishing the long-sought “maker’s district” — for small-scale manufacturers of clothing, beer or other artisan goods — just outside of where the Mariners play baseball. Furthermore, housing there is a means to inject positive energy into an area that has seen recent violence.
“It’s important to bring this right now because our housing is only getting worse, and more and more businesses are leaving town,” she said.
Although Nelson ultimately emerged victorious, it came at a cost, splitting a council that is obsessed with appearing unified and pitting unions in the building and maritime sectors against each other.
The Port of Seattle, as well as several of Nelson’s colleagues on the council and a sizable number of state lawmakers, fought her to the end. The bill, they argued, represented an unacceptable encroachment into Seattle’s blue-collar business class and upends a 2023 agreement codifying how industrial lands in the city should be used. Housing, unlike temporary lodging, would bring neighborhood-level complaints about noise and activity to their doorstep, they said, and create a feedback loop of pressure on local elected officials to suppress industrial growth.
“What I see at stake at this moment is the future of our city,” Councilmember Bob Kettle said. “I’ve often said that we need to ensure that we have a viable port 100 years from now, because how important the port is to our economy.”
Sensing the vote was not going their way, opponents of the bill, including several commissioners from the Port of Seattle and Councilmember Dan Strauss, urged a delay on the vote. With more time, it was possible to find a compromise, they argued, and for ongoing planning conversations to proceed further.
They did not succeed.
For a council slate elected on a platform of public safety, its members have now begun each of their first two years fighting over a Nelson bill about something else. Last year it was a proposal to rewrite Seattle’s wage law for app-based delivery drivers and this year it was over whether to rezone the area near the city’s stadiums to allow for housing.
The main area of focus for Nelson’s bill was the property immediately south of T-Mobile Park. Owned by the ultrarich Chris Hansen, where he’d once hoped to build a new basketball arena, the underused blocks were previously zoned for hotels and entertainment, but not housing.
That was not an accident. Two years ago, during negotiations over a broad agreement regulating industrial and maritime lands, the Port of Seattle threatened to walk out if apartments were allowed on the property. To save the agreement, Mayor Bruce Harrell agreed to strip the housing rezone from the final package, which was approved in 2023.
Nelson at the time wanted the housing to remain, but said she held her tongue to not overturn the apple cart. But she and others in favor of apartments there said the mayor’s office told them they could revisit the question in short order.
Nelson took that to heart.
“It was implied to me that that if I want to do this, just wait until some other time,” she said before Tuesday’s vote. “Well, it’s been almost two years, and so I’m advancing it now, because the conditions are only getting worse for housing and small businesses and there’s no time like the present when you’ve got a bird in the hand.”
Nelson’s bill allows for just under 1,000 apartments on the property, half of which must be “workforce” housing, below market rates. It was supported by some local businesses, neighborhood groups, housing advocates and unions in the building trades.
Some proponents, such as the body overseeing the operation of T-Mobile Park, have argued the 2023 agreement excluded their wishes and so feel justified in revisiting the question of housing so quickly.
But for the Port and the labor unions that work in Sodo, Nelson’s bill was seen as a slap in the face. Not only was it viewed as an abrogation of the 2023 agreement, but the process leading to its consideration was rushed.
“To give us such little notice is, I think, a tremendous source of disrespect,” Port of Seattle Commissioner Fred Felleman last month.
The ultimate question is whether housing at the location constitutes a threat to business in the area. A study done by the city in advance of the 2023 agreement concluded largely no — finding that traffic in the area would not be made significantly worse with housing there than with hotels or lodging.
Backers of Nelson’s bill pointed to the conclusion repeatedly, pressing the Port and others to explain why they believe housing would be so much worse than hotels.
“I don’t know why allowing for limited workforce housing is really going to have much of an extra impact than what’s already there with this commercial use,” Councilmember Rivera said in an earlier meeting.
Port representatives say they disagree with the study’s conclusions. Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa said people living in the area is fundamentally different than hotel guests who cycle through. She argued it was unfair to all, residents and workers alike, to put housing there.
“They’re not just coming in for a hotel for a night, and then they’re going to leave,” Hasegawa said. “You’re going to hear from these constituents who are living in and next to an industrial operation.”
The bill is separate from the council’s larger conversation around adding housing over the next 20 years, which is also unfolding right now.
Tuesday’s council meeting was packed with business, labor and industry advocates for both sides, some with signs saying “We Had a Deal” against the proposal, others with signs saying “Maker’s District Now” in favor of the bill.
The council signed off on eight amendments to the bill, including stating the city’s commitment to industrial lands going forward, limiting the total number of apartments on the property to 990, barring housing west of 1st Avenue South and other relatively small changes.
Representatives of the Port of Seattle and the Northwest Seaport Alliance said in a letter they believed the council’s actions could be illegal under the state’s laws regarding environmental review, but have not said whether they intend to file a lawsuit.
