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Efforts to create a new Pike/Pine Business Improvement Area are moving forward in 2025.
The city’s Office of Economic Development has continued to push for the zones where assessments on local properties go directly to funding neighborhood cleanliness and anti-graffiti programs.
The GSBA chamber of commerce group has been leading efforts “trying to assess the level of interest in the community.”
“The are some owners who are very, very committed,” the GSBA’s Laura Culberg told CHS about the early stages of the outreach last year.
The effort around creating a Pike/Pine BIA comes as the neighborhood has struggled with drug use and street crime that has had deadly consequences. CHS reported last week on complaints of drug gang activity from one neighborhood developer in the wake of a deadly 11th Ave shooting last fall that sparked a major Pike/Pine public safety initiative from Mayor Bruce Harrell and his deputy Tim Burgess.
A Pike/Pine BIA would not fund more police, add Seattle Police Department surveillance cameras, or pay for a new CARE department facility on Broadway, and the programs typically don’t invest in costs like private security. Instead, the city’s patchwork of BIAs focus on issues like litter, lighting and seasonal promotions, and vandalism abatement.
The assessments are typically modest. The 15th Ave E BIA formed in 2021 is one of the city’s smallest covering only around 40 properties. Each pays somewhere around $3,000 per year depending on their size. The BIA is levied on property owners but the costs do trickle down to business owners and customers.
Big property owners have sway. To be approved, petitions from property owners in support of any proposed BIA have to represent at least 60% of the total dollar amount that would be collected for the area.
For Pike/Pine, the 1.7 acre Harvard Market shopping center could be a complicating factor. CHS reported here in September on the shopping center’s ownership putting the property home to one of Broadway’s two QFCs and a mix of businesses on the market for $25 million.
Culberg said that the GSBA’s outreach has seen “some switch hats who were previously against the BIA.”
“These are all longtime property owners just seeing the level of garbage, the level of property crimes, the level of unserved people,” Culberg said.
There is also hope the Pike/Pine BIA could help ongoing efforts to improve safety issues around the edges of Cal Anderson Park.
Determining the borders of a Pike/Pine BIA will be one of the challenges before any legislation moves forward. An effort at creating one huge BIA covering the entirety of Capitol Hill was a recent disaster.
Seven years ago, the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce backed down after a years-long fight against smaller Capitol Hill property owners over a planned expansion of the 1986-born Broadway BIA that would have included the neighborhoods around Summit/Bellevue, Olive and Denny, Pike/Pine, 12th Ave, 15th Ave, and 19th Ave. The expended energy and flagging membership contributed to the chamber’s shutdown months later.
Still, while Pike/Pine’s BIA will be distinct and focused on the corridor, there is interest in helping Capitol Hill’s business improvement areas work together. A new Capitol Hill “Neighborhood Safety Coordinator” role at GSBA with funding supported by District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth will “work with the Capitol Hill business community and be responsible for building relationships, outreach, coordination with key city departments and communication to the community regarding safety issues.”
The role, officials hope, could also help bring together Capitol Hill’s BIAs.
Additional funding earmarked to support GSBA’s efforts including $150,000 to support development of a new street Ambassador Program on Capitol Hill in 2026 modeled on efforts downtown could also be shaped by the formation of a new Pike/Pine BIA.
For now, the GSBA and advocates for the new BIA are talking and asking questions as a plan is shaped to form a new improvement area.
No timeline for introducing legislation to shape the new BIA has been announced.
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