Transportation, Waterfront, and Seattle Center Committee 5/21/2026

Good.

All right.

Looks like we have courtroom, so.

Okay.

Good morning.

The May 21st, 2026 meeting of the Safety, Transportation, Engineering Project, Sports and Experiences Committee will come to order.

It is 9.32 a.m.

I am Rob Saka, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Kettle.

Here.

Councilmember Lin.

Councilmember Linz here.

Councilmember Rink.

Present.

Councilmember Foster.

Here.

Chair Saka.

Here.

Chair, there are five members present.

Excellent.

All right.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing and seeing no objection, the agenda is hereby adopted.

Good morning, colleagues, members of the public.

Welcome and thank you for joining us today.

Exciting meeting.

Very stacked agenda and ambitious as always.

First and foremost, In addition to the fact that we do have a lot to talk about today, I want to begin by acknowledging what is going on across the street.

The King County Council is considering a new 0.1% sales tax administered through the King County Transportation District.

There's a pending amendment on the table right now that would limit the amount of revenue Seattle receives from this tax to 15%, which estimates reflect would be less than half the amount of money Seattle taxpayers would contribute.

Now, Seattle's definitely willing to pay our fair share, but receiving less than half of the potential revenue that we contribute to the broader collective good is a bit concerning.

So my office is tracking this legislation closely, respecting a separately elected government, working with partners, including our, what is it, Office of Director Hashimi, whatever that office is. and working closely with partners, Office of Intergovernmental Relations.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

And I appreciate your engagement and leadership on this as well, Councilmember Kettle, in any event.

So we're monitoring it.

Stay tuned.

We do have a very ambitious agenda before us today, again, with four critical items.

The first is a briefing and discussion about the urgent opportunity we have collectively to address the renovation and modernization needs at Seattle Center.

Earlier this year, the Seattle Times published an article about the maintenance issues at Seattle Center.

The headline read, Seattle is fraying.

Will the city pay to fix it?

Well, folks, the answer to that question today is an emphatic yes, at least in part.

when factoring in potential non-city investments through public-private partnerships.

Seattle Center is our city's hub for creative expression, cultural diversity, and civic life.

And it is our responsibility to invest in it for our future.

The key unanswered questions are how we will pay for it and specifically when.

This briefing and discussion will center around those two questions.

Our second agenda item is a joint mayoral and council resolution that, among other things, acknowledges the great imperative to restore, renovate, and revitalize the Seattle Center campus once and for all.

Anticipates a decision on a bond measure to fund its capital investment no later than 2027. commits to exploring all viable funding options to support Seattle Center's modernization, including establishing, again, robust public-private partnerships.

In April, Council passed bold new legislation that my office developed and co-wrote with Mayor Wilson and which unequivocally declared that Seattle is ready for an NBA team.

We know that Climate Pledge Arena today is ready to welcome a new NBA franchise.

This historic bill highlighted a number of key factors that demonstrate our readiness, resolve, and enduring commitment to bring back our Sonics once and for all.

Again, we know Climate Pledge Arena is NBA-ready today.

That said, I believe that making this funding commitment to restore and modernize Seattle Center on which grounds the Climate Pledge Arena sits and through which fans will pass before and after games is another critical step towards bringing back our Sonics.

It's literally an opportunity to back our prior words and value statements with concrete, tangible investment in dollars and a specific timeline.

Even this won't be the decisive factor, but hopefully it'll be a nice cherry on top, so to speak.

We're not messing around.

If I can paraphrase a famous proverb, the best time to do maintenance work on Seattle Center was 20 years ago, at least.

The second best time is now.

And we're not gonna continue to kick this can down the road.

Third on the agenda is an important update from our executive department partners about unpermitted street vending.

Colleagues, you'll recall last fall during our annual budget process, I proudly sponsored legislation requesting the mayor's office to lead a comprehensive interdepartmental review, policy review of unpermitted food and merchandise vending.

Also last fall, this council expanded resources available for enforcement of unpermitted street vending by approving the hiring of three additional enforcement FTEs within SDOT.

Today, we will be hearing from central staff and a great group from the interdepartmental team put together by the mayor's office to hear about the status of those recent budget investments their implementation and our city's plan to better address unpermitted vending in our public right of way.

Fourth and finally on our agenda is a possible vote on a petition to vacate a specific alley in Greenwood that we heard during last committee meeting.

So such an ambitious agenda, again, as always.

Why?

Why is it another ambitious agenda?

Because World Cup starts next month.

On June 15th, which is just 25 days from today, Belgium and Egypt are squaring off in the first of six matches that will be played in Seattle, District 1 to be specific.

Soccer fans from around the world will be converging onto our city Many of them will head to the Seattle Center campus as part of our distributed fan experience model, whether it be for purposes of attending FIFA events and activations that will take place there or just to visit our iconic Space Needle.

The time is now to ensure that we have a plan in place to fund the maintenance needs on the campus today and tomorrow.

Thank you.

So let's go.

We will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda and within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up today?

Chair, we currently have one in-person speaker signed up and there are two remote speakers.

Awesome.

Each speaker will have approximately two minutes.

We'll start with the in-person speakers first.

Clerk, can you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they're registered.

Speakers will alternate between sets of in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period has ended.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open.

We'll begin with the first speaker on the list, Stu Hennessey.

Thank you.

Good morning, council members.

This is regarding the supplemental small project transportation safety improvements.

I'm here in support of a growing number of citizens of West Seattle District 1. who are experiencing a dangerous street crossing at 23rd Avenue Southwest and Southwest Delridge Way.

This short residential family street has become a pass-through for hundreds of drivers a day who use it to avoid controlled intersections along Southwest Delridge Way and Southwest Andover Street.

Because it is an open access to Delridge Way and the on-ramp to the West Seattle Freeway, it induces a great amount of cut-through traffic that is a danger and annoyance to the residents that live on the street, 23rd Avenue Southwest.

This also induces more traffic along 21st Avenue Southwest, which is the route of the Delridge Highland Neighborhood Greenway and the entrance to the Pathfinder School.

At the end of the 23rd Avenue Southwest is a bike path leading to the West Seattle Bridge Trail.

This crossing is a severe risk for both cyclists and motorists.

The angled street does not allow clear visibility of traffic traveling north on Derritch Way toward the West Seattle Freeway on-ramp.

This forces drivers to block the bikeway to see approaching traffic while waiting for the traffic to clear.

The drivers are often focused on looking to their left and never see the bike riders coming downhill from the West Seattle Bridge Trail.

This is also a hazard for motorists in the northbound Delridge Way.

Traffic is already approaching on-ramp acceleration speeds to the freeway.

The tight corner makes most of the drivers overshoot the lane and then partially go into the through lane on the edgeway that goes to Spokane Street.

This induces traffic from this street being open to the West Seattle Freeway on-ramp comprises mostly of drivers trying to avoid traffic control measures and are often most likely in a rush to drive over the speed limit.

This concern of the residents that live on this short, narrow street and have voiced their concern and are on these petitions I have provided you today.

It is not very, it did not take me very long to gather 150 plus signatures.

Many of the signatures commented too many close calls.

West Seattle Bike Connections believes that corrections should be made when there are too many close calls and not wait for disasters to occur.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Hennessey.

And feel free to, if you have written comments or the petition, a physical copy.

Oh, yep, there we go.

Submitted for our file.

Thank you.

We'll now go to our remote speakers.

We'll start with Clive Hayward.

Mr. Hayward, please press star six.

Mr. Hayward, if you could please press star six to speak.

Rebuild waterfront is more than 28 years yet are limited to only five designated protected species locations.

that is not meaningful access.

Seattle Centre's security personnel have said on-camera to be stated, not seen an explanation of why these locations are closed, evidence support, what is the best respect for New York's 14th, why there is no meaningful access.

Safety, emergency, and pedestrian access matter, restrictions on speech, to be legally responsible for meaningful engagement.

Seattle and Seattle Centre have already lost force of legislation for this exact issue.

Strictly street performers in the public space.

City cannot repeat that mistake on the waterfront.

It should not favour released or readily generating uses over exclusive opportunity.

They welcome engagements but engagement means actually meeting with us, explaining the policy.

If this is committed to the Constitution and policy on the agenda and explain it

Okay, thank you Mr. Hayward.

Our next speaker will be Howard Gale.

Mr. Gale, please press star six to speak.

Good morning.

Howard Gale, District 7. The first two items on today's agenda involve a discussion and the proposed Resolution 32205 regarding renovations at Seattle Center.

Resolution 32205 endorses a significant modernization project for the armory at Seattle Center.

After the major armory renovation during 2011 and 12, there was a concerted effort to make the armory inhospitable to the unhoused focusing on targeting certain behaviors, selectively targeting the unhoused for resting or sleeping, and denying people access to the newly installed AC power outlets, a critical need for the unhoused by installing lock covers on every publicly accessible outlet in the Armory.

The Armory then remains the only place in Seattle besides the downtown library with more restricted access and hours for significant numbers of the unhoused to congregate, see shelter, have social interactions, keep their belongings safe, and recharge their phones and computers.

These hostile acts came about as a result of decisions made by former Seattle Center Director Robert Nellum, decisions fueled in part by a management contract with Levi Restaurants, part of a huge multinational British food services company who advised that attracting high-end restaurants with corresponding clientele to the food court would not succeed with unhoused folks present at the Armory.

I therefore recommend that Resolution 32205 include provisors to ensure that the Armory and all of Seattle Center be welcoming and accessible to all users and to also include the unhoused in decision making.

Based on what happened from 2011 to 2015, there should be provisos and close monitoring of any private investments or contracts to avoid these entities from shaping policies affecting how anyone is treated at Seattle Center.

These providers should address concerns around access to all amenities, AC outlets, Wi-Fi, bathrooms, seating, etc., the creation of hostile architecture and how private security interacts with marginalized people.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Gale.

All right.

Looks like there are no more registered speakers, so we will now proceed to our items of business.

Will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, briefing and discussion, urgent opportunity to address Seattle Center renovation and modernization needs.

Thank you.

Will our presenters please join us at the table?

Good group here today, assembled.

And I think we have at least one panelist joining us virtually as well.

So exciting group while everyone gets settled in.

I want to share some brief observations about the Seattle Center that I learned in the first few months as assuming the council chairmanship of the Seattle Department, that is, Seattle Center, and taking multiple tours and site visits, in my sort of day job, and I'm always there regularly with my family.

I love the place and the space.

It's great for families.

It can be even better.

But also speaking with literally hundreds of stakeholders about it over the past few months alone, it's very clear to me that after 60 years of continuous use, much of the Seattle Center's core infrastructure has aged significantly Many facilities now require substantial reinvestment to remain accessible, resilient, and relevant.

Core systems across the campus have experienced decades-long deferred maintenance challenges and are operating far beyond their intended lifecycle, increasing the risk of disruption to one of the city's most iconic civic assets.

Very clear that we can no longer take a pass-the-buck approach and pass the buck on to future decision makers in the city to find a way to address the significant needs or not.

It needs critical work and that work officially kicks off today.

Speaking of work and labor, that's why I also want to thank our labor partners for joining us today and the terrific work you all do to support our local economy.

We know that labor unions strengthen Seattle's economy by raising wages, improving benefits, and supporting safer workplaces.

Strong unions help reduce wage gaps, expand economic mobility, and increase consumer spending.

They also support workforce training and apprenticeship programs that sustain Seattle's construction and manufacturing industries.

Folks, this is about more than beautifying and maintaining a vibrant public space that so desperately needs it.

This is about more than investing in our local economy, strengthening our culture and civic pride, enriching our public gathering spaces for working families and our youth, or even helping to play a tangential role in bringing back our sonics.

It's also about the opportunity to create more good union good-paying jobs and enhanced quality of life.

This is about getting hammers in hands, shovels in the ground to keep paychecks coming into our local workforce.

But again, don't take my word for it.

That's why we have such an exciting panel today.

Quick run of show here.

Panelists, in a moment, please introduce yourselves, including the one online.

And then we will have a a presentation, a deck shared by Seattle Center, and then we'll do just a round robin if everyone can chime in from your perspectives and share about this opportunity and the critical need directly from your perspective.

That would be great.

So panelists, we'll start right here.

Welcome.

