“Seattle’s Living Room” requires a billion dollar renovation. Here’s a thought…
I sat in on a convening of arts leaders from across the country recently and heard so much unfounded hope, you’d have thought it was a tent meeting. I heard participant after participant blather on about what they wished for in 20 years, rather than answering the question at hand, which was, “How do you envision the arts in America in 20 years?”
These are two different questions. The posed question had to do with reality. The unasked question people chose to answer was tantamount to clapping really loud if you believe in fairies. And then, one of the kerjillion talking heads made sense. By the rules of the meeting, I can’t reveal his name, but Gary, it was the best moment of the day and it applies to this week’s story about Seattle Center.
“I don’t want to be, you know, the East German judge or anything, but can we talk for a minute?”
For those of you who weren’t even born when East Germany fell in 1989 or so, I don’t have the time to explain it to you. Look it up. And yes, things of note happened before you were born and you should know what they are (or else, be doomed to repeat them).
Now, about Seattle Center.
The Seattle Times’s Margo Vansynghel and David Kroman researched and penned a thorough article on the future of Seattle Center on January 18 of this year. If you don’t know what Seattle Center is, think of it as a cross among Central Park in New York, Navy Pier in Chicago, and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. It is, however, different from all of those in that it is the land on which dozens of arts organizations, museums, service organizations, science organizations, gardens, the Monorail, and arts-adjacent nonprofits have buildings, facilities, performance halls, and offices. There is also a state-of-the-art arena, Climate Pledge Arena, home of the Seattle Kraken, the Seattle Storm, Seattle University sports, and, one day soon, the Seattle Supersonics will be reborn. Dozens of big-name concerts keep the arena hopping on most nights as well.
Oh, and the International Fountain. And the Space Needle.
As stated in the article (read it; it’s an excellent piece), the Center, which was created for the Seattle World’s Fair in 1962, has buildings that were only supposed to last as long as the World’s Fair lasted, a couple of years at most. Some of those buildings are on their 63rd year and are clearly breaking down.
Even the newest buildings, such as Marion McCaw Hall (home of the Seattle Opera, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and other events), “freight and backstage elevators malfunction with some regularity.”
Seattle Center is at a crossroads. Parking is somewhat limited, there is no light rail service to the park — we’ll get to that in a moment — and when the arena is housing 20,000 screaming fans, arts organizations like Seattle Rep, Seattle Children’s Theater, and the rest suffer from a kind of positive/negative experience found more often in bigger cities. What is never said is that there might be too much going on at Seattle Center for the 40,000 residents of Queen Anne (the neighborhood that surrounds the Center, known as one of Seattle’s wealthiest areas, with a high median income) to deal with. Even on campus, house managers and box office personnel are in the line of fire for latecomers who didn’t anticipate they’d have to find relatively expensive parking and dodge 20,000 attendees for the Jonas Brothers or UFC Fight Night.
When Seattle Center was younger, there was a bit of Seattle kitsch to it. Be it the Space Needle or the Fun Forest (carnival rides and booths akin to the Santa Monica Pier), it was a place to take kids for a little homespun fun, something unusual in a tech-driven (Boeing) city such as Seattle. The Needle is still there and admission to the observation deck is $49 per person. The Fun Forest’s rides and games are all gone, replaced mostly by the Chihuly (famous glass artist) Garden and Glass (admission $42.50) and the Frank Gehry-designed love-it-or-loathe-it Museum of Pop Culture (aka MOPOP), a project of narcissism by the late billionaire, Paul Allen (admission, $36.50).
And even at those prices, the buildings are falling down. In order to improve Seattle Center to a new heyday with the same intentions of being “Seattle’s Living Room” (a quote by former center director Virginia Anderson), they will have to raise over one billion dollars. They say it’s $1 billion, but that, of course, means that’s it’s closer to 3 when all is said and done.
In addition to all of this, the arts organizations on a particular side of the Center will be forced to make a decision about their futures, mostly because a light rail station (see, told you) is set to open in a decade or so next to the arena. They will have to dig underneath the current structures, making it plausibly unsafe for art to be produced in these spaces, which includes Seattle Rep. At best, these organizations may have to temporarily relocate; at worst, they may have to move.
Not to be, you know, the East German judge or Gary or anything, but can we talk for a minute?
If the newly-elected Katie Wilson wants to be a one-term mayor like her immediate predecessors, she’ll renege on her promises to build low-cost housing and shelters, (the key promises of her campaign) and start raising taxes to put together a $1+ billion fund for the renovation of a high-end Seattle Center. And she’ll copy what other cities have done with the patronage systems that pervade the city-building industries. And put tons of money into a few shady pockets, to boot.
However, if she has a steel backbone and smart folks around her, she’ll look at the problem not as a renovation, but as a reimagination of this huge plot of land. Similarly, if these arts organizations want to earn their nonprofit credibility (they currently kinda don’t, with a few exceptions like Path With Art) by serving the community instead of themselves, they’ll take this opportunity to get the hell out of the commercial art business and take their works directly to the people who need their services. Eschew the whole machine. Instead of being Seattle Rep at Seattle Center, for example, they’d become Seattle Repertory Theater of all Seattle, using Seattle talent everywhere, and doing plays in more than one location at a time. In a city that has spread its influence for miles and miles, it only makes sense.
Of course, the old fogies (both individuals and foundations) with their names on the walls won’t like it. The knickers of the toxic rich who made sure that their blessed behemoth theater, opera, ballet, and children’s theater would be built in an area that is full of highly-paid folks (and is 83% White) will royally twist. However, anyone upset by the idea of opening up the arts to more people (as a tool instead of a product) proves to the world that their support was only based on a narcissistic means to lift themselves. They donated so that they could attend. Textbook definition of elitism.
That said, what might Seattle Center do with all that land where all those rickety buildings used to be, including the “armory,” the area in the middle with the food court?
Here’s a thought.
How about grass and trees? Trails. A pond. Maybe even a bandshell where symphonies and bands could play on holidays.
You know… a park.
Wouldn’t it be more representative of Seattle’s real culture to offer a place where the outdoors matters more than more sets of elitism centers? And, even though it’s not the reason behind this thinking, wouldn’t it be far cheaper than billions to create?
With all the changes that live entertainment has had to endure (and instigate) since well before the pandemic — the loss of contributed income, the aging and lack of diversity of the audience, the wrongheaded approach of “artistic vision” trumping “community vision” — maybe it’s time to lower the temperature on the revenue-enhancing high-tech twaddle and create a natural space for all Seattleites and visitors, not just the wealthy ones. And maybe there will be other city leaders that might copy Seattle for a change.
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