Boom town

When I worked downtown, I took my Toyota in for oil changes, tune-ups, etc., to a Toyota dealership in what we then called the Denny Regrade -- the part of Seattle on which Denny Hill had once perched, before it had been washed into Elliot Bay to make room for development that never occurred.

For decades, the Regrade was a desert of enormous parking lots, empty spaces separated  in places by one or two story shops, small industrial buildings, and run-down residences.  Walking to the Toyota dealership from my office building was a matter of only a few blocks, but I felt I was walking from civilization into the abandoned and mostly flattened ruins of a town that had once existed seventy or so years earlier.

The dealership is now gone.  The entire block on which it was located is now an enormous pit -- soon to be the third and final tower constituting Amazon's world headquarters.  The entire portion of the Regrade between downtown and Lake Union -- now renamed "South Lake Union" -- has become a vibrant continuation of the traditional downtown.  But its population is younger and more spirited than the older office workers in the traditional (i.e., ten years or so older) downtown.  They walk faster, they speak more quickly and more articulately, they look more purposeful, than the businessmen, corporate executives, and lawyers to be found elsewhere.  And they know how to code.

These changes have all occurred within the last 15 years or so, but with ever increasing speed.  Every time I walk through the area -- which I do fairly often, simply as a fascinated observer of the urban scene -- I'm amazed at how many new buildings are under construction, and how buildings that were in the initial stages of construction a few months ago have now shot into the sky.

Yesterday, I took the photo reproduced above, looking east down Blanchard Street from the intersection of Eighth Avenue.  Five years ago, only the yellow-hued hotel at the extreme right, seen in the distance on Westlake, existed -- and it had been built only a short time before.  All the other buildings viewable in the photo were non-existent.  Whatever they replaced -- whether small buildings or parking lots -- were so unmemorable that I don't remember them.

And I did not take this photograph from a clever angle, to make the construction appear more impressive than it is.  Behind me, and to my left, is all the new Amazon construction.  It's the same all over South Lake Union.  To only a slightly lesser degree, it's the same all over Seattle.

It can't go on forever, of course.  Amazon is already looking for another city to bear some of the burden of its success.   But these are good times for Seattle.  Nine years ago this month, I wrote a gloomy discussion of Seattle's economic condition, trying to douse my readers' joy over Christmas 2008.

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.

I didn't foresee the rapidity with which construction would resume.  You're right -- maybe I'll write, years from now, that I didn't foresee in 2017 how soon the city's glory years would come crashing to an abrupt halt.

But, right now, for once, I feel optimistic.  I'm delighted to be a Seattleite.  Merry Christmas!