Proposed land use signs are a familiar sight around Seattle. From West Seattle to Ballard and everywhere in between, the large white signs planted in the front yard of an old house or stuck to the side of a building signal that change is coming.
As anyone who lives in the booming tech town knows by now, that change in recent years has involved more urban density in the form of apartment buildings and condominium developments and office towers. Old stuff comes down, new higher stuff goes up in its place. It’s a good time to be a property owner or a developer or a crane operator in Seattle.
But, as we know, change is hard for some. And massive, rapid change is even harder.
Land use signs are a prime target for opinionated Seattleites armed with a Sharpie or a can of spray paint or a stack of stickers or a clever stencil. Vandalism of a sign was the focus of a story on KIRO 7 News Friday, in which the station said a new social media post “blasts developers.” The story features interviews with some folks on the street, but doesn’t point to where the sign was located or where it showed up on social media.
KIRO anchor and investigative reporter Dave Wagner did tweet a picture of the sign on Thursday. The vandalism — or public service announcement, depending on which side you’re on — takes aim at “Seattle property developers,” saying they have “torn down everything that made Seattle cool and replaced it with suck.”
The all-caps rant further warns, “Stop building ugly shit that looks like stacked shipping containers!”
A pointed message for developers in Seattle. Every blue dot represents a building under construction or about to be pic.twitter.com/OjI6PvCJq0
— Dave Wagner (@DaveKIRO7) September 8, 2016
Wagner’s tweet also contains a map of Seattle covered in blue dots, which he says each represent a “building under construction or about to be.”
Certainly social media is a popular place for residents of cities everywhere to complain about all sorts of things, including development and change. In a town where Amazon has reshaped an entire neighborhood, where popular bars and coffee shops give way to 3- or 4- or more-story mixed-use buildings, where being stuck in traffic provides ample time to stare at construction cranes, Facebook is a breeding ground for disgruntled Seattleites who miss “the old days.”
But there is an increasingly loud counter voice that welcomes the change. Just glance at the story comments ripping the woman in KIRO’s news video. The tone is familiar to anyone who has been on the social site Nextdoor or elsewhere. Perhaps it’s folks who moved from other bigger cities and wonder why residents in Seattle don’t like new apartment buildings or towering office buildings. Development means jobs and more vibrant nightlife and so on, they argue.
What can get lost amid the noise from both sides are genuine concerns about history and affordability and displacement and diversity and more. GeekWire has written previously about “Seattle in Progress,” an app that uses construction permits and design proposals to show how the city will evolve in the months and years ahead. The more you know, right?
In any event, it’s a battle that’s sure to continue as more companies hire more people needing more places to live. And it will continue on bar stools, in coffee shops and classrooms. And on social media. And on those ubiquitous land use signs that pepper the city’s neighborhoods.
And as far as “shit that looks like stacked shipping containers,” what if shit really IS stacked shipping containers? Oh, hey, Ballard Starbucks …
