Advocates won a big victory in their quest to save the historic Showbox theater in Seattle, which until Monday was on the cusp of being demolished and replaced by a brand new apartment tower development.
According to an article in The Seattle Times by Michael Rietmulder, the Seattle City Council passed an ordinance in an 8-0 vote on Monday to temporarily expand the Pike Place Market Historic District to include the site of the legendary music hall.
The ordinance will preserve Showbox for the next 10 months as the council weighs the pros and cons of making the expansion permanent and tries to find long-term ways to save the venue.
“Nearly 50 years ago, it was a community uproar and community organizing that saved the Pike Place Market,” Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant said ahead of the vote.
“The Showbox is our struggle of our times, so it’s really exciting that we will be able to take this first step,” she added.
Developer Onni forced the vote due to its impending vesting (a benchmark in the permitting process). Had it reached the vesting phase, any new zoning stipulations passed by the council would not have applied to Onni’s planned 442-unit development.
Seattle Council member Lisa Herbold said that Onni voluntarily took steps to delay vesting in hopes that the council would postpone the vote on the ordinance. The developer’s legal team wrote a letter to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections stating they would consider ways to “sustain the performance history” of Showbox, but Herbold and the rest of Seattle aren’t buying it.
According to the Seattle Times, backlash against the development has created vigorous opposition from Seattle’s music community. A petition for the Showbox to be granted landmark status drew more than 93,000 signatures, and last Friday, a coalition of Seattle musicians led by Death Cab for Cutie; Duff McKagan; Macklemore and Ryan Lewis; and Pearl Jam took out a two-page ad in The Seattle Times in support of Showbox’s preservation.
“The Showbox is a focal point of culture in the city,” Death Cab for Cutie lead singer Ben Gibbard said in an interview earlier this month, according to the Times.
“There are three things that people know about Seattle when you say that you live in Seattle — rain, coffee, music. You can’t attract people to a city by using its cultural touchstones … and then remove those things when they become inconvenient.”
