Seattle Times: Seattle’s Aurora Avenue can’t climb out of its cut-rate economy

The following is an article by Paul Roberts, published in The Seattle Times on August 18, 2024, about how public safety issues intersect with the real estate market in the Aurora corridor.

Seattle’s Aurora Avenue can’t climb out of its cut-rate economy 

By Paul Roberts

A block off Aurora Avenue North, not far from Handy Andy Rent-A-Tool and the Ladybug Bikini Espresso stand, the cut-rate economics of one of Seattle’s least fashionable neighborhoods are stalling out. 

In 2022, Seattle developer Daniel Stoner began the permitting process for a five-story, 101-unit apartment building on North 109th Street — his second on that street and fifth on or near Aurora since 2014. 

Many apartment builders avoid Aurora, where the noise and grit of a working state highway make it hard to charge rents that justify market-rate units. 

But like generations of Seattle entrepreneurs before him, Stoner has been willing to accept those costs in return for substantial benefits. Aurora’s rougher qualities have kept land prices low enough that Stoner can build tiny but fully equipped studios for tenants who otherwise couldn’t afford their own place in Seattle.

Tenants “recognize that it’s not Green Lake,” Stoner said, referring to the upscale neighborhood a few miles south. But for a 230-square-foot studio starting at $895, “they’re willing to compromise.”

Or were, at any rate. Although Aurora’s affordability has always reflected a certain level of crime, public safety risks are now outweighing other considerations.

Not far from Stoner’s site, drug dealing and prostitution play out in broad daylight. Businesses have been repeatedly burglarized or vandalized; lately, some have been hit by gunfire that police believe is tied to warring sex traffickers.

Some of Stoner’s business neighbors have responded by barring windows or shortening hours. Others have fled, leaving empty storefronts and forlorn “space available” signs.

Stoner hasn’t bailed, despite Aurora’s shifting economics. But earlier this year, after vacancies at his other apartment building on 109th more than doubled, he put the new project on hold. When prospective renters come by for a tour, Stoner says, they “see what’s going on just steps from our building, and they keep driving.”

***

Stoner’s predicament highlights the latest challenge for what is arguably Seattle’s most stubborn neighborhood — a 7.6-mile commercial and residential strip, little changed since the last century, noisily elbowing its way through some of the city’s pricier ZIP codes.

For many, that stubbornness is due to the crime that has always dogged this section of Highway 99, especially north of Green Lake, but which has worsened since the pandemic.

Between 2019 and 2023, reported crimes on Aurora and in adjacent neighborhoods between North 85th Street and North 145th Street rose 22%, or almost three times as fast as rates citywide, police data shows. Aggravated assaults, which include shootings, rose 72%, or more than triple the city rate.

In July, anger boiled over among merchants and residents in the area between North 95th and 110th, in the Licton Springs neighborhood, after repeated shootouts.

“My car had five bullets in it,” said Herman Matute Jimenez, who has managed a Latino grocery on Aurora near 101st, across from the Oak Tree Village mall, since 2020. Unless security improves, Matute Jimenez wants to leave when the lease ends. “It’s unsafe here,” he says.

Sebastian Brown Glad, who last year bought a home a block off Aurora, not far from Matute Jimenez’s store, is staying put — but he constantly wonders whether he’ll “be standing in my room one day and ... get hit by a stray bullet.”

City officials have promised to crack down on sex trafficking on Aurora, including by restoring a prostitution-loitering law repealed in 2020. In July, street crews even put a concrete barrier across North 101st where it meets Aurora, an intersection businesses say had become a center for sex trafficking and violence.

But even if those fixes stick, Aurora faces a more fundamental challenge — deeply ingrained economic patterns that have kept much of the corridor frozen in place.

***

That challenge is evident in the Aurora Ave Project, the city’s latest effort to turn a 1930s-era state highway into something suited to a crowded 21st- century city.

