The cranes are flying

In Seattle, today, not all is well behind the glossy surface. The shops are crowded with shoppers, but actual sales are reported to be unnervingly poor. Towering buildings are being erected by mobs of hard-hatted construction workers -- but, if you notice, no new construction has begun within the past six months, maybe even a year. The streets at lunch hour are packed with office workers, but each day the newspaper carries stories announcing new lay offs.
--Confused Ideas from the Northwest Corner (Dec. 8, 2008)

Yes, it was just six years ago tomorrow that I looked about me and contemplated the likelihood that we were entering a deflationary spiral, one that had already been anticipated by the virtual cessation of all downtown Seattle construction.  The lights, I felt, paraphrasing Sir Edward Grey, were going out all over Seattle.

By 2008, I should have fully internalized the lesson that I first formulated in my small brain back in college -- the lesson that things are rarely either as good or as bad as they seem at any given moment.

As I look around Seattle today -- and this has been true for the past year or two -- I see a virtual forest of building cranes.  The commercial building boom is most noticeable in the South Lake Union district, immediately north of the traditional downtown, but is evident throughout the entire downtown area, and up onto the heights of Capitol Hill.  South Lake Union's dynamism has been spurred largely by Amazon's continued expansion, with three entire blocks adjacent to the retail core being developed for the behemoth's world headquarters. 

But skyscrapers are springing up elsewhere, everywhere -- office buildings, hotels, condominium and apartment buildings.  Moreover, we are witnessing an impressive increase in retail stores and restaurants, opened by businessmen eager to support present and future workers, guests, and residents in these new buildings.

The New York Times published a full page travel article on Seattle last month, offering enthusiastic recommendations for restaurants that didn't exist a year or so ago.

I need to keep my mantra in mind -- it's never as good, as well as bad, as it seems.  Seattle and the Puget Sound area are booming, but much of Washington away from the Sound still suffers from a permanent loss of its traditional logging, fishing, and shipping industries.  And the nation as a whole still suffers from massive unemployment -- with many of the unemployed educationally unprepared for new jobs in the new technological economy.

But life is looking good for most of us in Seattle.  Caution about the future is always important, but so is enjoyment of life at the present. 

The lights have come back on, all over Seattle.  Merry Christmas!