Good morning, Chair.

Thank you.

Brian Surratt, Deputy Mayor.

Good morning.

Thank you all for having us today.

Randy Engstrom, Acting Director of Seattle Center.

Good morning.

Nicole Grant, Director of Government Affairs for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 46, Seattle.

Good morning, Council.

Monty Anderson, representing 25,000 construction workers here in Seattle, King County Building Trades.

Good morning, Council.

Idle Brunswick of the North Coast State's Regional Council of Carpenters, representing 57,500 carpenters.

Pleasure to be here with you today.

Rob Johnson, Executive Director of Seattle Center Foundation, OGD4.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Go ahead.

Acting Director Engstrom, feel free to- Oh, sorry.

One other person.

Let me be- Online.

Yes.

Online, Jennifer Bacon, I'm president of IATSE Local 15. We represent the stage hands, the stage technicians who help make the events at the Seattle Center happen every week, every summer, many different things we work on there to make it a good place to go.

Thank you, Ms. Bacon, love our stage hand partners.

All right, thank you so much.

I know that Seattle Center is a place that's familiar to many of you, but just to run through a high level of who and what we are, it's a 74-acre campus, including 40 acres of green space that's a destination for most neighborhoods in the city and most regions throughout the state and visitors from all over the world.

We host between 11 and 12 million annual visits every year, the most visited cultural destination in the Pacific Northwest.

We're an economic engine that represents $3.3 billion in regional economic activity.

We support over 19,000 jobs in the creative, cultural, tourism, hospitality, and event sectors.

We're home to over 30 independent organizations.

Arts, sports, culture, and entertainment all come together at the campus.

We're largely self-funded.

We generate 70% of our own revenue to cover the expenses of running the department year over year.

We are very proud to manage Waterfront Park, which is a really wonderful resource down on the waterfront, welcoming another 9 million visitors a year where we do the maintenance operations and public safety.

We have over 240 full-time staff, over 500 intermittent and seasonal staff that do all functions of the campus from trades and technical facilities maintenance to programming and event management and everything in between.

and we work with 10 critical labor partners, many of whom are here at the table or virtually.

We're very proud to be in deep partnership with our union partners.

This is our vision and our mission.

I won't read it to you because it's annoying when people read what's on our PowerPoint.

But Seattle Center has been an anchor and a gathering place for this city for its entire history since 1962. It's where we filled the Fountain Pavilion with flowers on 9-11.

It's where we protest.

It's where we celebrate.

It's where we come together.

It's one of the most democratic spaces in the state of Washington.

We recently launched a strategic plan, a 10-year plan that a lot of folks in this room helped to make happen, and it's a really thoughtful vision.

One, the goal number one is really about maintaining that cultural heart of the city, which is about how we drive and sustain private investment and private activity for public experience on the campus.

The second is how we reinvest in the campus as a gathering space.

That's a lot of what we're going to talk about here today.

we do a lot of amazing things on the back of infrastructure that is in most cases well beyond its useful life and we are hoping that we can see public investment in that infrastructure and the third is building and maintaining a long-term sustainable economic model for the campus itself and for the department and the organizations that call it home So about some of our critical repair and infrastructure needs, a lot of the core buildings, the Armory, the Children's Theater, the Seattle Rep, the Northwest Rooms are at or well beyond their useful life.

A lot of these facilities were built in 1962 for the World's Fair, and in some cases only intended to last for three years.

that was a long time ago.

Available public funding has been very limited over the past two decades.

There hasn't really been a significant investment in the campus in a meaningful way since 1991. As my friend Rob Johnson likes to say, in 1991, he was in seventh grade and he now has a seventh grader.

That is where we find ourselves.

And I'm very, very proud of the work that the team continues to do, but it is incredibly inefficient and costs more money to do it on top of infrastructure that's at risk of critical failure at any given moment.

The last voter approved levy, like I said, was in 1991, and that was for $25 million, which really is only scratching the surface of the need.

Things that can happen as a result of this investment are addressing the critical needs at places like McCaw Hall, the Armory, the Exhibition Hall, as well as the Children's Theatre, as I mentioned in the Northwest Rooms.

We have an opportunity to decarbonize the campus.

We represent our mighty steam plant, represents 16% of the carbon footprint for the city of Seattle, which is not something that we want to see happen long term.

So we'd really love to not only decarbonize the campus, but see all the union jobs that are going to come along with that work and the maintenance of that work going forward.

We can elevate the heart of the campus to continue to be a destination for locals and visitors alike, transforming the Armory into a more permeable, more dynamic space that can host more events and offer more to community and the festivals that occur on campus, expand the Artists at Play Playground to really be a destination, upgrade the International Fountain and all the fountains that exist along the campus, to preserve and enhance the Science Center courtyards and the arches, one of the iconic spaces that it's so great that now the gates are down and if we can get the pools back working, it would be even better.

And plug and play infrastructure, we host hundreds and hundreds of events all over the campus.

It's incredibly inefficient to set up and tear down generators and electrical infrastructure and fencing event over event.

We could actually modernize and improve the infrastructure that exists so it could be plug and play.

Some of that's already happening with the investments in Memorial Stadium, which is going to be really exciting.

And then, you know, this campus was built to either keep people out or keep people in, depending on how you think about it.

And 62, I mean, it was an armory.

And we really want to connect to downtown, to the surrounding neighborhoods, to South Lake Union, and to the waterfront.

You know, with the Elliott Bay connection, there's going to be about a four block gap between the new waterfront park and the campus itself.

And we really want to be connected physically and through pedestrian and transit means to the whole city.

Seattle Center is the heart of the city culturally and civically, but a heart is connected to the whole body by a circulatory system.

So we want to connect to every corner of Seattle and make sure everybody feels welcome there.

We want to improve the monorail connections.

The monorail is an incredibly hard-working transit system.

I learned a lot about the monorail in the last eight weeks, but the ridership numbers are pretty staggering and only growing.

And we want to create an iconic gateway that really enhances a sense of arrival to the campus.

The Armory's a big part of this.

It's the most visited building on the campus.

It is where the restrooms are for all of the events that come through.

It's where the food hall tenants are.

It's the home to many resident organizations.

It's where all of our staff lives.

It's the home of the Seattle Center, our Seattle Public School partner, and millions of visitors a year come through that building.

We talked a little bit about what's possible on the grounds themselves.

This is a rendering of how the fountain might connect to the Fisher Pavilion, having this sort of continuous fluid event infrastructure so that we can accommodate more people, more ADA access.

ADA wasn't really a thing in 1962 when the World's Fair happened.

That's a big challenge throughout the campus and in many of our buildings.

So we really want to see not just the buildings connect out to the neighborhoods, but to see them connect with one another and have it be one continuous experience as you move through the campus.

The Science Center has been a great asset for a long time.

We want to expand the heart of the campus into the courtyards.

The gates coming down are a big part of that.

We want to enhance the pools and the arches, and we want to open that new portal into Denny Way.

We really want to be the north anchor of a revitalized downtown that can go down 3rd and 4th Avenue through Westlake into Historic South Downtown and really be a catalyst to the reimagination and revitalization of our entire center city.

and one of the early things we're going to be doing is looking at the Thomas Street area, the new monorail platform and how we might turn that into more of a destination festival street that keeps people lingering and gathering, thinking about the theater commons and how we really double down on our theater district and having these gateways with artworks that can really welcome people with a grand gesture to the campus.

There's a lot happening at Seattle Center.

We can talk about any and all of it, but I wanted to just go through that quickly and make time to hear from our partners.

Thank you for the time.

Thank you, Acting Director Engstrom.

Appreciate you, this great presentation kind of framing and teeing up the need opportunity.

At this time, we'd love to just kind of do an informal round robin from each of our panelists and presenters here today to chime in directly from your perspective about the need, why it's important, What inspires you the most?

What gives you the most hope and optimism about the opportunity to renovate the Seattle Center once and for all?

And then we can kind of informally riff off of it.

If there's something that someone else says that really speaks to you, moves you, can informally riff off of that topic then.

And then we'll take comments and questions from my colleagues.

So I guess first we'll go down the line, excuse me, Deputy Mayor, if you have anything else to add.

Not really.

I think the acting director did a great job of laying out the big picture vision and the mayor's office support for helping usher in a new era for the Seattle Center.

So I look forward to the conversation with all of our friends here, and I'll pass it on to take over the agenda, Chair.

Awesome.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, chair, council members.

Again, Nicole Grant from the Electrician's Union.

And thank you, director, for the incredible presentation on this priority for the city of Seattle.

From our perspective, the Seattle Center is Seattle's face.

And you take care of your face.

You know, you wash it.

You brush your teeth.

You pluck her eyebrows.

You want it to look good.

You need it to function.

The Seattle Center is not just the face to the world and to the cruise ships and all the tourists that visit us here.

It's where our families and our kids and our elders have our most joyous moments.

It's our backyard.

And as a union woman, I wanna say that nothing is too good for the working class.

all the people that make it so that we can be a world center of aerospace and technology and all the teachers and healthcare workers and transit workers, nothing is too good for them and they deserve a backyard, a Seattle center that truly befits what they provide to Seattle and to our region.

From a climate perspective, Redoing the Seattle Center is very important.

We need climate resilience.

It's getting too hot.

The weather's too volatile.

On a smoky day, the air is unfit to breathe.

We need places that are public, that are accessible, and that are a good time.

and they have to be cool and the air has to be clean.

They have to be nice.

To hear that 16% of the carbon pollution comes from this facility is unacceptable.

But more than addressing the problem, we need to make it be the solution.

Right now, there is a heating and ventilation system and a cooling system at the Seattle Center that is going to fail when we most need it because it is ancient and it is collapsing.

When the city of Seattle and the private sector joined forces to build Climate Pledge Arena, it was visionary.

And that is an iconic fossil fuel free facility.

The whole of Seattle Center needs to be that way.

because you can't always just walk in to Climate Pledge Arena, but you can always just walk into the Armory, and it's such a special place.

Now is the time to invest in addressing climate change and bringing climate resilience to Seattle.

That's it.

Well, thank you, Nicole.

That's awesome.

I mean, she hit all the points that I want to save.

Once again, Monty Anderson with Seattle Building Trades, and thank you all for having us here.

You know, my first, I still refer to it, I was corrected downstairs as the Science Center, because that was our big field trip when we were kids, right?

We got to go to the Science Center, so forgive me if I interject those two words from the Seattle Center to the Science Center.

You know, when we first were talking about building the arena, We had some of these people at this table.

We're around that table there.

We talked about all the things we're going to do.

We talked about the center and what we were going to do there.

And for some reason, I think it was COVID or something, we got all this private investment.

We got all this to make the arena world class.

They were going to upgrade the Space Needle.

We were talking with the school district about getting together, about fixing Memorial Stadium.

And somewhere in all those conversations, the Seattle Center just kind of got, I think, just left out or the oxygen got sucked out of the room or something.

But I remember having these same conversations about failures of systems there nine years ago.

So for somebody that works around electrical and HVAC and stuff for a living, when I worked at the tunnels back in the late 1990s here.

I mean, we still had asbestos down there for cripe sakes.

So back then they were old.

So, and now I'm old and the HVC is old and we need to fix it.

So I think everybody knows what's going on here.

We've just not taken care of business long enough.

I don't think there's any fingers to point here.

It's just one of those things that pop up that you go, you know, we've got to complete the rest of the puzzle here.

So I appreciate everybody's time and Look forward to getting to work and putting some local hire apprentices to work here on this project.

Thank you.

Council, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak with you today.

Again, Idle Brunswick of the North Coast State's Regional Council of Carpenters.

I think this signifies an investment to our constituents, into our landmark.

There's a pride that comes with Seattle and its residents.

And really, this opens up the gateway to opportunities.

We've heard a lot about labor shortages.

There's not a labor shortage.

Everyone wants to go to work.

They want to earn a living wage.

There's a shortage in opportunities.

This opens up that pathway for opportunities.

I think it also signals to the rest of Seattle and to Washington that the city is investing in economic growth and we will see that flourish from this.

So, you know, want to see this investment carried through and to not kick the can further down the road.

Your infrastructure grade is into mediocre, which then comes with critically and declining after that.

We have to act and do something now.