For Licton Springs, early design concepts include a “walkable boulevard,” with a planted median, more pedestrian crossings and fewer lanes, plus wider sidewalks to encourage cafes and other “street activation.”

It’s an appealing vision for what is now one of Seattle’s deadliest roads, with a fifth of the city’s traffic fatalities, many of them involving pedestrians.

It also dovetails with broader goals for Aurora, including more transit-oriented housing. The corridor, which already boasts the state’s busiest express bus route, the RapidRide E Line, could support many new homes under a 2019 rezone allowing five- to seven-story apartments for much of the route.

Aurora “doesn’t have to be this scar, ripping through the center of our city,” declared former state Sen. Reuven Carlyle, who in 2022 helped steer $50 million toward an Aurora makeover.

***

The problem with scars like this is they don’t necessarily want to be removed. Previous efforts to reinvent Aurora have been undone by resistance from businesses that continue to depend on its midcentury qualities.

Aurora is still one of Seattle’s busiest freight corridors, a status that groups like the North Seattle Industrial Association fear would suffer if lanes are reduced.

More broadly, the corridor still offers businesses a physical environment that is increasingly rare in upscale Seattle.

For relatively low prices, even smaller operators can still rent or buy space with easy access, great visibility and surface parking, with grandfathered zoning that still permits many commercial and light-industrial activities.

For decades, that package meant Aurora functioned as a kind of commercial preserve, an elongated opportunity zone where everything from nail salons and cantinas to weed stores and mechanics shops, dental offices, budget motels and even ready-mix concrete suppliers could operate in noisy harmony.

As author Jonathan Raban once put it, “On Aurora one can see the region’s face, without makeup, caught in an unguarded and unselfconscious mood.”

City officials have pledged to “strive to minimize displacement” of businesses.

But many still worry that the city’s aspirations will invariably drive Aurora toward the pedestrian-driven retail that already dominates much of Seattle.

“There are so many places in the city where you can have a cafe or a restaurant, but there’s limited places where you can have a tire shop, or a scuba dive supply place or a Handy Andy’s,” says Dana Mongillo, who opened her doggy day care, Fuzzy Buddy’s, on Aurora near 109th because it was where she “could run a business that makes noise.”

Displacement angst is especially sharp among automotive businesses, which have flocked to Aurora since the completion of the Aurora Bridge nearly a century ago.

“They’ve tried to kick the car businesses out of here,” grouses Moe Pilgrim, owner of Rich’s Custom Upholstery, which has leased space at North 100th Street since the 1980s.

Pilgrim notes that zoning changes allow blocks like his to be redeveloped into apartments atop retail but prohibit new developments that need extensive surface parking, such as car lots.

“How many pizza parlors and dry cleaners do we need?” asks Pilgrim.

Even nervous residents like Brown Glad, the new homeowner, worry how redevelopment might affect one of the “most authentic” remaining parts of Seattle.

Seattle “isn’t in South Lake Union,” he adds, referring to the commercial neighborhood-turned-tech hub. “Seattle is on 102nd.“

***

For decades, businesses on Aurora had enough clout to keep the road largely as is.

Groups like the Aurora Avenue Merchants Association helped stop center medians, wider sidewalks and other beautification — even as Shoreline spent tens of millions of dollars revamping its own segment of Highway 99.

Much of that political power was marshaled by Faye Garneau, the association’s leader and a major landowner in the corridor.

Garneau, who died in 2019, believed it was folly to encourage density and walkability on the arterial. “You can try all you want to make it into a little neighborhood street, but it isn’t. It’s a major highway,” she told KUOW in 2018.

But by then, the politics of Aurora were already swinging the other way. King County Metro put in dedicated bus lanes, despite business pushback. State officials have leaned on the city to improve corridor safety.

Aurora has also become critical to Seattle’s housing goals, which envision many thousands of new units along a stretch that currently holds only a fraction of its zoned capacity.

Pressure is also growing from nearby neighborhoods, which were once dominated by renters but have steadily seen more homeowners.

