♪♪
-Please welcome
Downtown Seattle Association Board Chair Sung Yang.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Good afternoon and welcome to the 2025 State of Downtown,
our 20th State of Downtown event.
We are delighted to be back
in the Seattle Convention Center Summit building,
an incredible facility
that welcomes tens of thousands of people to Downtown each year,
helping propel us on the path to progress
and continued revitalization.
Just wait until next week
when this venue welcomes 85,000 people
for Emerald City Comic Con.
Yeah, that's worth clapping. Okay.
It's not just a huge boon to Downtown,
but it's a truly a site to behold.
So get ready, all you die-hard cosplayers and MCU fans
because I see you.
This month, construction began
on the privately funded Elliott Bay Connections Project.
And later this spring, after nearly two decades,
we will celebrate the completion of Waterfront Park.
Yeah. Give it up.
These efforts will redefine what it means
to experience Downtown Seattle.
We've already seen the catalytic effect of the Seattle Aquarium's
new Ocean Pavilion and the Waterfront Park's Overlook Walk.
And you're going to hear more about the immediate impact
of these spaces during today's program.
And later this year,
groundbreaking will take place on a new Memorial Stadium
at Seattle Center set to open in 2027.
That's right.
Investment in Downtown is strong
and we continue to benefit from creative, public, private,
nonprofit partnerships.
It's that sort of all-hands-on-deck approach
that has led to real progress on issues
that for too long seemed intractable.
Mayor Bruce Harrell's
Downtown Activation Team is a prime example.
Mayor Harrell will join us in a moment
and speak to the steps that his office and partners
have taken to make dramatic positive differences
in the heart of Downtown.
And we thank the mayor for his continued leadership.
For this year's keynote,
we're excited to welcome Marc Dunkelman,
a Brown University fellow
in International and Public Affairs,
who just recently released his book,
"Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress --
And How to Bring It Back".
It has timely and instructive advice applicable for local
and national issues.
And you'll hear from Marc Dunkelman shortly.
That's right. Let's give Marc a hand.
DSA president and CEO, Jon Scholes,
will take the stage with the State of Downtown address.
Jon will detail the progress
that's been made in revitalizing our city's core,
challenges for the year ahead,
and opportunities to accelerate that progress.
And after Jon,
we will wrap up the program with the surprise special guest
who just wanted to stop by and say hello.
So if you're joining us today and you are not a DSA member,
which given this crowd, is hard for me to believe,
we invite you to become a part of this great community
of business, arts, and nonprofit leaders
who are passionate about this place.
And you can learn more about the DSA membership
by visiting our website, downtownseattle.org.
Now, I'd like to recognize our generous event sponsors.
First, thank you to our presenting sponsor,
Ballard Spahr Lane Powell. And in a bit,
you'll be hearing from Managing Partner Paige Davis.
Vanguard's sponsor is Alaska Airlines.
Our innovator sponsor is Mortenson.
Today's convener sponsor is the Seattle Convention Center.
An appreciation to our visionary sponsors, Amazon,
BXP, Clark Construction, Hudson Pacific Properties,
Lease Crutcher Lewis, Merrill Lynch Wealth Management,
The Omni Group, Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt,
and Urban Renaissance Group.
And today's live music sponsor is PMC Bank.
And you'll be able to join the band
at our post-event reception.
Appreciation also goes out to all 15 of this year's
steward sponsors for your contribution
and helping us bring you this year's State of Downtown.
And also, thanks to our media partner,
The Puget Sound Business Journal.
Now, please help me thank all our sponsors,
partners, and our 46 corporate seating hosts.
All right.
Finally, let's give a special welcome to the elected leaders
who are here today.
And please hold your applause until they are all announced.
First, we have four-termer
and the longest-serving county executive
in the history of the known universe,
King County Executive Dow Constantine,
King County assessor, John Arthur Wilson,
King County prosecuting attorney, Leesa Manion,
King County councilmember,
Girmay Zahilay and Rod Dembowski,
Port of Seattle commissioners Ryan Calkins and Sam Cho,
Seattle City attorney, Ann Davison,
Seattle City councilmembers,
Council President Sara Nelson and Bob Kettle.
Thank you all for being with us today.
Now, before we move on,
I have one more housekeeping item
and that is that we encourage you to join
and amplify today's conversation and post
about this event on social media using the hashtag, SOD2025.
We hope you enjoy today's discussion about the State
of your Downtown.
And now, it is my pleasure to welcome our Seattle mayor,
who we know there is no one working harder
than to keep the buzz on the Sonics
alive sometimes at his own peril.