What we build is a portfolio and how we build it is a legacy.

I think it's time for the council to take the steps to set the foundation for that legacy.

Again, thank you for your time and look forward to seeing this happen.

Mr. Chair, would you like to keep the labor love going and have Jennifer go next?

Terrific idea.

If Jennifer, our stagehand partner, go ahead.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much, counsel, for inviting me to attend today.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to be there in person.

I want to say, you know, Sage technicians are extremely creative and innovative people.

You give them some zip ties and some duct tape and they will make a thing happen.

And that's what they've really been doing over the last few decades.

So an investment like this will really give them the tools and the opportunity to create the magic that they are capable of doing rather than just trying to get by and make things work.

The show will go on.

Stagehand will make sure that that happens, but it won't necessarily be the experience that it could be.

And frankly, our city deserves to have the tools and those experiences.

We are a world-class city.

We need to put that face forward.

The Seattle Center is that center that people come to see.

And I believe we should make this investment to allow them to have those world-class experiences as well.

Again, I want to echo what my colleagues at the table have been able to say so far, which is how grateful we are to be in this civic moment.

One of our predecessors, Sally Clark, used to say she knew a meeting was important to someone when they showed up into her office wearing a tie.

So I want you to know how important this meeting is today, because on a hot Seattle day, I showed up wearing a tie.

Well done, Councilmember Kettle, you as well.

And Randy.

I think Randy hasn't been without a tie in the 80 days he's been on the job.

We, the foundation, sits as the nonprofit partner for the public sector agency that is Seattle Center.

For the last 50 years, we've been responsible for bringing resources to Seattle Center, bringing attention to Seattle Center, trying to find ways to fund free programming.

That would happen at Seattle Center.

and stewarding it for future generations.

We are, as Randy said so well, the cultural gathering space.

We're more than just that.

In contrast to one of your public commenters, we are a place where we have a lot of clients that come on a daily basis who are using us for our electrical outlets.

We are a cooling shelter in hot weather events.

We're a warming shelter.

in cold weather events.

We are the emergency city hall.

If something were to need to happen, we're the emergency gathering place where, in the event of a major disaster, the public would be expected to gather and get access to services.

And yet, at the same time, over the last 15, 20, 25 years, we've seen a dramatic set of investments, but it hasn't been on the public sector side.

It's been almost exclusively on the private sector side.

$1.2 billion in private sector investment at Climate Pledge Arena, $40 million in private philanthropic investment at Memorial Stadium, $10 million at KEXP, hundreds of millions of dollars between Chihuly, Space Needle, McCall Hall, etc.

So we've seen investment happen at Seattle Center.

It's just been on the private sector side.

And now it's time for our public sector to step up.

This is the next waterfront park.

This is the next civic moment where we can demonstrate that we as a community can do big, hard things together.

We have a vision for a brighter future, and that brighter future is going to knock over a lot of other important economic development dominoes.

We all know that when you put public sector investments into major capital facilities, it's a really important signal to the private sector that this is a place to be taken care of, and for them to double down and put additional private sector investment into not only that civic campus, but also the space nearby.

So we are grateful to you, Mr. Chair and Madam Vice Chair, for convening this conversation today.

We know that this is the first of what we hope will be many conversations about the future of Seattle Center, and we stand at the ready to marshal resources, public, private, and otherwise to the cause.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Thank you, presenters, panelists.

Terrific conversation and insights offered so far.

So let's keep the conversation going.

At this point, I will turn it over to my colleagues for any questions, comments, feedback might offer from your perspective.

First off, let me just say, No ties.

I have a no tie rule, and I appreciate my fellow colleague, Councilmember Lynn, for following that.

And we're both lawyers, by the way.

Oh, and of course, Deputy Mayor as well.

We're both lawyers.

And it's the substance over the form is my hope that we all pay attention to.

In any event, starting first with our vice chair.

Go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm afraid I forgot my tie today as well.

But this is a very important conversation and one that I'm so excited to have because Seattle Center is our face of our city.

Seattle Center is such an important space in so many ways, and I've said this a few times to folks in community, but everyone has a Seattle story, every single person in this city.

And what we're talking about here is a critical opportunity to really imagine the next phase for the Seattle Center, the heart of our city.

and so I'm so grateful that we're having this conversation.

Thank you to our panel today.

Thank you for the work that you do serving our city and huge thank you especially to our labor partners here.

Please extend a lot of gratitude to all of your members for the work that they do to quite literally build our city.

And I wanna start with a couple of questions actually for our labor partners just because I've been beating this drum colleagues as we know about just the lull that we've experienced in the construction space and that permits in this city are down and to a really disturbing degree, especially as we're in the midst of a housing shortage and a housing crisis.

And so I'm wondering, from your respective union perspectives, can you speak to right now how some of the things happening right now in the broader economy have impacted your members if there's any also updates we can provide in terms of initial assessment of the kinds of jobs that this revitalization of Seattle Center would bring and just the opportunities there, I'd really appreciate it.

Yeah, I'll kick that off.

Thank you, council member.

Well, There are a thousand journey level union electricians unemployed in Seattle right now.

And we're also joined by our colleagues from LIUNO 242 in the audience.

Yesterday we were talking, and they have 1,000 union construction members that are out of work as well.

The scale of the unemployment crisis in construction is as bad as when the economy bottomed out after the Great Recession in 2008. and when we look at projects and priorities like the Seattle Center, this is a bridge for us to be able to transition a workforce that we've invested in very heavily.

Every journey-level electrician is somebody who went through a five-year apprenticeship that the industry paid for, the private sector.

And when one worker leaves, like they are right now by the hundreds, to go somewhere like Boise or Texas, where the construction economy is booming, you know, they don't come back.

And we lose the investment of having a city that's full of highly skilled craftspeople.

And things might be slow now, but that's not how it's gonna be in five years.

And so we can't lose our construction workforce now.

Projects like a revitalized Seattle Center can be the bridge until the next wave of construction hits Seattle.

and a lot of things that we have to do.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nicole.

Some people forget what it was like a few years ago.

I was going through some of our numbers.

about 20,000 hours, I mean, 800,000 hours a week here in Seattle.

That was $52 million a week in wages and benefits, and wages alone.

We put it at a medium.

That year, the city cranked out $2.7 billion in wages for people to put that money in their pocket and go spend in the economy.

So when we talk about construction wages, is no mystery.

Construction workers like to spend their money where they live, right?

They're not sending their money offshore.

So these construction jobs are really tax-based for the city and an economic boost for the city.

So it's really just an investment in yourself.

Rob was talking here and he's got it absolutely right.

There's an ecosystem here we're looking to find.

You know, we can't put all the burden on Seattle or King County or hope that some billionaire is going to build some project.

It's an ecosystem that we're open for business.

And I think this really shows everybody that we're open for business.

and we're open for more private investment here at the city.

So what we're looking for is a broad picture here.

Seattle's open for business.

Yeah, they're not building any.

COVID kind of changed the tune around office buildings and things.

We get that.

But we are still open for business, and there's still a lot of things we can build and maintain here in this city.

So thank you for asking that, Alexis.

I want to echo what my esteemed panelist partners said.

They did a great job.

And really want to point out what Rob mentioned earlier is it's a signal if public is making the investments into the infrastructure, private will follow.

for the last 12, 14 years, Seattle heavily depended on that private investment.

When we were in a boom town, we had 60-plus tower cranes.

A majority of that was private investment.

Doing this will signal back to private investment that it's time to build, it's time to reinvest, to build around South Lake Union, to build around the Seattle Center.

when you look at the unemployment rates for construction in Washington State, and they're above 10%, there is an issue.

Permitting being slow, but you look at the signals that the city has done and the state, we have been doing a good job.

We've built twice as many residential units as any of our neighboring states.

certain points that we need to make the investment into to keep business booming and growing.

I think this is a great opportunity, as Chair Saka had mentioned, to signal to the MBA for the expansion and to continue that pathway forward.

On the labor side, for us, we have been doing quite well as the carpenters.

We do around 26 million hours in Washington State.

Our out-of-work list is not very deep.

We cover 12 different crafts.

So for us, this would be an opportunity to uplift individuals who are looking to get into construction, which we look forward to.

Excellent.

Ms. Jennifer Bacon, I think your last from the Labor Partners to chime in on this.

Yes, so, you know, stage hands don't do a lot in construction, although we do do some, you would be surprised.

There are these rope access rigors that installed a number of things in the Climate Pledge arena.

Our work is seasonal and dependent on a good economy.

So, investing in a place that is going to uplift the economy is going to be good for us long term.

We saw that with Climate Pledge Arena.

There was definitely a down time during the time of construction, but the jobs that have come back to us after that construction is over have been excellent.

It is a place that people want to go to work.

We see the concerts that are coming through there and all of the people that come to that venue and those are providing good jobs to our technicians in the city.

We have on our hiring hall list as we are preparing for FIFA, we have over 3,000 people who get work through our hiring hall and we need the venues, we need the places to be able to put on those events in order to put those people to work.

Thank you all for those responses.

And I don't ask that question to be a downer by any means, but rather to place us in our context that we are in right now and to say this would mean a lot to our community.

It would mean getting folks to work while also tending to really the heart of our city.

And so thank you all for those responses.

And kind of bridging into just one other question I have for today, Chair, if I may.

We spoke a little bit about the decarbonization efforts, is critically important and very exciting.

And I'm wondering right now in terms of Seattle Center, whether on the Foundation side or also within Seattle Center City side, how we might be thinking about additional opportunities for further climate resilience measures.

I'm looking at the left side of the table first to start.

I always defer to our public sector partners.

Well, it was mentioned earlier that Rob brought up the cooling shelters, the heating shelters.

We are, I believe, a very welcoming place for our entire community, including our most vulnerable.

And if you come to the Armory any day, I'd be glad to show you how and why.

I think the challenge as was stated is that a heating and cooling shelter only works if the HVAC system works and if the HVAC system was built in 1962 and it's steam powered it's vulnerable and I think you know there's a lot we could do in the armory renovations There's a lot we could do with the renovation of each individual building.

We're talking about the Seattle Repertory Theater, McCaw Hall, Cornish Playhouse, the Children's Theater, the Northwest Rooms, home to KEXP, SIF, Vera Project.

There's a lot of buildings on campus that, while some have been renovated and are in better shape, in particular the Vera Project, they did a great job on that campaign.

but there's a long way to go.

We're a long way from being resilient in the way that Nicole described and we're anxious to model the behavior that we think aligns with our values and the city's values.

Nicole, would you like to go next?

Yeah.

Well, everything Randy said and Seattle is an innovative place, and I think we have an opportunity that could iterate and build, because when we do the resilience hubs at the Armory and at other facilities at the Seattle Center, It's also an opportunity to attract interest from the state of Washington, from the private sector, to see if we can also do solar on the buildings, if we can also do a microgrid and have a level of resilience that builds upon making the changes to the heating and cooling system.

And I think that just like it happened with Climate Pledge Arena, where the city took a big step, made a big commitment, and the private sector rose to the occasion, we could do that again with climate innovation, and it could be a model to the city and to the region and to the world about how a world-class facility operates in a climate-threatened era.

Just a couple of brief thoughts, council member.

As the guy who was in charge of sustainability at Climate Pledge Arena, I want to just tell one quick story and then use that as a framework for, I think, the future of sustainability at Seattle Center.

We were under construction of that arena.

We had built what we were calling the wedding tent because the 44 million pound roof was floating on 75 temporary steel columns.

We just poured the foundation.

when Governor Inslee sent Washingtonians home in the nation's first stay-at-home COVID requirement.

We had our first ownership call on Zoom that Friday, and one of ours raised his digital hand and said, what if this is Mother Nature's way of fighting back?

So during the course of the next 10 weeks, the construction team, the engineering team, myself, a cohort of other owners' representatives redesigned and re-permitted that entire facility to eliminate all fossil fuels from the building and decarbonized 100 percent of the scope one emissions associated with the facility.

and I use that as an anecdote because that was a critically important moment, and there's a chance for us to take the leadership of Climate Pledge Arena and transition that over to, this is the heavens telling us that this is a good idea.

We can transition that leadership from the private sector over to the public sector.

And decarbonization of 16 percent of city-owned facilities is important.

