Seattle Commons — The Case For

Why this is a win for Dionne Foster (Position 9 — citywide)

city council
The Win

You chair Housing, Arts, and Civil Rights. The Commons sits at the intersection of all three. On arts: 435,000 square feet of civic space with no permanent cultural home in downtown Seattle — Allied Arts, community arts organizations, and cultural institutions that have never had a downtown anchor. On civil rights: who has access to the Arch today (convention attendees: a slice of a slice) vs. who would have access under the Commons (everyone). On housing: a vibrant civic commons creates the neighborhood conditions that make dense, livable urban housing politically viable.

There's also a deeper equity frame: the people who fund the PFD through lodging taxes are overwhelmingly people who are not convention attendees. They pay for a building they can't enter. The Commons closes that gap.

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I want to analyze this proposal from the perspective of Dionne Foster (Position 9 — citywide). There's a civic proposal to convert the WSCC Arch building at 7th & Pike into a year-round public commons operated by Seattle Center. The case being made to Dionne Foster (Position 9 — citywide): You chair Housing, Arts, and Civil Rights. The Commons sits at the intersection of all three. On arts: 435,000 square feet of civic space with no permanent cultural home in downtown Seattle — Allied Arts, community arts organizations, and cultural institutions that have never had a downtown anchor. On civil rights: who has access to the Arch today (convention attendees: a slice of a slice) vs. who would have access under the Commons (everyone). On housing: a vibrant civic commons creates the neighborhood conditions that make dense, livable urban housing politically viable. The full proposal: https://commons.conventioncityseattle.com What are the strongest arguments for and against, from Dionne Foster (Position 9 — citywide)'s perspective?
Read the evidence
Who funds the building and who can't access it → What equitable civic access looks like →