Our beloved and one and only, Mayor Bruce Harrell.
[ Applause ]
-Thank you, Sung.
And for the record, my wife laughs at all my jokes,
but we won't be hearing a lot of jokes about the Sonics
or anything like that.
I'm very excited.
I'm excited to hear from Marc Dunkelman.
And I'm excited to see all of you
sharing the energy of what I'm going to describe
in a few minutes.
I start by recognizing that I certainly can't do it alone.
The elected leaders here cannot do it alone.
The DSA are known for building these kind of
collaborative partnerships.
And so I'm very thankful that here in Seattle
we have this kind of ecosystem
and I do not take that for granted as your mayor.
Looking back in 2024, we made incredible progress.
I hope you'll agree that it's fueled in --
I don't want to say in large part,
but it's consistent with
and aligned with what we are describing
as our Downtown Activation Plan.
It's coordinated action, very strategic.
It created a shared vision for a safe, active,
and thriving city core. And I spend a lot of time
talking to mayors all around the country on what this takes.
Today is a shining example
of what powerful transformations are possible
when we come together.
And again, I share with you
that mayors would die for this kind of ecosystem of people,
civic leaders, political leaders, philanthropic leaders,
nonprofits, profit-based businesses working together.
Look at what is happening. And when I describe Downtown,
I'm not describing a Monday-to-Friday pit stop.
We talk about Sunday-to-Sunday neighborhoods
where people can truly thrive, live, work, and play,
and explore every day of the week.
Eleven million visitors Downtown last summer.
Starting 2025 very strong
with two million visitors in January alone,
10.5 million visitors to Seattle Center last year.
That's 2.2 million monorail boardings.
That's up 19%.
We averaged nearly 97,000 daily workers this January,
the highest daily average since March, 2020.
More than 100,000 people, of course, call Downtown home.
Now, we know that our path to continued progress downtown
begins and must center around safety.
That is my charter responsibility.
And to show a little partiality toward the city councilmembers
that are here, they know that
that is their charter responsibility as well.
So when I took office over three years ago,
we launched, and developed,
and created the vision for what we affectionately called DAP,
D-A-P, Downtown Activation Plan.
In the first five months of DAP,
Priority 1 calls are down over 50%.
EMS dispatches are down 15%.
Violent crime is down 14% across Downtown
with a projected 20% decrease along Third Avenue
in the Pike Pine Core.
We are expanding DAP to now cover other locations Downtown,
including the CID, and 12th and Jackson.
And you are seeing results.
Now, this has to be very intentional, quite honestly.
I say to you ladies and gentlemen
that if we are to create the city that we all love,
we have to be very strong in doing so.
Fatal overdoses fell by 25.1% in Seattle
2024 outpacing King County
because of our work to create an ecosystem
of public health solutions.
That's where I'm very proud
that King County Executive Dow Constantine is here
with some of his councilmembers because in the health space,
they recognize the urgency of the hour.
So we created our care department
and many of you heard me talk about that before.
It is responded over 1,400 calls for service
and the staff now with 24 behavioral health responders.
Now, we started this pilot Downtown because that's
where we saw the most acute need.
But you saw the positive work that resulted from our efforts
and now, we've demonstrated this pilot Downtown,
which has allowed us to expand the program citywide.
Let's talk about police officers for the moment.
For the first time in five years,
we've hired more police officers than we lost;
4,300 applications.
The most -- -- we have the most applications since 2013.
That's more than double those received in 2023.
Last month, we hired 19 new officers in January, 2024.
The preceding year, we'd hired only six.
So that's over a threefold increase in what we're doing.
Now, what's the bottom line?
The bottom line is we are changing the trajectory
of what we're doing relative to public safety.
And I have a lot of people to thank for that,
particularly, members on my executive team
and this new chief that I have, Shon Barnes,
who we've hired out of Wisconsin
with his theory of change, of leadership.
We will see results that I think are unprecedented in this city.
We did a national search and many people may recall
that our first national search, I had only received --
really the top three were internal candidates.
We built a city in which I could attract the kind of talent
that you see now as part of our administration.
So I need to thank DSA.
They are a critical Downtown partner.
They are truly leaders.
An example of this kind of partnership
you saw in Memorial State and redevelopment.
Now, the problem with Memorial State and redevelopment,
which is going to be one of a phenomenal
athletic and music scene.
The problem is in my state of the city speech,
I described it after that damn basketball joke.
That was the problem.
But people still see the collaborative nature
of what we're trying to do in our Seattle Center campus.