At the time, CPA decarbonized city-owned facilities by 5 percent.

So collectively, those two actions would reduce the carbon footprint of city-owned facilities by greater than 20 percent.

But on top of that, we've got an opportunity here with the way we think about the operations of the facility.

So Scope 1 is important.

Scope 2 and Scope 3 are equally important.

When you think about the life cycle of a building like Climate Pledge Arena, the number of people who contribute to the Scope 3 emissions of attendance of things that happen in that event are more significant on a year-over-year basis than the decarbonization efforts from Scope 1. So the more we can do to eliminate the fossil fuels from campus is critically important.

However, it's equally important to invest in the monorail, to get people on public transit to reduce those scope through emissions, to think about implementation of reusables throughout the campus, to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill, to implement more sustainable operating practices at all of those other nonprofit facilities that are part of the campus.

These are all part of a grand vision of decarbonization of the campus as a whole.

None of it can start without a significant public sector investment in decarbonization of that central plant and the HVAC systems and the other critical investments that need to happen throughout the campus or at large.

This is the big domino that knocks over all the rest of those things that allows us to meet our goals of being really a climate neutral city by 2040.

Thank you so much for that.

And colleagues, I mean, this is a major opportunity to have a large-scale civic project that would be an opportunity to support climate resilience efforts and innovation, bring online good union jobs at a time where we need to get people to work, and to tend to our critical public infrastructure.

And I really mean emphasis on infrastructure.

I mean, I've been in Fisher Pavilion for events, and I've also been in Fisher Pavilion when it serves as our severe weather shelter, when it is far too cold outside for people to be outside.

So truly infrastructure that serves so many different folks across our city.

So thank you, Chair, and thank you again to the panel for being here today.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle, floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair.

First, I want to welcome Deputy Mayor Surratt, Acting Director at Engstrom, former Councilmember Johnson, Director Johnson, fellow Rob, Robert, and Ty Ware.

Thank you.

But also a very special welcome to our labor partners, Mr. Braunschweig, Ms. Grant, Ms. Bacon.

and last but not least, Mr. Anderson, welcome.

Good morning.

And for many reasons, I want to give a special welcome to you, but also because part of that is in terms of being old and all that, I'm right there with you.

So we have that in partnership.

So welcome, everyone.

And for Seattle Center, I've been engaged with this really ever since 2014, first with the Queen Anne Community Council, and then especially as a stay-at-home dad in the neighborhood, if you will.

every little piece, seeing it from that perspective and all these different angles to the Science Center, you know, but as a father to a young girl, you know, all these pieces.

And then especially as a council member representing District 7. I know Seattle Center and Waterfront has been added to the transportation community this year, but we've been working, my office has been working the issues for three years.

You know, initially I was doing with Director Needlem, but then Director Foster, things, the Rep, the Armory, and then there's some, the Tenants, if you will, Theatre Puget Sound, all these different pieces.

It is an intricate, and we've been working, and we're in our third year of working those pieces, and it's really, really, important work that's been done, but we need to do more.

And this is what this represents.

And we need to do it in partnership.

You know, over the last few years, doing a partnership now with Mr. Johnson's new role.

But, you know, this is so important.

One roof in its various forms, and now its latest form, The School District, which was huge as it relates to the, particularly with the Memorial Stadium and the Memorial Wall.

But it's also, you know, the Pacific Science Center.

You know, because there's elements that are not technically part of Seattle Center, but are integral to it.

The Pacific Science Center, Space Neater and the Chihuly.

And I'll add too, by the way, not mentioned, but the IMAX Theater is a gem.

There's only one.

and that's where it is.

This is, you know, and so we have to have that partnership.

MOPOP, of course.

But I also wanted to note, we need to have partnership.

I mean, there's one line in the beginning of the briefing, but we have to have that partnership with neighboring communities.

First, Uptown, then Queen Anne, South Lake Union, and as very well noted by Mr. Engstrom, Belltown.

Because people, those connections, you see it in Kraken games, for example.

between Belltown, you know, so it's not just with the opening of the connector, you know, with Merle Edwards and the Centennial Park, but all these different pieces of Belltown as well.

So those four entities, because they're the next-door neighbor, and they're really important in terms of that partnership.

And so I just highlight that, but at the end of the day, the labor piece, you've got to be there.

and I will say be represented.

Mr. Anderson and I have had these conversations.

Be there when shovels are going in the ground.

Be there at those important points to be represented and be seen because that shows the true partnership.

and so that's my commitment to you as we work through this, working with our chair and then working with the executive to do that because it's important and it's important to address the ecosystem.

That is so key, that we are open for business.

There's a lot of questions about that in today's Seattle.

Where are we?

And by the way, it's in reality but then also perception of reality.

the perception of reality is even a bigger challenge.

And I think that this effort, along with other things related to budget, tax policy, transportation, but this public investment is really key to show that we have that balance, that we're engaged on all these different pieces to move forward and to, in this case, bring Seattle Center where it needs to be.

And I think we can do it and I think we can do it in partnership.

There's also a lot of talk about partnership, but I make the commitment, I make the commitment to everyone here to have this partnership with the mayor and her team.

I've been doing it on public safety pieces, and this is another area where I think that the executive and the legislative branches can work strongly together in partnership on those outside entities, particularly labor, to move forward.

And so at the end of the day, it's about leadership, and I think everybody in this room can stand up and make the argument to the people of Seattle about how important Seattle Center is and create that excitement.

And that excitement comes from when you're there with a young child at the Pacific Science Center or at the Armory, the Children's Museum, or the fountain.

I mean, there's a million things that can make this excitement.

And this excitement's only gonna be that much more because Memorial Stadium is going to come online.

We have the improvements already with PacSci, and there's more to come there.

And we can do more as well with Seattle Center and Chihuly.

I already mentioned the IMAX.

We can do it.

And I think everybody at this table, this dais, and here at City Hall, we can make this partnership work.

And Chair, that's my commitment here as someone who represents the next door neighbors, but also in the bigger picture.

in terms of our duties citywide as council members.

And again, I look forward to that partnership with everyone here.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

And you are lucky to represent the council district where the Seattle Center is housed.

But to be frank, it's a treasure for all of us.

and that's what we learned here in part today.

And therefore it is our collective responsibility, shared responsibility to reinvest in it as well.

Couple quick comments, self-reflections directly from my perspective.

Love the comments about this being a critical large scale civic projects and infrastructure.

That's exactly what's in the scope of this newly expanded transportation committee.

And that's exactly why we're having this conversation today.

Huge opportunity.

Love the compelling justification about the climate and sustainability overlay and rationale to improve the Seattle Center and support our city's climate sustainability goals through decarbonization efforts.

Love all that.

I know today some of these aging infrastructure systems are heavily, increasingly reliant on human maintenance, constant state of human maintenance, repairs, and by making this investment now can free up some of that time to focus on other strategic priorities in the center.

But that's the reason this thing, frankly, hasn't completely fell apart before our eyes.

It's been close.

And I appreciate the employees of the Seattle Center and the contracting partners at the Seattle Center who addressed this critical maintenance gap.

Finally, the monorail.

the monorail.

Love the monorail.

And by the way, tourists love the monorail, too.

We want to attract more tourists, tourist dollars.

It's a tourist favorite.

And one other thing I know about the monorail is it's a great line of transit service, one of two that the city operates in the city of Seattle, the other, of course, being the streetcar.

But the experience from an ingress-egress perspective of the monorail for differently-abled people isn't the best.

It's not at all ADA compliant to current standards.

And so trying to navigate the monorail and having a desire to take the monorail I can't even imagine what that's like for someone with different mobility needs because, again, it needs to be upgraded as part of this refresh.

So huge opportunity there, and finally I'll note that.

I think Mr. Anderson mentioned the science.

Was that?

Yeah, the science overlay.

Couldn't agree more.

At the end of the day, this is our arts, cultural, and civic gathering hub for our city.

And yes, that includes science and STEM.

This is a place of discovery.

This is a place of imagination.

This is a place of exploration.

It's a place of invention.

And yes, science.

So I appreciate those comments.

All right.

Chair?

Yeah, go ahead.

Recognizing Councilmember Foster has her hand raised.

Yeah, Councilmember Foster, you're recognized.

Thank you so much, Chair.

I'm sorry to come in after, I think, what you intended to be your closing comments.

I snuck a hand in there late.

Thank you so much, everyone, for being at the table today.

I appreciate each and every one of you and your leadership and also the diversity of the discussion today in terms of, like, what Seattle Center is and what it means to our city.

I want to turn us, I think we've talked about obviously like the building has these just tremendous needs and I kind of want to first ask a question.

We've been talking a lot about our deferred infrastructure needs across the city and how we balance that alongside aroundside the impact for cost.

But I also think a lot about the cost of inaction or continuing to delay much needed investment.

And I wonder if somebody at the table, I'm not sure, Interim Director Engstrom or Deputy Mayor could speak to that because I think that's an important part of this conversation around why we need to be taking action.

Sure, I'll start and happy to share the floor.

I mean, at a most basic level, if you buy a car that's not an electric car and you don't change the oil ever, you're going to have to replace the engine on the car.

And we've done as many oil changes as we can.

And when you're literally holding HVAC pipes together with duct tape or the earth itself, you've reached a point where it just needs to be replaced.

And, you know, I'm glad Council Member Saka you shouted out the staff.

The staff at Seattle Center is unbelievable.

The heart and hustle they bring to work every day and the fact that they make this machine keep running and keep delivering from everything from high school graduations to the King County Health Clinic to shows at the opera and everything in between.

That is a huge strain on the labor force.

They are working above and beyond what is reasonable to expect in terms of the equipment that they're working with.

So all credit to them for doing that work, but I would love to see what would happen if they could be working with contemporary modern infrastructure and what that would mean for the service delivery for the community.

I'll give you one example.

Two years ago, two hours before the Rainier Beach High School graduation ceremony, we lost power.

and had to get on the phone and find every generator in King County that wasn't currently rented and get it brought to the center and rewire the electrical so that those kids could graduate on time.

That's one example of what happens with a system that's at risk of critical failure all the time.

Thank you so much.

That was very helpful.

Oh, yes.

Deputy Mayor, please.

Thank you, Councilmember.

The only thing I would add is you're absolutely right.

There is a cost for continued delay.

And at the same time, I think it's also ironically, this deferred maintenance has allowed us to be smarter, frankly, on what's possible at Seattle Center.

I think the new technologies, the new visions around what does decarbonization truly mean has given, I think, us a lot of ideas of, again, what's possible.

I think we all share that same urgency that we can no longer kick the can down the road.

The question becomes for us is let's be really, really tight on exactly what we want.

And I know we'll talk about this in the next section of the agenda, but the timing of it, if we're asking voters to invest in this treasured asset, is kind of our responsibility to make sure that we know exactly what we want to ask of the voters.

And let's be intentional about it.

Thank you so much, Deputy Mayor.

And just for the record, I want to say we've heard Seattle Center today compared to a heart, a face, and a car.

So it is obviously a lot of great analogies coming from the table today.

And I'll just have one final question, Chair.

So, you know, the other thing I want to bring into this conversation, and I would just be remiss not to because I have the pleasure of serving as the Chair of housing arts and civil rights.

And the Seattle Center is such an important place for our art community.

I think about Festall, I think about the connection with vendors, but I also think about the diversity in our arts community in Seattle that diversity is also intertwined with Seattle Center.

So that might mean other independent arts organizations that partner with the center.

And so I wonder if somebody could sort of speak to that network and that connection and how Seattle Center partners with our broader arts community because I really see that interconnection is vital.

Okay, me again.

Hi.

Well, I mean, one, you mentioned Festall.

We have 25 cultural festivals that are produced all year round.

We have a ton of Winterfest programming that hires artists from all over the region and cultural partners from all over the region.

I mean, Northwest Folklife is gonna welcome 200,000 people to the campus, hundreds of artists and vendors of all shapes and sizes.

We have the...

the Byte of Seattle, which brings a lot of local food vendors and hospitality vendors.

The Fisher Pavilion is home to a ton of events.

I was just at the, well, I was at the Pacific Science Center lunch on Friday, and then I was at the Pratt auction on Saturday.

Also, Mary's Place was there last week.

