Socialist Seattle mayor-elect vows to levy new taxes to fund her ‘priorities’

Despite the bleak indicators, Wilson reiterated during her acceptance speech last week that Seattle must pursue new sources of “progressive revenue.” Her long-standing support for taxing high-earning corporations, notably through her advocacy for the JumpStart payroll tax, has made her a champion among progressive groups but a concern among business leaders after Amazon fled the Emerald City in response to the tax.

Rather than allaying the concerns from the business sector, immediately after her victory speech, Wilson joined local baristas protesting Starbucks. The coffee giant has also closed multiple locations in Seattle over the past few years, including a consistently busy store near the iconic Pike Place Market, a prominent tourist corridor, earlier this year

This week brought more business closures in Seattle’s struggling downtown core. Skillet, a longtime local brand known for its comfort-food diners, announced it will shutter multiple locations. Pablo Y Pablo said it will close one of its restaurants as well. Pike Brewing will close its longtime Pike Pub and the adjacent Pike Fish Bar. These developments follow the closure of Capitol Hill mainstay Mamnoon and its sister restaurant MBar in South Lake Union, and the recent end of two Starbucks Roasteries, once considered anchor attractions.

Greg Patrillo, who oversees Skillet, cited escalating operating costs as the primary driver behind the company’s contraction. “Higher minimum wages, food prices, inflation, and the inability to keep raising menu prices” made the business model unsustainable, he said. Each time prices go up, Patrillo noted, customer demand drops, creating a cycle that many restaurants can no longer survive.

“This is a city where everything costs more,” Downtown Seattle Association President Jon Scholes told KOMO News. “We have some of the most expensive housing, we have some of the most expensive food, we have some of the most expensive Ubers, and we should be looking at the set of regulations and taxes that have been put in place over the last decade. Are those helping things? Are they making this city more affordable or not?”

Scholes pointed to Amazon’s recent decision to eliminate 2,400 Seattle jobs and move additional roles to Bellevue as evidence that the city’s tax structure may be accelerating a shift away from its once-dominant tech hub status. “It’s not a myth anymore,” he said. “Jobs are crossing the lake.”

Seattle’s commercial real estate market mirrors the trend: the city’s office vacancy rate has climbed above 33 percent, according to Colliers. A massive jump from roughly 8 percent before the pandemic.

Additionally, there is no new office construction downtown with such high vacancies. Foot traffic in the retail core remains depressed as empty storefronts and reduced in-person work continue to drag on recovery.