Talk about Spark Block,
the partnership that brought new lighting, murals,
and activation along Third Avenue,
our Office of Arts
& Cultures Hope Corps Downtown Mural Project;
last year's Mural Fest in Belltown
of transformed public space with vibrant art.
Our Seattle Restored Program led
by phenomenal leader Markham McIntyre.
Eleven businesses transitioned from temporary
to long-term leases last year.
We supported through his shop three industry incubators;
the M5 Creative Hub for film and other creative ventures,
the Climate Innovation Hub to boost our green economy,
and soon to open the AI House.
Now, we should be very proud of this work.
I'm not going to talk a lot about Overlook Walk.
You saw some great renditions, but the fact of the matter
is these legacy projects are the largest projects
we've had since the 1962 World's Fair.
They are redefining our city.
We are putting ourselves in a position
for the world to see
as we prepare for the FIFA World Cup 2026,
the world to see what this city is that we are driving together.
We have been tenacious, relentless on this pursuit
to strive for excellence in this city.
Today's Downtown is not just a picture of progress.
It's a testament to what happens when you work hard together;
you laugh together, you play together,
you have a vision together.
So I'll close these comments by saying
that we cannot do this in a vacuum.
We have to realize in the stage of national politics
what we are up against,
what is my job as a mayor of one of the largest cities
in this country, a city of innovation.
Now, we know that we have current litigation
against the current administration
for funding issues
and what we believe we need to protect for our values,
for our infrastructure.
We're blessed to have, for example,
at a meeting last week with Rick Larsen,
the ranking Congressman Larsen, a ranking member
in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
But litigation is, of course, oppositional and adversarial.
My guess would be there's a few lawyers out there
as I'm a lawyer as well,
that that is one strategy that must be considered
when we are fighting for this beautiful region,
this Seattle, and this King County, and this state.
That is one strategy.
But there are other strategies that --
well, I'm involved with a Bloomberg Leadership Initiative
with teams of my staff
who are looking at how do we still optimize who
and what we are as a region. I am particularly concerned,
and I've talked publicly and nationally about this,
about issues in cybersecurity
as we deploy and evaluate artificial intelligence.
The fact of the matter is, is when we compete against China
as one example,
we also have to concern ourselves
with protecting ourselves against China,
protecting your business interest,
protecting our private security.
The lists of vulnerabilities
that particularly AI presents are pretty significant.
We know that the FCC is run by Brendan Carr,
who did write the playbook for the FCC's chapter in Project 25.
We know that our current president surrounds himself
by some of the smartest innovators around
when we drop names like Andreessen, or Peter Thiel,
or David Sacks, or Elon Musk.
These are smart innovators.
And when you look at the world of regulation,
I am concerned about our cyber security issue.
So I will assure to you as your mayor,
as the only mayor
that was put on the Safety and Security
Board for Artificial Intelligence,
when I look at
the National Institute of Standards and Technology
or the -- just one sec here. Obviously, I'm off script,
but I get emotional when I start thinking about it.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology,
you are seeing massive layoffs.
You're seeing, I think,
last week, 130 people in these critical decisions laid off
that we have to concern ourselves with our protection.
So as the Chair of the Technology and Innovation
Committee for the US Conference of Mayors,
I will fight for you
that many of our largest employers are in this space.
It affects us all. We --
under some letters that I had written
and got many other mayors to participate in,
last year in 2024,
we had opposed
the American Broadband Deployment Act of 2023 H.R.
3557.
What it did is took away local jurisdiction's
ability to sort of look at broadband
and high-speed internet,
and where we can deploy,
and how we could make sure we have an equitable way
to deploy this technology.
Last week, keeping my eyes on the Broadband Leadership Act
that, again, one can argue and I will argue
that it weakens local control of some
of these important deployments
that we should concern ourselves with.
And I don't mean to close on a dire note,
but the fact of the matter is, here in Seattle,
the strong partnerships we developed,
the strong visionaries that are listening to my words right now,
with DSA's outstanding leadership,
we still will make 2025 a phenomenal year for us.
We are heading in the right direction.
We are winners here in this region.
We win because we are innovators.
We worked together.
We listened to one another; 2024 was a great year for us.
And going into 2025, this is when you dig deep.
This is when you work harder.
You know, in my athletic background, I lost a few games.
All I did was work harder the next day.
So I close by saying, let's work harder together this year.
We are a family. We are One Seattle.
And we are going to rise here in 2025 together.
Thank you very much.
