Proposed New SoDo Housing Revives Vigorous Pushback from the Port

Seattle’s sports stadiums owners and erstwhile Sonics arena developer Chris Hansen are teaming up with building-trades unions and small businesses to do battle once again with the Port of Seattle and longshore workers over housing development near the baseball and football stadiums.

City Council President Sara Nelson’s proposal would permit about 1,000 housing units just south of T-Mobile Park on two blocks within the special stadium district. In reviving the debate about non-industrial development close to the Port, Nelson’s bill is opening fault lines between the Port and the city, between powerful unions, and within the City Council itself.

This time, a basketball arena is not on the table. The fight is over affordable housing and
development of “maker spaces,” intended for small manufacturers, artisans, and craftspeople. Nelson said new housing will help ease a city shortage, “put eyes on street’’ to reduce crime near the stadiums and would create badly needed affordable workspaces for small businesses.

Nelson, chair of the city council, rejects arguments that housing will conflict with Port activity, citing 2023 traffic studies that found no significant traffic congestion from such development. She has seen no evidence limited housing will deter Eastern Washington cargo moving to the Port. “I’ve always considered myself a champion of the Port as an economic development agency,” she said. “I always will be.”

But the Port and its waterfront union allies, which were instrumental in defeating Hansen’s
Sonics arena in SODO in 2016, is once again contending even limited housing will create freight-traffic congestion and will further weaken the city’s industrial base. The Port, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 19, and other maritime unions contend Nelson’s bill breaks a compromise on industrial zoning legislation brokered in 2023.

Port leaders said they heard of the bill in December just before it was introduced. The Port and waterfront labor has enlisted trade and agricultural groups from across the state to fight Nelson’s legislation. “While we absolutely need more housing and commercial space in the Puget Sound region, we must not sacrifice the precious industrial land near our deepwater seaport — the very land that drives commerce to and from Washington state and connects us to the rest of the world,” the Port coalition stated.

“We were taken aback when we heard about this legislation,’’ said Port Commissioner Ryan
Calkins. “We had just one year earlier finalized a grand bargain in which we all made
concessions. In exchange for that compromise, we would get a period of stability.”
That bill, the product of a contentious two-year stakeholder process, generally tightened
protection of industrial lands citywide, while easing housing restrictions in some limited areas.

In draft versions, the earlier legislation would have allowed housing with certain conditions in a section of the stadium district, touching off a last-minute battle with the Port. Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell erased the provision allowing housing in the stadium district bill, which the City Council later approved in July 2023.

Outmaneuvered, housing-development proponents vowed not to give up. They are pouring renewed energy behind Nelson’s bill this year. Nelson’s legislation would allow residential development along First Avenue only as part of mixed-use developments, opening the door to “makers spaces” on the ground floors for small manufacturers, brewers, artisans, and other local businesses. Another stipulation: a minimum of 50 percent of the new housing must be affordable.

Chief among the housing-development supporters are the Lumen Field and T-Mobile Park public development agencies, Chris Hansen, and other property owners, along with the Building Trades, Service Employees, and hotel and hospitality workers. Hansen has agreed to require union construction labor on any future projects. Other backers include Pioneer Square and Chinatown International District leaders as well as small business groups including the Seattle Good Business Network and Seattle Made.

Nelson, co-founder of Fremont Brewing, said high real-estate prices are driving small businesses out of Seattle. Pairing makers spaces with residential development is the only way the developments will be economically viable, Nelson said.

The stadium-area controversy comes amid broader debates that could re-shape the face of
Seattle as well as the Port. Battle lines are being drawn over Mayor Harrell’s Comprehensive Plan update that aims to spur new residential development by sharply increasing density throughout the city. Neighborhoods are gearing up to fight multi-family housing and commercial development in exclusively single-family areas.

The Port itself is dealing its own crises: Declining cargo volumes have led to the closure of two major container shipping terminals (T-46 and T-30) just west of SODO to international cargo operations. Marine cargo operations in Seattle and Tacoma are operated jointly by the Seattle-Tacoma Northwest Seaport Alliance, which is fighting stiff competition from other West Coast and Canadian ports.

Meanwhile, the Port is awaiting a potential bid by the U.S. Coast Guard to acquire up to 54
acres of the 88-acre T-46 to berth new patrol ships, part of a major expansion of its base at the adjacent Pier 36. Although T-46 has no current container business and is used primarily to park cars in transit, the Port opposes the Coast Guard’s acquisition in order to preserve cargo capacity in the harbor. The Port instead is encouraging the Coast Guard to expand south. An earlier plan to build a third Alaska cruise ship terminal at T-46 was shelved but is not completely dead.

Yet another piece of the SODO puzzle is the state-owned five-acre former WOSCA warehouse site between the Port terminals and the stadiums. The state has commissioned a study of future uses, which may include a new Washington State Ferries headquarters, maritime training and industrial uses, public access – and potentially housing. Any decisions are more than a year away.

Nelson, one of two councilmembers elected citywide, was elected in 2022 as voters turned from years of increasingly progressive candidates to more pragmatic and business-oriented officeholders. She is up for re-election this year, and is likely to face serious opposition from labor and progressives.