It is home to a lot of different kinds of events, and it supports the community in a variety of different ways.

You know, McCaw Hall is home to events, both of the opera and the ballet, but also of Ali Wong this summer.

and other events that come through the city.

We have an interesting partnership with Cornish and Seattle University, where the students and the public get to access that space.

The Rep and the Children's Theatre host obviously their own programming, but they also host community programming.

And then we have organizations that do events all over the city, organizations like Team Tix that send young people to engage with arts and culture citywide.

I think that something we're looking forward to doing more is how we can be a resource for the wider cultural and creative economy ecosystem.

You know, we support 19,000 jobs at the campus.

How can we be a resource to every student in Seattle Public Schools who's interested in a career pathway into the creative economy?

is something I've talked about with Jennifer and a number of our labor partners, but there's what we do on the campus, and then there's what we can do for the rest of the city, and I really hope that we can be an engine both of our immediate neighborhood and campus, but also for the wider ecology of the city.

And if I may, Councilmember, I want to just put a pin in one little thing there, which is one of the ways in which we can continue to be a home for arts and culture is by bringing those costs down.

Right now, if you're at a burgeoning festival and you'd like to bring something to Seattle Center, you have to pay for the temporary power.

You have to pay for the temporary water.

You have to pay for a whole lot of infrastructure that doesn't exist on campus today.

A lot of the modernization that we're talking about will make it simpler, faster, and easier to knit together while also decarbonizing and bringing those costs down.

It maintains that position as an incubator that I know you care so much about for arts and cultural institutions and community members from not just throughout the city but throughout the region in an increasingly competitive space.

Seattle Center needs to modernize in order to stay relevant to a lot of those folks and to ensure that we are being as affordable as we possibly can be for those nascent, growing, and established institutions.

I'd love to invite, if any of you are free, tomorrow between 3 and 6. It's actually the opening of the Folklife Festival, which is free to anyone in the city.

They work with, I think, 1,600 artists at last count, was what Ben told me.

But I'll be there from 3 to 6 and would love to show you around or answer any questions, introduce you to some of the artists or the staff.

Come down and visit, because it's a pretty magical place.

Thank you.

If I can just add, you know, Theatre Puget Sound is based out of the Seattle Center Armory and they are an amazing connector in the arts community.

You know, they're working with organizations that are, you know, they're They are not the big for-profit theaters, or not even for-profit, the big non-profit theaters like Fifth Avenue Theater.

They also connect with all of these smaller organizations throughout the city, and they make it possible for these organizations to do that by bringing people together at the Seattle Center.

But the infrastructure that they are currently working with is very limited.

So they're able to make things possible.

They do auditions for all of these smaller organizations as well as they're bringing people together for tech opportunities and helping to create some of those pathways for people to make a living and a career in the arts.

And they are also doing it on a shoestring in an infrastructure that really doesn't give them everything that they could use to make those connections more effective.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair.

Excellent.

Well, thank you everyone again for being here today.

Really appreciate your thoughtful contributions.

This has been a terrific, lively discussion.

We're also about 10 to 15 minutes behind where I anticipated this would last, so I'm hoping to make up that time on the back end of the agenda.

In any event, it was worth it because a lot of great Great comment.

So thank you all again.

Really appreciate you and your partnership and being so generous and gracious with sharing your feedback and perspective to continue to guide our city's approach.

It's an important issue.

Thank you.

Thanks for the invitation.

Thank you.

We will thank you.

We will now move on to our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Agenda Item 2, Briefing, Discussion, and Possible Vote, Resolution 32205.

All right, thank you.

Will our presenters or newest presenter please join us at the table?

When ready, please introduce yourselves and begin your presentation.

Brian Serrod, Deputy Mayor.

Good morning, Eric McConaughey of the Council of Central Staff.

I may need a second just to transition to a different slide deck.

and here comes the very person to do so.

Thank you.

All right, while we finalize the tech, let me kind of frame up the conversation on this next agenda item directly from my perspective.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge the fiscal strain that many residents, families, and local businesses are under these days.

Affordability is top of mind in my office.

Asking taxpayers to support this effort is not a decision that I have taken lightly.

My office has spent much of the year researching the various funding options that are available to include a thorough review of what other cities do to support similar venues and arts, cultural, civic gathering spaces.

And after careful thought and deliberation, I've determined that this is the right move at the right time in partnership with the mayor's office and community, really for a few key reasons.

First and foremost, I want to emphasize that this framework proposal that we'll hear more about in just a moment would establish and heavily rely on the creation of robust public-private partnerships that leverage our private and philanthropic communities to amplify the impact of any city dollar or any city investment.

We're looking at a couple models right now for precedent purposes, for prior city funded investment that included robust private contributions as well.

And whatever those projects were, we want this to be the new gold standard in terms of public-private partnerships.

This is, as we learned about earlier as well, this is a strategic investment that offers economic opportunities and also unlocks future revenue and growth potential for all.

Seattle Center is a key driver of our tourism industry.

Every single dollar invested in the campus has the potential to impact various small businesses, neighborhood restaurants, hotels and retail shops.

renovation would create immediate, high-quality union jobs, putting people to work.

It's an urgent opportunity to invest in our local workforce and Seattle's long-term economic health.

Next, current operations, as I mentioned earlier, rely heavily on temporary fixes, band-aids, emergency responses, and staff workarounds.

This approach is ineffective in the short term.

and not at all sustainable.

That's why investing now allows us to pay much less in the future as Councilmember Foster teed up.

It's no secret that costs are going up and we all feel it.

That's why investing in Seattle Center is now is fiscally prudent and avoids skyrocketing costs in the future for the city and its private partners.

Finally, I'll note that voter-approved bonds help distribute costs over time, reducing current-year financial impacts and making significant capital investments possible.

It's borrowing authority against the city's future self as opposed to raising net new revenues via levy.

We're borrowing against ourselves.

And again, to be clear, we're not asking the public to foot the entire bill.

for any potential Seattle-centered renovations, public-private partnerships will be a key component of their overall funding strategy.

All right, that said, now, panelists, can you please reintroduce yourselves and share your presentations?

Go ahead.

Or thoughts?

Good morning, Chair Bryan Saran, Deputy Mayor.

Eric McConaughey, Council of Central Staff.

And Mr. Sright, maybe you'd like to open up and just frame it up, please.

Yeah, I'll be really brief and have the conversation dive directly into the resolution.

And vice chair and council members, Seattle Center, as you heard from the previous panel, is a priority.

It's something that, in many ways, when you think about assets that communities take for granted, I think Seattle Center is one of those things because it's been ever-present.

and it's like, oh, it's there, it's there.

And what we have found is over time, we have not done what we're supposed to be doing with one of our most important assets.

I think the urgency and the litany of improvements that we need to see done, the list is long.

And I think we have an opportunity to do something really, really dramatic going forward.

I also appreciate, Chair, your comments around how we put this in a context of the public.

And affordability is on top of mind for everybody.

and what we want to do as we move forward with being thoughtful and intentional and diligent in supporting any kind of funding measure or strategy, I wanna keep that in mind.

And if we're gonna do this, and when we do this, when we do this, I think it's incumbent upon all of us to be really, really clear on what we're asking voters to approve.

The threshold is if we do go down the path of a bond, which is the most likely vehicle, the threshold is high.

and the challenge to us to communicate the value will be high.

And so the previous panel did a great job of outlining kind of high level what's needed, the big buckets, and there's some deeper work and planning that we need to do.

So if we're gonna ask the voters, we need to be thoughtful, strategic.

I think this resolution is a great initial step to help frame the issue and frame exactly the homework that we need to do if we're going to do this right and ask the voters to entrust us to make a case for this vital institution.

So I'm grateful for your partnership and partnership with City Council because when we do this, we should be unified, not just at the executive and the council level, but all of the partners that you saw at the table earlier, labor, business, the arts community, I think we have a very powerful coalition, but that coalition is incumbent upon us to get the details right and the communications right and make the case to the public.

So thank you.

Okay, so I'll jump in.

So my job today will be to describe this resolution and its parts.

I'll stay at a high level and sort of keep it light, happy to answer questions when we move along.

But that being said, let's jump in.

As has been emphasized today, this resolution opens in its first section with the findings regarding the Seattle Center, of its history, how it's been funded, its importance, and perhaps the sort of key sentence or topic sentence from that section is that the Seattle Center is one of the most iconic and widely used public spaces.

It's a hub for arts, culture, education, entertainment, sports, and community gathering.

So that's sort of the opening statement and how the resolution begins.

It then goes through, it describes how the council, with the mayor concurring, would affirm the importance of the Seattle Center, acknowledge the urgency to restore the center, request that the mayor and city departments work together in a capital planning effort for the Seattle Center, It anticipates a bond measure to fund its capital investment by the end of 2027. It commits to exploring all viable funding options to support its modernization.

It declares Council's priorities, and it calls upon the executive to direct departmental resources and budget allocations sort of in the nearer term in support of its capital improvements.

Regarding the effort, there are some things here to call out that are important to note.

One is to assess the sales center's long-term capital infrastructure needs.

It would call for identifying priority projects necessary to maintain safety, accessibility, and operational continuity.

It would consider areas for modernization of facilities, amenities, and capital assets, and develop ongoing approaches for future investments.

Advanced projects that would be called for, that would sort of happen sort of in parallel with considerations for future funding options would be to look at having Seattle City Lights and public utilities and other departments get the Seattle Center ready for decarbonization, to modernize, to make the Seattle Center more competitive for grants from the state and other bodies for appropriations to do those projects with a special focus on the Climate Commitment Act funding from Washington State.

As has been mentioned, before the resolution calls for considering and taking action to place a bond measure on the ballot to the voters by the end of 2027 to support the Seattle Center, a condition of the bond issuance up to the maximum specified of the bond measure would be commensurate funding from private and non-city sources.

We've heard today about that interaction of private and non-city dollars as part of the support of the Seattle Center.

and in parallel with a possible bond measure would be to look at other capital funding sources, county-state and funded grants, excuse me, federal grants, public-private partnerships, and also a partnership with the Seattle Public Schools related to the center school, which is in the Armory.

And as you know, Seattle Public Schools and the City of Seattle are participating in the Memorial Stadium project right now.

with investments from both parties, and supported by a successful bond measure by Seattle Public Schools to support their capital, and some of that money is going to, of course, the Memorial Stadium.

Council would call for budget development going forward.

They would look for a higher return on investment over the next 60-plus years for the center.

It would, of course, balance allocations to the settle center capital needs with other city priorities, and would consider impacts on city taxes, levies, and bonds on affordability.

That's been emphasized here today.

There will be certain call-outs or expectations if we're looking for coming right up here this fall with budget expectations.

would look for appropriations and position authority for Seattle Central Capital projects to get ready for projects that would be coming.

Some examples would include a 30 percent design for the project to modernize the Seattle Central Armory, public engagement in scoping for expanded Veterans Memorial on the campus, contracting with and also calling for contracting with contractors that have experienced with union partnerships and a demonstrated history of compliance with labor laws.

and here we are.

I got there.

I didn't time it, but I think it was okay, maybe not too fast, not too slow, and hopefully it holds your attention.

Happy to answer any questions.

And also, you know, to refer to Chair Saka, who is the sponsor of this bill, or excuse me, this resolution.

Sure, absolutely.

So, first off, thank you, Deputy Mayor, Eric.

Appreciate the presentation.

I am the council sponsor of this legislation, but because it is a joint mayoral council resolution, you know, that's why we have our partner from the mayor's office here, deputy mayor.

We literally, quite literally wrote this hand in hand.

It was an iterative collaborative process and in lockstep with each other.

And here we are.

And yeah, this is very important.

opportunity that we have here before us.

So I'll share that to echo comments from Deputy Mayor a moment ago.

What this is, is it's a framework proposal.

This establishes a framework for how, when, and why we're gonna go renovate the Seattle Center.

It clearly does not include or contemplate every single conceivable detail.

Some of that, a lot of that, a decent amount of that needs to be figured out.

Good news is, a lot of that work has already been going on for over a year, as reported in some of this early reporting.

Almost two years now.

Important limitation with that, it hasn't been- that work has not been fully optimized and vetted with today's decision makers.

in the administration and my council colleagues.