That’s helped empower groups like For North Seattle and the Aurora Reimagined Coalition, which think Aurora needs not only better safety and more housing but also the coherence of a genuine community.

Lee Bruch, a retired architect and member of Aurora Reimagined, says that kind of broad revival could be jump-started by successful housing redevelopments.

Paired with road and safety improvements, a large, bustling mixed-use project could “change the whole conversation about Aurora,” Bruch says.

***

While Aurora businesses have lost some political influence, they have an ally that may be just as effective — economic inertia.

The same rough characteristics that keep land costs low for entrepreneurs like Stoner also discourage the larger-scale investment needed for all the market- rate apartments Seattle planners want.

In a neighborhood that can’t yet support market-rate rents, few developers will gamble on a $30 million-plus construction loan.

“If it’s not yet a safe walkable environment or if there’s loud traffic noise, those factors are going to limit development feasibility,” said Geoff Wentlandt, land use policy manager for Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development. “And we know that’s the case on Aurora today.”

Instead, much of the recent multifamily development is either government- subsidized or niche projects like Stoner’s.

Overall, growth on Aurora tends to replicate what is already there.

Often, properties that change hands are kept in their existing uses, such as a garage or a restaurant. Many are handed down to owners’ children.

Of course, property owners on Aurora often harbor bigger plans, especially since 2019 zoning changes.

Some of the larger street-front parcels, such as the Puetz Golf driving range, have been eyed for development, according to city filings.

Often, owners use the existing business to pay the mortgage and other holding costs — a strategy known as a covered land play.

In many ways, most of Aurora is one covered land play, with hundreds of underdeveloped parcels, proximity to downtown and the new Northgate light rail station, and zoning for lots of big projects.

But time and again, Aurora’s potential has been held back — most recently by the perfect storm of a pandemic-related recession, a surge in crime and spikes in construction costs and interest rates.

TC Wu, a veteran developer and broker, has seen that dynamic firsthand. Nearly 10 years ago, a “mom and pop” client bought a strip mall on Aurora that was almost fully leased and well-suited for redevelopment.

Since then, crime has helped drive out several tenants. Among them was Travis Elley, who moved his medical supply company in March. Though Elley pays twice as much for his new space near Lake City Way, he says it’s worth it to be free of “the drama we used to deal with.”

Wu’s clients, meanwhile, haven’t been able to secure a buyer because of interest rates and neighborhood risks, which he estimates have cut the property’s market value “by 40% to 50%.”

Wu sees Aurora as the Catch-22 of commercial development in Seattle.

Given housing demand, Aurora still has vast potential. And redevelopment would lift the economy of the entire corridor.

But that turnaround isn’t likely until a major player makes a move, Wu says. And “nobody wants to be the first to be the guinea pig.”

***

Aurora has long been the bastion for lesser Seattle. If the major players are waiting on the sidelines, a few smaller ones are jumping in.

Late last year, a discount grocery chain called Saar’s filed permits to put a location at Oak Tree Village, in a space that has sat empty since 2022. An opening date hasn’t been announced.

And this coming week, the Vibe Pub & Grill is slated to open in one of the mall’s retail spaces.

Neither represents the grand redevelopment that some hope for. But for community advocates like Casey Pier, with For North Seattle, small successes signal the start of something bigger. “To be honest, we’re at a tipping point,” she says.

They also come as some businesses and residents report modest public safety improvements, including more police. It’s far too early to know whether the push to crack down on streetwalking prostitution will be effective. But through June, overall crime on the corridor was down slightly.

Stoner, the developer, plans to get permits — but he won’t break ground on his next apartment building until the conditions improve enough that “we’re seeing normal occupancy next door.”

Still, Stoner sees a few promising signs. He was encouraged by the roadblock the city put at North 101st. And he and his staff are seeing more police patrols and even fewer streetwalkers.

“It’s very, very anecdotal,” Stoner says. “But it’s — it’s something.”