Nelson said she disagreed with Harrell’s last-minute deletion of stadium-area housing in the
2023 legislation but bowed to the mayor’s plea that the entire package of land-use changes
citywide would collapse if the provision stayed in the bill. “What I was told was –don’t [push for the housing component]. You don’t want to turn over the apple cart and the Port will oppose the whole ordinance,’’ she remembers being told.

With a different political climate, Nelson said the timing is right for the legislation. This time, Mayor Harrell is publicly neutral on her bill. At a recent public hearing, his planning director presented the results of the 2023 environmental review showing small negative impacts on the Port.

“What continues to drive me is the scarcity of spaces for makers and small business owners,” Nelson said. Increased crime in the area, she said, only increases the need for a more active, round-the-clock community. “This is an area that needs more eyes on the street,” she said. “Public safety cannot wait. Crime patterns follow function.”

Monty Alexander, executive director of the Building and Construction Trades Council, also said Harrell’s office gave a green light to bring the housing proposal back. He disputed claims by longshore workers that the mayor is jeopardizing their jobs. “We were told explicitly to come back in a year, and you will get it,” said Alexander, who represents hundreds of craft workers on Port jobs. That promise is stoutly contested by opponents of the housing proposal.

The Port’s campaign against Nelson’s bill echoes the Sonics Arena battle: Redevelopment poses a significant threat to Port operations, traffic will tie up Port trucks, and the city cannot afford to lose any industrial property. Further, the area lacks schools, grocery stores, or other neighborhood amenities, opponents point out.

Referring to Chris Hansen, the Seattle and Tacoma port directors wrote to Nelson of their “grave concern that the City Council faces new pressure from an out of state developer seeking to weaken local zoning protections for maritime industrial land.”
That dig at Hansen — who grew up in the Seattle area — overlooks the reality that the real muscle of the organizing effort behind Nelson’s bill is home-grown: the two stadiums’ public-development authorities and the construction unions who share a commercial interest in rebuilding the area.

In past years, the stadiums lobbied for much broader development options such as entertainment, hotels, housing, and restaurants. The goals today are more modest, said Joshua Curtis, executive director of the ballpark that is the Mariners’ home. They seek revitalization of deteriorating buildings and vacant lots south of the stadiums, where they say industrial activity is gone forever.

“We were pretty frustrated’’ with the eleventh-hour deletion of the housing component from the 2023 land use bill, Curtis said. “That was a good compromise. We support the protection of industrial lands in the long term. We would not want to compromise the industrial base of the city,’’ he said.

Ironically, the Mariners aligned with the Port in 2016 to defeat Hansen’s arena project. This
time, Curtis said, the potential impacts to shipping are minimal. Nelson’s handling of the legislation left some of her colleagues feeling bruised. She introduced her bill without advance notice at a regular Monday planning meeting, then quickly moved to refer it to her own Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee. The council’s Land Use Committee currently lacks a chair.

Councilmember Dan Strauss, caught off guard, said the bill was not timely and should go to the committee overseeing the Comprehensive Plan update. In a vote the next day, however, Nelson kept the bill in her committee on a 5-3 vote.

That exchange was just a warm-up for a briefing in Nelson’s committee on January 24.
Carpenters, electricians, property owners, and neighborhood groups backing the bill lined up against longshore workers, port officials, fishing and agricultural interests hoping to stall the legislation.

“What you are considering today is the same thing the same group of Seattle’s wealthiest real-estate developers have been proposing for more than a decade,’’ said Eric ffitch, executive director of the Washington Public Ports Association. “And each time, it’s for shiny new thing.”

Herald Ugles, a former Local 19 longshore president, said Nelson’s proposal put dockworkers’ jobs at risk. Gesturing to the building-trades workers, “those jobs can go anywhere. I don’t want to eliminate jobs here.”

Monty Anderson, the Building Trades head, touched off a heated exchange with
Councilmember Bob Kettle, a critic of the bill, when he suggested opponents were just
parroting talking points to delay the legislation. Kettle, a former Navy officer, replied sharply that his opposition was based on his long experience with the maritime industry. Suggestions he was a “mouthpiece” were “absolutely false.’’

“Since you are so intelligent and smart, and I’m just an ignorant Mexican construction worker,’’ Anderson shot back.

Strauss repeated his frustration with Nelson for strong-arm tactics, accusing her of a “process that has been one of surprises, and attempts at silencing separately elected colleagues.’’ But even Strauss hinted there may be a path to compromise with a new public process. “This conversation has merit,’’ he said. But first, questions about the Coast Guard expansion, WOSCA, and freight access to I-90 need to be resolved.

Calkins, the Seattle port commissioner, is pushing Nelson to delay action while the Port comes up with an industrial-development plan for the area, possibly including hydrogen energy and advanced manufacturing. The Port claimed “SODO is the epicenter for maritime industrial and clean-tech, sustainable energy economy jobs.”

The Coast Guard’s potential expansion to T-46 creates uncertainty in how the Port could move forward. “If the concern is how to address public safety concerns and economic development, there is more than one way to skin the cat,’’ Calkins said.

Nelson seems to have the votes to win, but she is taking mounting hits from the maritime
industry and its allies. Neither side is predicting victory now, and this debate has often taken unexpected twists and turns. A public hearing is set for Feb. 24, pushing action on the bill into March. That leaves a lot of time for arm-twisting and surprises.