And so we're gonna have to have some continuing ongoing conversations about refinement.

What's in scope versus out of scope?

One example, some conversations around, should it include organizations with dire capital needs that aren't technically on the Seattle Center campus?

That's an open question today.

I think at a high level, how I'm approaching this is a more urgent priority at the principal level is we need robust public-private partnerships.

And if we have an ability to secure a high level of matching or dollars to exceed whatever the city investment, worth exploring, but we need to be disciplined as well.

in our approach.

We can't, the city can't be all things to all people at all times.

And even if we as decision makers, the mayor and this council decided to, that we thought as a policy matter, it is worthwhile to expand outside of, in a limited capacity outside of the Seattle Center, there might be legal hurdles to that as well.

Because one unique feature of this is there is a safeguard baked in where you need an independent, unaffiliated person to certify that it meets the requirements, it funds the capital projects tied to the Seattle Center that we say it is.

So there's an attestation requirement.

We still need to finalize a lot of details, but we are establishing the framework and I'm excited about what this means.

The only thing we know for sure, the Armory in scope, and we call that out, and an expanded Veterans Memorial Wall, or a memorial of some sort.

We know that as part of the Seattle Memorial Stadium, public-private partnership renovation that's currently ongoing, we are renovating the existing memorial wall.

It's a terrific place to honor some of our city's fallen service members, but a couple, and I'm looking forward to seeing that refreshed and refurbished memorial wall.

It's an important part of our city's history.

That said, it honors World War II veterans who are SPS graduates, So if you're not an SPS graduate or don't have, but have otherwise ties to the city of Seattle, you're not listed.

Sacrifice, bought and died in other armed conflicts globally, not listed.

Love the location, love the wall, but it's also not in the most prominent or visible location either.

And so that's what we're calling for here in Expanded.

We can finalize scoping details.

It should be a wall or just like some artistic depiction, who knows?

Finalize that later, but an Expanded Veterans Memorial.

And wanna thank Council Member Kettle for his partnership on that as well.

I know that's deeply important to him as a fellow military service veteran.

All right, colleagues, comments, questions, reflections from your perspective, starting first, customarily with Vice Chair.

Vice Chair Rink.

Thank you, Chair.

In the interest of time, I want to defer to other committee members to get their questions in.

I got a lot of questions in in the last presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Foster, floor is yours.

Thank you so much, Chair.

I really appreciate the opportunity to have this in front of us today.

I think I first just want to start off with sort of stating, you know, my understanding with this resolution is this is an exploratory resolution.

There are sort of a number of items that are here and some that you just spoke to from the dais, which I appreciate.

But the intent, my understanding is, is the intent is to make sure that those items are sort of studied and are part of the research process, but that this resolution does not commit us as a council to those particular items at this time.

Council staff, can you speak to that to just affirm my understanding, please?

Yeah, I think that's an accurate description.

Fantastic.

And I just want to make sure that, you know, the other component in here that sticks out to me is this request around sort of development for ways that we can move Seattle Center forward, looking for sort of things, you know, that we could do this year to ensure that this project can come into fruition and can be meaningful.

And I know this is something that we think about a lot when we're thinking about projects needing to get first to 30% design and then 100% design and then being able to get shovels in the ground.

Can you just speak to the contents of this resolution in so much as it references potential budget action for 2027, 2028?

Sure, yeah.

As you just described, whenever you're talking about capital projects, you're talking about now, in the near future, in the long-out future, and it's sort of a rolling process.

And I think that the structure of this resolution attempts to do that in a way that's clear, and so it does identify what would be going forward in the long haul, for the Seattle Center, but then it points to things that could happen, you know, and it identifies priorities for the council and mayor in the near term.

So I think that alludes to some expectations, looking toward what could happen in the budget this fall to start to support capital planning, for example, within the Seattle Center to get those projects ready so that they're staged for future funding, investment, and taking them on.

Does that help to answer the question?

It does straddle at least two sort of time scales, right?

The near term and that sort of mid to long term.

I hope it's helpful, yeah.

to add on to that, council member.

One of the items of the resolution I called for in the upcoming budget that we're just now getting our heads wrapped around, we want to be thoughtful.

We want to have whatever we're proposing, whatever implementation to be very clear and as precise as possible.

Especially again, if we're going to ask voters to approve and investment at the scale that we all believe that the center deserves.

We want to make sure that we've got capacity and we're contemplating position authority for your consideration when we transmit the budget later this year.

to help with that planning.

That being said, we have very strong new leadership with Acting Director Engstrom and he has taken the bull by the horns and add another analogy to the fray and is committed to be as thoughtful as possible in understanding what is needed at Seattle Center and so We're excited about his leadership there to help guide the ship and frankly signal to the executive and the council and the rest of the city around what's really needed.

But the planning is ongoing and we plan on submitting budget authority or budget requests to make sure that we get even more expertise to build out a really comprehensive capital proposal.

Thank you so much.

And then I wanna ask a follow-up question.

I'm looking now at section three, which is on page 21. I, as Council Member Juarez always calls us to use our page numbers.

So I wanna ask you, as I'm looking at this, this is helpful because I know this is sort of saying what council is requesting the executive to direct and coordinate.

However, I very much read this as not being an exclusive list to what could be potentially considered.

So this is providing some things that we definitely want to have explored, but I want to affirm my understanding that if there are things that need to be explored outside of this list, this resolution does not preclude that exploration.

Is that correct?

That's correct, yeah.

Thank you so much.

And then I'll just have one comment, which I don't usually do, but occasionally I like to throw a comment in.

And the reason that I ask is I think that as we talked about in our previous panel discussion, which was just so helpful, there is so much that needs to be done at Seattle Center and it's such a meaningful space for so many people in our city.

I have so many fond memories of my kid maybe not allowed to be, but being in the water fountain.

And I know I'm not the only one.

And I also, as you heard in my question for the previous panel, wanna make sure that as we're considering any potential action on Seattle Center, that we are having a moment to think about the broader arts community as well at the same time.

As we know, there are a lot of infrastructure needs at Seattle Center and with our partners who utilize Seattle Center.

as well as the small businesses that are located there.

And I just want to make sure that we have the opportunity to have a really robust discussion about what might be included in a potential ballot initiative.

And I want to make sure that we have the clarity as we're discussing this for the public of what the resolution sort of does and does not lock us into in the future.

So thank you so much for those responses.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Appreciate your feedback.

Next up is Councilmember Kettle, but I'm actually going to allow Councilmember Lynn the opportunity to speak first.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, apologies, I had to step out briefly for another meeting.

But I'm super excited about this, and there's a few ways that I'm thinking about it.

One, I'm super excited, and we had this discussion about this eco-district resiliency hubs.

You know, there's both sort of the cost of what this might cost and finding those resources, and then there's the benefits.

And I think about and the many different benefits Seattle Center provides.

And so I think about the public health, the healthcare clinic, multi-day healthcare clinic that was provided there.

I think about where we might need to serve our community if we have a major natural disaster.

And the Seattle Center seems like it could be a great place if we plan it right to be this resiliency hub.

I think about this idea of the eco-district as we're going through these discussions in our comprehensive plan about how do we have a tree canopy, how do we plan for climate change?

We have Climate Pledge Arena, could this be sort of Climate Pledge Seattle Center where the entire center is really on the leading foreground of imagining how do we prepare for the next 50, 100 years and be a sort of a thought leader in that regard.

And as we think about these multiple uses, does that open up different funding sort of partners, whether it's like FEMA grants, if we're talking about resiliency, does it open up other partnership opportunities with other businesses or other folks who want to be leaders in addressing climate change?

One other thought is that as I look at the economic revenues generated by the Seattle Center, and I think about these other major facilities, you know, our stadiums and or the convention center.

And oftentimes this is not just a Seattle asset.

This is a regional asset.

This is a statewide asset.

And so I would really hope that our, you know, regional partners, our state partners recognize the value that this Seattle center drives in terms of our economy and the benefits to not just the city, but to to the county and to the state, and can we recapture some of those benefits somehow through some creative partnerships?

And finally, I'll just kind of, going back to the eco-district component, I met with the Seattle Aquarium recently down on the waterfront, and they want to really be thought leaders and sort of addressing climate change and specifically the impacts to our waterways and our maritime areas.

And could this Seattle Center kind of be this other component to it, the strong connection to our waterfront and then the Seattle Center and again, could these be leaders as we prepare for the future?

And I'll just sort of say with the question in terms of the planning, the public engagement, what is that going to look like?

How do we start to identify those partners?

How do we engage with our regional or statewide partners?

And also, how do we engage with our tribal partners, again, as we reimagine The Seattle Center, as we look to some of our strongest stewards of our natural environment, you know, it is oftentimes our tribal partners, both the history, the present contributions, the future contributions, you know, I just want to sort of suggest and insist that we engage with our tribal partners as well.

Just a brief response, thanks Councilmember for that.

I think, you know, this goes back to the comment that Councilmember Foster made earlier about the cost of not moving forward and obviously I think we've kind of dissected what those costs are and Again, ironically, the fact that we haven't moved allows us a lot of space to be as thoughtful as possible and look at, again, new partners that maybe 10 years ago or 15 years ago weren't there, new technologies that weren't there a decade ago.

What I feel really bolstered by in all the things that you laid out and what you've asked or have suggested that we engage, we've got, again, great leadership in our new acting director.

I think the Seattle Center Foundation is the strongest that it's ever been under their new leadership in Rob Johnson.

I think you've got a dynamic coalition of labor, and business and the arts community that in many ways in the past, they've always been there, but here's an opportunity to really galvanize around this and bring all these other partners that you had mentioned to the table.

So I think we're in a really critical time and an exciting opportunity to bring all those pieces together.

Thank you.

And if I may, one more.

One, I just really appreciate having this discussion today.

I think it's going to take a while to do the planning for this, both the financial planning, but also just sort of what the campus, how do we make the most of this opportunity?

And I think it's going to take some time to engage with the public.

So I'm glad that we're getting started early.

Obviously, there is some urgency, just given the condition of the Seattle Center.

Obviously, we want to get started sooner than later to get these great jobs and to imagine a better future.

But I also want to make sure it's done right as well.

So thank you for all your hard work.

Thank you to the chair for bringing this forward so that we can really get this work started.

All right, thank you, Councilmember Lanwell said.

Last but not least, the Councilmember who's home turf, the Seattle Center resides in, Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to first thank, Councilmember Foster makes a good point in terms of the broader arts and culture.

That was hinted at different times in the previous one.

I was talking about Theater Puget Sound, for example, but it's off, you know, the campus as well.

And it's a major, major issue for Seattle and very important for Seattle.

and also thank Council Member Lynn because it kind of goes to what I was about to say in terms of like the Native community, like engaging with the Native community.

We're doing that, you know, with OIR and others, you know, the Indigenous Advisory Council outreach regarding Portal Park, for example, and all those pieces are germane.

Actually, it's happening right now with the LA Bay Connections.

very much been happening, but it also needs to happen here.

And so regarding the resolution, I was looking to make an amendment, and I will just say on slide two, we talk about committing to exploring, we should also commit to that partnership point that I was raising earlier, and the various entities that we were speaking to, and I think that's important to butt into the resolution to show that we are committed to work with the various partners that we mentioned to include as Council Member, Lynn was mentioning the Native community, because I think that shows the inclusiveness, you know, the intent, you know, to be inclusive and to bring these pieces forward.

So, you know, nothing major, but I do think it's important to, you know, with that term partnership to highlight it.

And that's it, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Appreciate your feedback.

We are going to vote on this today.

But what you're saying makes sense.

I'm aligned in principle.

Devil's in the details.

We'd love to see the specific language.

And then because this is a joint mayoral council proclamation, we'll socialize it with the with the executive as well and make sure they're comfortable with it.

But it makes sense in principle and I'm supportive in principle, just would love to see that before it gets to full council.

But we are gonna vote on it today.

So I move that the committee recommend adoption of resolution 32205. Is there a second?

Second.

All right, it is moved and seconded to recommend adoption of Resolution 32205. Are there any final comments?

Hearing and seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the recommendation to adopt Resolution 32205.

Council Member Kettle.

Aye.

Council Member Lin.

Yes.

Vice Chair Rink.

Yes.

