The Seattle Sports Commission's Region Ready program recently announced that Pacific Place — the 1998 downtown mall that has struggled with vacancies since the pandemic — will serve as a fan zone hub for SEA 2026, the FIFA World Cup matches coming to Lumen Field next summer.
The plan: transform Pacific Place's five-story atrium into a stadium-adjacent activation space. Giant screens, food and beverage, merchandise, international fan culture. The building that couldn't hold tenants becomes the building that holds a World Cup.
This is worth paying attention to for anyone thinking about the convention district.
The pattern
Pacific Place's activation playbook is exactly what the Arch building could support year-round. The atrium is purpose-built for events — large interior volume, central location, multiple levels for programming. The mall's long-term vacancy problem is, in a way, the same problem the Arch has: a building designed for activation that doesn't have a year-round operator with a mandate to activate it.
The difference is that Pacific Place has ownership that can say yes to a one-time event and make it happen. The Arch is owned by the Washington State Convention Center Public Facilities District, a public body whose primary purpose is conventions — not public programming.
The SEA 2026 opportunity
The convention center will host media operations and possibly accreditation for SEA 2026. The Arch building, directly adjacent to the Summit and two blocks from the venues, sits in the middle of what will be the densest concentration of international visitors Seattle has ever seen.
A building with a public programming mandate — a Commons operator — could turn that moment into something. Fan zones, cultural programming, the kind of activation that gets photographed and shared. Instead, it will be dark, or booked for a private convention that's been on the calendar for years.
What Region Ready gets right
The Seattle Sports Commission is doing something the convention center PFD is structurally incapable of doing: treating downtown activation as a civic project worth organizing around. Region Ready coordinates hotels, restaurants, transportation, and venues in service of a single goal — make Seattle feel like a world-class host city.
That's the mandate a Commons operator would carry year-round. The difference is that Region Ready lasts for a month. The Arch needs a permanent answer.
Resources