Re: “There is no credible Downtown Activation Plan without city workers” [March 10, Opinion]:
The success of downtown Seattle will be the success of the entire region’s effort to bounce back after the COVID-19 pandemic. Being able to stroll down to Pike Place Market, attend a show at the Moore Theatre and dinner in Belltown is what makes Seattle’s downtown so vibrant in the first place. It is a fun place to visit and exist in.
Demanding that working-class government employees reoccupy office spaces, shelling out money for commutes to be confined to their cubicles for mundane Teams video calls and chats, is a relic of an antiquated mindset we can leave to the early 2000s.
Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson recently spoke at the State of Downtown event, echoing the thoughts of this old mindset. Pulling city and county workers back to an office environment, artificially propping up the success of downtown, is not the model for which we should be advocating.
Placing the burden on government workers is a shortsighted, backward step for our city. We need our leaders to generate innovative ideas, not regress to match old ways of thinking. If they can’t do that, maybe it’s time for a new generation to step up and replace them.
Landon Labosky, MPA, Seattle