Council Member Foster.

Yes.

Chair Saka.

Aye.

Chair, there are five votes in favor and zero opposed.

Excellent.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that council adopt resolution 32205 will be sent to the June 2nd, 2026 city council meeting.

I want to thank the Mayor's office, Deputy Mayor especially, but Mayor Wilson for her partnership in this.

It was truly a collaborative effort.

More work clearly needs to be done.

We don't have to know every single conceivable detail.

A lot of that work has already been done.

We just need to tee it up for current decision-makers.

and get a few key operational details right.

But appreciate the partnership from the mayor's office in this.

Thank you.

All right, we will now move on to our third item of business.

Will the clerk please read item three into the record?

Agenda item three, briefing and discussion, unpermitted street vending update.

All right, welcome.

Looks like our presenters are joining us at the table.

Welcome.

When you're ready, please introduce yourselves and begin your presentations.

All right.

Thank you, Chair.

I am Hannah McIntosh, Executive Operations Manager for Mayor Wilson.

I'm here at the table because this sly response is being led out of the mayor's office, and I will let my colleagues introduce themselves Elyse, shall we skip you?

You got it?

I'll do it.

I'll do this position.

Hey, everyone.

My name is Elyse Nilsen.

It's good to be here with Council today.

I'm the Estat Street Use Director for the Department of Transportation.

Good morning.

Julie Horowitz with Public Health Seattle in King County.

Good morning.

Scott Plooskolek, Nightlife Business Advocate with the Office of Economic Development.

Hi.

Ed and Sisich with your central staff.

Excellent.

Well, welcome everyone.

And while we finalize the tech, I think run a show, we're going to have our partners from central staff kind of give an overview.

But let me frame up the conversation a little bit just from my perspective and address why we're here.

So I want to first off reiterate the importance of a few things of this topic unpermitting, addressing unpermitted street vending in the City of Seattle, especially as it relates to upcoming FIFA festivities, but not exclusively related to that.

It was a challenge before that.

Unless we take better action to address the activity, it will remain a persistent challenge after that.

It's a unpermitted street vending is a shared challenge and a shared opportunity that is frankly coming to a head now more than ever as we prepare to welcome the world to Seattle and FIFA.

And I think we all love our street vendors, our famous Seattle dogs.

For me and mine, I prefer extra cream cheese, extra onions.

We appreciate our entrepreneurs and micro-entrepreneurs and the value and the service that they bring to the city as a whole.

But we also have a shared responsibility to promote public health.

And when we talk about food vending, have a responsibility to improve public safety.

Tensions are mounting, they're rising between permanent licensed business owners, compliant in every material respect of the way, like navigating all the regulatory soup of things to be compliant with, and then someone comes up and sets up shop right outside, literally right outside their doors in Elkai or the Seattle Center or the Stadium District and can understand the frustration that that might cause.

Tensions are high.

So, also a responsibility to ensure our micro-entrepreneurs are operating in a compliant manner.

So, unpermitted pop-up vendors are bypassing mandatory safety regulations, typically operating in the food context, excuse me, without running water, hand-washing sinks, or reliable refrigeration.

This kind of act, unlicensed, unpermitted activities, poses a major risk for foodborne illnesses.

So preventing widespread food poisoning outbreaks lessens the risk that our local emergency medical services will become overwhelmed, inundated, allowing first responders to focus on critical emergencies during the massive FIFA tournament and beyond.

Fans and residents are encouraged to purchase food from licensed vendors displaying official green smiley face, Seattle King County Public Health food safety ratings.

While we want to support and educate, educate and support our entrepreneurs and micro entrepreneurs, we also need them to be compliant with all local regulations as well.

Allowing licensed unpermitted vendors to operate betrays the legitimate taxpaying small businesses that invest significant time and money into the city of Seattle, street use, vending permits, business license, tax certificates, health inspections, and in compliance with the alphabet soup of other regulatory requirements.

That's how I would frame the conversation from my perspective.

You all have introduced yourselves.

Welcome again.

Eden, go ahead.

Ed and Sisic with central staff for the record again.

So I am here to introduce, they'll pull up slide one, but I can make my opening remarks.

So here to introduce the statement of legislative intent and unpermitted vending enforcement piece of the larger public space management and joint enforcement team programs before turning the show over to our colleagues.

So this statement of legislative intent asked the mayor's office to lead a comprehensive policy review of the city's current approach licensing and enforcing unpermitted vending.

As context, the mayor's proposed budget includes approximately $1.6 million in new funding to support the the broader unlicensed vending enforcement efforts.

Council is seeking additional clarity on the strategy for how these new and existing resources will be used In terms of scope, this statement of legislative intent requests that the mayor's office evaluate current enforcement practices across departments, how well interdepartmental coordination is functioning today, approaches to addressing public health and safety concerns associated with unlicensed vending.

It also specifically calls for an assessment of how key city partners can best coordinate to meet the needs presented by this issue.

And as part of the deliverables, the mayor's office is asked to review policies and best practices from other cities.

The report should specifically highlight strategies for immediate implementation that address potential accessibility challenges, equity impacts and barriers faced by individuals engaged in unlicensed vending and a written report with findings and actionable recommendations has been transmitted by the executive team and they'll walk us through that shortly.

but the overall intent is to provide council with a clear understanding of the city's overall strategy, ensure resources are deployed effectively, and support a coordinated, equitable, and practical approach to vending issues across departments.

If you can move on to the next slide, please.

This timing is also, I'd like to say, intentional as it allows the city to prepare for increased vending activity expected during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

So, okay, unpermitted vending enforcement is one part of a much larger public space management program within Seattle Department of Transportation Street Use Division with a purpose to oversee vending in the public right-of-way, consistent with Seattle Municipal Title 15, and this includes reviewing and issuing permits, educating vendors, and enforcing city code on vending in the public right-of-way.

The overall program budget for 2026 is $8.8 million and unpermitted vending represents a small portion of that essentially.

In terms of new appropriations specific to expanded enforcement, the council adopted a total of $1.6 million within SDOT for this purpose, including three new FTEs dedicated to increased vending enforcement and the joint enforcement team expansion.

and just as a quick background, the Joint Enforcement Team is an interdepartmental effort coordinated by FAS and Seattle Police Department and involves staff from Fire Department, Seattle Department of Transportation, Public Health, Seattle, King County, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board and other departments to address issues surrounding the nighttime economy and conduct inspections of nightclubs, bars, restaurants, and other businesses at peak after hours times to help maintain a safe environment for patrons and the community.

And so as DOT staffs these joint enforcement team outings with public space management inspectors, and inspection leads, and inspectors communicate with vendors about what permits are needed to vend in their right-of-way, answer questions, issue warnings, citations, and other measures as needed.

So with that, I think I've teed it up and said a lot, so I'm gonna be quiet and turn it over to them unless there's questions.

Okay.

Thanks, Eden.

And as the committee chair knows, our office, the mayor's office, is also engaged with this topic of unpermitted vending for all the reasons you laid out.

And we are responding to this statement of legislative intent in two phases.

And what we're here to talk about today is the first phase, which is focused on near-term strategies for near-term implementation, particularly during the World Cup.

We're then gonna, and if you don't mind, Brendan, we can go to the next slide even.

We're gonna take a beat and look at lessons learned from the experience of rolling out these strategies during FIFA and then come back in the fall to talk about some of the longer term policy options, how the departments can work together, and some of the lessons from our peer, like best practice from peer cities.

I think the other thing we wanna bring back at the end of the summer is just a basic kind of lay of the land.

You know, the environment out there with unpermitted vending is changing and so have really a lay of the land for council and some proposals around shared goals for how the city should be addressing unpermitted vending.

To organize both these strategies, the Mayor's Office has convened a cross-departmental team.

The folks, the agencies at the table and departments at the table here with me are represented, but so is the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, Labor Standards, the Police Department, Fire, Finance and Administrative Services, Parks and Rec, Seattle Center, and the City Attorney's Office.

So this team is taking an approach I hope you'll see in these slides and when we come back for a conversation in the fall, which really emphasizes lowering barriers to access to opportunity, providing education, and then looking at enforcement as a final resort.

So focusing on these strategies for near-term implementation, I want to just quickly talk about our overall goals for these.

The best way to address unpermitted activity in the right-of-way is to have permitted activity in the right-of-way.

So that is goal number one, to really activate our public spaces during FIFA.

We want to expand access to economic opportunity provided by the World Cup.

We want to take an education first approach to enforcement and really focus our enforcement efforts where we're seeing obstructions to save pedestrian mobility.

We want to take steps to limit the likelihood of foodborne illness outbreaks during FIFA, and we want to leverage this moment when there are more people wanting to vend, and more people wanting vendors to test new approaches where we can and learn from those.

So our team has identified the following actions for implementation this summer, and then we'll learn from those and come back to share what we learn in the fall.

I'm gonna turn over to Elise to talk about the strategies.

I think you're first.

Oh, sorry, to Julie.

So I'll be speaking on the education piece of this.

And as you spoke to Chair Zaka, our overarching goal is public health and safety, protecting folks from foodborne illness outbreaks.

And when we have permitted food establishments, they're going through all of the processes and steps to make sure that there's safe food facilities and handling of those foods for the public.

Unpermitted vendors don't have the benefit of having those safe set up, right, as well as having the access to hand washing, restrooms, keeping food appropriately hot and cold, which significantly increases the risk of foodborne illness.

So on the education piece, We're collaborating with multiple partners on this, on informing people how to find safe food during the World Cup.

And we're focused on a positive message that is focused on helping people identify and find our food safety rating placard that you can see up on the screen there, right?

So looking for the green smiley face is the key message because all of the permitted food establishments have those placards.

We're partnering with SDOT to put out physical signage in key locations downtown that will help folks see that and look for those signs.

And we plan to build on that physical signage effort after the World Cup, both in collaboration with stadiums as well as other spaces in transit.

In terms of other types of communication, we're planning various other digital media efforts.

We're planning to have both organic and paid social media with videos describing what the food safety rating system is, where to look for it, and these ads will be geo-targeted towards key event spaces.

In addition, we're running PSAs on KUW and El Rey, Spanish language radio, during June and July.

We're exploring various options to distribute food safety messages through various hospitality groups to reach hotels and other third-party accommodations to spread that message, and that includes working with Office of Economic Development to distribute messages to the business improvement areas and through other business networks.

So in short, our goal is to reach as many residents and visitors during FIFA and build on that longer term to build the public awareness on this issue.

down the road.

With that, I'll pass it to...

I think I'm next.

Okay.

Thank you.

Again, my name is Elise Nelson.

I'm with SDOT and Street Use Division Director.

And like Hannah spoke about, one of the ways we can help address unpermitted vending is making space for opportunities for small businesses to thrive.

and so we're going to start by talking about the opportunities that we've identified.

Pioneer Square is going to be a pedestrian zone on game days and this is going to provide a lot more space for many different purposes.

It will help us have space for people to walk and roll, to queue as they wait to enter the stadiums and it will also support heavy activation that we expect in the neighborhoods.

There will be watch parties, there will be entertainment, and there's additional business opportunities that will also be available for both brick and mortar and vending.

So I'm kind of presenting the high level, and now I'm going to turn it over to Scott from Office of Economic Development that will dig in a bit deeper.

Thank you.

Again, Scott with the Office of Economic Development.

I just wanted to note that OED's role here is very much on the education side of this issue.

And to that end, we have been working very closely with King County and with SDOT on developing those strategies for how we do the outreach to these vendors and helping them understand exactly the pathways that they can go through to become permitted.

So that's a very high-level approach of ours.

We have the resources and the ability to be able to help them through the process.

And once they are licensed, we have plenty of resources to help them as a small business to move forward.

So that's the larger picture in this direct FIFA moment.

As Lee said, we are working with SDOT to provide funding.

We have $65,000 to provide funding to our brick and mortar businesses.

We want to make sure that we're not leaving them behind as we focus on vending and really providing them the opportunity that has been given with the legislature this year to expand on seasonal seasonal dining, outdoor area dining.

So we are providing this funding through SDOT to help mitigate the costs of doing the permitting and putting in those expanded areas for those businesses to take advantage of our international visitors who will be here this summer.

All right, thank you.

So we've talked about education and opportunity, and then there's also enforcement.

I'll be talking about a couple things that we're doing with this statement of legislative intent around enforcement.

and piloting new ideas.

We already have great working relationships with the departments around the city and other agencies that do enforcement related to unpermitted vending, but with this sly response, we're seeing how we can build upon that great relationship.

We do find that savvy unpermitted vendors know the line between jurisdictional boundaries, and they can move into an area where an individual department who is out cannot connect with them.

So to improve our enforcement efficiency and capacity, we are reviewing opportunities to delegate enforcement authority between different departments within the City of Seattle.

So we're looking at Seattle Center, Seattle Parks and Recreation, as well as SDOT.

Everyone within the City of Seattle has an education-first model for enforcement and will continue to have that education-first approach with any delegation.

So that is kind of something that we're developing now.

It probably won't hit the ground before FIFA is here, but it is a really exciting outcome from this initial phase of the SLI.

But for FIFA, we are looking at setting up a coordinated enforcement team.

And we already have that.

We mentioned the Joint Enforcement Team, which is also known as JET.

That's a nightlife-focused team that goes out already and does coordinated enforcement.

And we also have done ad hoc coordinated enforcement in the past for things like the All-Star Games that came to Seattle.

As part of this response, we're standing up a coordinated enforcement team for FIFA.

As DOT's taking the lead and working closely with partner agencies, we will have patrols during the game days to minimize impacts from unpermitted vendors that are within Seattle's public spaces around the stadiums.

And I think after FIFA, as we continue the SLI response and review, we'll have an opportunity to learn from this effort and to think about how some of the new things we're trying could be built out even further for additional work in the city.

Well, I guess that's it.

There's no...

I'll turn it back over to Hannah for any closing remarks.

Yeah, I think that's it.

We're open for questions and looking forward to this ongoing conversation with Council.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate everyone for being here.

I have some comments, but first turn it over to my colleagues.

For clarity, we're not going to be able to get to agenda item four today.

Council, starting first with Vice Chair Rink.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for being here today and for your preparation work, especially with everything going on in FIFA.

It is definitely something we're all gearing up for, and so I want to voice my appreciation for your hard work to make sure our city is prepared for that.

I do just have a question on just the education-first approach, and I will speak with some candor.

I think we've definitely received some consternation from community members when they see a, what they view a beloved street vendor, a need to shut down and feeling frustrated by that.

And so can you speak more about an education first approach and how you're also incorporating perhaps language access into that and just trying to really put equity at the heart of trying to just get more folks, you know, going through the proper channels and processes to be able to do this?

Yeah, I can speak at least to what SDOT does, which probably aligns with some of the other city departments that are not here at the table today.

We have a lot of our materials that are translated into multiple languages, and we also have access to the language line to be able to provide a phone for someone to hear directly during our discussion or our encounter.

So, you know, we do basically go to a person and try to have a conversation.

We assume that folks don't know the rules and we want to have everybody who wants to be a permitted vendor be able to vend in Seattle.

So that's always our goal.

And so usually our encounter would start with a conversation.

We have plain language materials that are also translated to be able to help provide information that they can take away.

And then we offer opportunities for coaching.

So they can come into the Seattle Municipal Tower for coaching or we can have a phone call or a virtual meeting.

So our approach is always one of trying to help folks come into compliance first and foremost.

That's always our goal.

I'm happy to add to that.

From the public health side of it, similarly to SDOT, we're wanting to provide all of the information, access the information through both our inspectors who speak many different languages as well as through language services.

And just to step back for a moment on this, our goal is to have as many vibrant vendors out there serving safe food to our communities.

Our goal is really to educate but to reduce barriers, to be able to access the systems to be able to be a permitted vendor.

And so that looks like a really broad range of resources from holding community-based sessions where folks can show up.

We've had 50-plus folks come to each session where they're sitting down one-on-one with our teams to get to know all of the processes, working with community-based organizations who are connected to communities, We have a commissary voucher program to try to reduce, a lot of the barriers are sort of the initial cost beyond the permitting, although that is a cost, right?

What we hear is that access to commissary kitchens is expensive, Having a, you know, food truck that meets the requirements is expensive, right?

And so finding ways to reduce those barriers and getting folks access to becoming permitted vendors.

And so there's a number of different tools that we're bringing into those conversations to support that.

And just as a point of clarification, this voucher program is within public health?

Currently, yes.

Okay, thank you.

Scott, did you want to chime in?

Oh, thank you.

I was just going to add to that.

I mean, it's very similar to what Julie just said.

You know, all of OED's materials are available in multiple languages, and we have access to the phone line as well to provide information and we are working with our community partners and with the BIAs to be able to put this information out and get it into as many hands as possible.

And I believe that we are looking this summer to do some very targeted work with King County on some of the vendors that have been cited to really help them understand the processes and reduce those barriers, as was mentioned.

that we want to see what costs can we reduce?

What permitting can be streamlined?

How do we just really make this as easy as possible for folks to be able to get into the permitted sphere?

I really appreciate that eye towards just like internal improvements to the processes because I was particularly caught by the coffee cart story that came out this week at Sound Transit and we know that especially the early stages for any new business are just really volatile as folks are figuring out their client base, their model and so on and so it's Disappointing or frustrating when, unfortunately, our own internal processes, we're providing that mixed messaging to different vendors.

And so is there anything you can expand upon, again, to our own internal processes of how we're working to remedy that kind of situation from happening again?

I would say that that is one of the things I'm really excited about for this second phase of our statement of legislative intent response.

This has been a really exciting process so far that the mayor's office has convened.

Everybody is all in, and we have so many different departments that are participating.

And so I think that through the second phase of this work, that's what we're going to dig into, right?

Because everyone is frustrated by the current state.

We don't want to be out there doing enforcement and focusing on that.

We want to make it so any small business that wants to set up can.

And so I think that's what will be next, and I can't wait to be back this fall and talk about what we've come up with.

Thank you.

And I have one other just point to make on this chair.

And I know, I don't know if anyone at the table is, has information or can speak to this matter.

But I know King County Councilmember Mosqueda has flagged some of the concerns around potential labor trafficking as it relates to unpermitted street vending.

And so I know that's an element in this discussion as well, just a human trafficking component.

And so I don't know if anyone here can speak to some of those points, but I just want to bring that into the discussion.

Yeah, I can't speak to that in detail at the table here today, but I do want you to know, Councilmember, that we are in conversation with Councilmember Mosqueda's office, and that is, in my introductory remarks, I said I wanna be able to come back with just a clearer picture of the landscape, and that is one of the things that we wanna be able to have a really clear assessment of like, what do we think is actually happening?

Because it is, I think the landscape is different than when a lot of these programs were initially set up and we need to respond to what's happening now.

So more to come on that as well.

Thank you.

Thank you for that response.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lin, floor is yours.

Thank you.

Thanks for addressing this issue and being thoughtful with education first and with the goal of getting these permitted.

And just one concern, and I think this was talked about a little bit, but any additional thoughts on just concern about accessibility issues, particularly when there's sort of larger food vending operations on a sidewalk and folks, especially in wheelchairs, can't get by and are then forced to go into the street or the bike lane.

Is there sort of a best practice or thoughts about locations and how to identify better locations for vending rather than sidewalks where it becomes an accessibility issue?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Thank you, Council Member Lynn.

I mean, that's one of the reasons that SDOT issues permits for vending, right?

Because it's kind of weird maybe when you think about it.

What does a Department of Transportation have to do with vending?

But that's exactly one of the main purposes for us is in thinking about mobility and accessibility and making sure that we can have this great business opportunity, but also keep the sidewalk and streets available and accessible for everyone.

Many of those setups are not permitted, as you may expect.

But we are interested in looking and talking to those folks about how could they find a place that would work, right?

And is it in a curb space?

Is it in a nearby park?

What are the opportunities so that we can have both, you know, have that great vibrant economic business opportunity and have sidewalks that are open for people?

Excellent.

Well, thank you, everyone, again, for joining us today.

A couple of comments, self-reflections.

From my perspective, when I think about this work, I think about the three E's.

Education, empowerment, which includes language access, empowering folks to be compliant through not purely just education, and, yes, enforcement.

I 100% agree and ascribe to the education-first model do not at all subscribe to the education-only model either.

And I'm concerned that some of these vendors operating without permits and licenses know those city boundaries, inter-departmental jurisdictional boundaries concerning.

When members of the public call the city to repair a pothole in their neighborhood, trim the hedges in the park, they shouldn't know or be concerned with or frankly care about, well, is the pothole on Parks Department property?

Because if so, then that's their responsibility.

Is it technically SDOT land in the right of way that the park, the brush needs to be trimmed?

should be a completely seamless process from the perspective of a member of the public, excuse me.

And now that sounds like our interdepartmental jurisdictional boundaries are being exploited, that's no good.

We have done a lot collectively as a city and I appreciate the alignment with the mayor's office on this and the work that they're leading to find a better state, because we're not there today.

Ask any small business owner.

We're not there.

But in this body, we have three principal powers.

Power of the purse, power to write laws, and the third, what I'll call our platform, or the pulpit, advocacy.

thoughtfully exercised, taking action on the power of the purse.

That's why we heard earlier we wrote some slides requiring calling on reports, funded new positions to help with enforcement.

So, exercising those powers, we'll continue to exercise them.

I've carefully personally reviewed the relevant code and laws on this.

I think the law is sufficiently clear on what's permissible, what should be done, what's compliant, what's not, in scope versus not.

I think the code is sufficiently clear from that perspective.

That said, as part of this interdepartmental review, fourth power on there is not execution or implementation.

That's the mirrors.

And so I don't control execution.

I have blind spots.

If the mayor is part of this, you know, wants to propose some tweaks to the code, I welcome seeing those.

And then platform, pulpit, that's exactly why we're here today, to talk about it.

Because we've taken action, now we need to check in.

And we'll be inviting you all again later this fall and would expect to see a better, more refined state and plan and steps to implement.

Align with the three E's.

You can call them whatever you want.

I think we're aligned in principle, which, yes, includes enforcement, but education only is not the solution.

All right.

Love the questions.

I had a similar question, Vice Chair, about the state of the the potential human trafficking challenge, it's a great one.

The final thing I'll ask our partner from King County Public Health, Seattle King County Public Health, when education has failed, how does, today, how does Seattle King County Public Health currently address unpermitted, unlawful street vending, including through enforcement?

Thank you, Chair.

Yes, so we do start with the education first and all of the pieces to help folks come into compliance.

We have seen a large increase in vendors who have not been willing to engage with our staff in that process.

And we've also seen with that an increase in sort of centralized operations, some of which are organized out of California or other places.

There's more to learn on all of that.

But we are seeing a shift in the dynamics of unpermitted vending.

And so some of the pieces that that involves, we respond to every complaint that we receive regarding unpermitted vending and any other food complaints.

We visit the vendor and we do the education.

We identify the food safety risks associated with the operation and ask them to cease operations.

and so we close them at that time.

What we find is that often vendors will reopen after we have left, either in that location or nearby.

we do also ask them to voluntarily discard the food at that point.

We are implementing also a sticker that we place on the cart to notify the public that it is an unpermitted facility.

We are working on a process to expand beyond that in terms of a progressive, enforcement process that builds including disposal of food as well as consideration of misdemeanor violations towards the owner, not necessarily the operator, where there is not another path that is found, right?

No off-ramps that have been found when there's multiple occurrences.

And so we're in the process of looking into and developing the progressive enforcement.

The goal is to really get folks permitted and to have the backstop and to focus on the owners, not necessarily the folks that are out there on the street, but the folks that are operating these larger operations.

Thank you for that.

Appreciate that.

We're about to lose quorum here, but I appreciate everyone being here today.

Again, we will be inviting you back in the fall and come back.

Look forward to hearing how this important work stream has developed and refined and more concrete plans in place to better address this.

Thank you.

We've run out of time to hear agenda item four, and that will be heard at the next committee meeting.

That means we've reached the end of today's meeting agenda, The steps committee will be preempted in June and July by the select committee on the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, which means our next regular meeting will likely be held on August 6, 2026 at 930. Is there any final business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

Hearing and seeing none, we are adjourned.

It's 12.04 PM.

Thank you.

Thank you.