-Please welcome Ballard Spahr Lane Powell's
Seattle Office Managing Partner, Paige Davis.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-Good afternoon, everyone.
It is truly a pleasure to be here today on behalf of my firm,
Ballard Spahr Lane Powell.
We deeply value our ongoing partnership
with the Downtown Seattle Association
and are honored to be the presenting sponsor
of DSA State of Downtown for the 15th year.
Our commitment to this event
underscores our dedication to Seattle
and the Pacific Northwest.
This year, our firm celebrates
providing exceptional legal service
in this region in its 150th year.
We are also celebrating our recent merger
with the law firm, Ballard Spahr.
This year's theme, Path to Progress,
resonates with both Downtown Seattle and our firm.
Our combination provides us with an expanded footprint of
over 750 lawyers in 18 cities nationwide.
As a result,
we are better equipped than ever to serve our clients,
clients like us, deeply rooted in Seattle,
clients across the country, and clients around the globe.
Over the past 150 years, our firm has witnessed
and contributed to the significant transformations,
events, and investments that have shaped the city.
Personally, I have watched the evolution of Downtown
from my condo on the corner of 2nd & Lenora.
I'm a proud Downtown resident for over 20 years
and so happy to raise my daughter in this beautiful
and amazing city.
Although the last couple of years
have been a little hard on Downtown,
it feels like once again,
we are on the brink of something special,
some significant change in Downtown Seattle.
There's palpable momentum and energy in Downtown
fueled by major events and projects on the horizon.
The Elliott Bay Connection Project
and its revitalized Downtown parks are underway,
set to complete in June of 2026, just in time
for us to welcome the world to Seattle for FIFA World Cup.
These paths to Downtown Seattle's Revitalizations
have been strengthened by alliances,
public, private,
and nonprofit partnerships committed
to rejuvenating Downtown.
However, although progress has been made,
we all recognize that there's more work to be done.
Some of the challenges we face as a city
and indeed as a nation seem daunting.
Our keynote speaker, Marc Dunkelman,
addresses these very issues in his book,
"Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress --
And How to Bring It Back".
Released just seven days ago,
Marc's book explores historical, social,
and political factors contributing
to stalled advancement
in areas like infrastructure and innovation.
Importantly, he also offers some insights on
how to overcome these barriers and reinvigorate progress.
Marc is a distinguished researcher, writer,
and public policy expert known for his work
on community dynamics and societal change.
He's a fellow in International and Public Affairs
at Brown University,
focusing on the architecture of the American community
and the progressive movement's evolving view.
Marc has had significant roles in Washington DC,
including as a fellow at the Clinton Foundation
and on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Marc's most recent book has garnered attention
from notable figures such as Ed Glazer,
the keynote speaker at this event two years ago,
and Jennifer Pahlka, Founder of Code for America,
who wrote so much hinges on understanding what
Marc Dunkelman so clearly explains in his book;
why we got stuck in a pattern of blocking everything from housing
to transportation, to green energy, infrastructure,
and the price that we're paying for it now.
Getting unstuck must become the most urgent priority of the left
if we value our democracy.
James Carville wrote, and you'll be able to --
you'll know that these are his words,
"America is living the truth of the old saying,
any old jackass can kick down a barn,
but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Today, it feels like anyone can stop progress,
but nobody is capable of starting it."
Marc is the author of "The Vanishing Neighbor:
The Transformation of the American Community" as well.
And his work has been featured
in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal,
the LA Times, the Atlantic, and many more.
And I also overheard that he has the cutest family on Instagram.
So please help me welcome Marc Dunkelman.
Thanks. -Well, thank you.
It's a thrill to be here.
It's been a week since the book came out
and this is my first time talking about it
publicly to a live audience.
So we'll see how this goes.
Let's get started not by talking about Seattle,
and all its challenges, and all of its opportunities,
but by something closer to home,
which is, I'd like to put you in your own mind
in the moment that you last had to choose with your family
where to go to dinner on a Friday night.
It's an awkward conversation in many families
because everyone has a different opinion.
I have a wife and two gremlins, two teenagers.
And when we decide sort of on a whim, on a Friday night,
that we're going to go out to dinner,
we immediately start into a conversation
where it becomes very clear
that there's some deep-seated feelings
about what the opportunities are for each of us.
My wife, who is not a vegetarian,
always wants to somehow send us to a vegetarian place
where we're going to be served,
you know, unseasoned quinoa or something like that.
My older daughter insists only on going to restaurants
that have fried chicken sandwiches,
preferably holding the chicken.
And my younger daughter, who's sort of a spark plug,
that's always some weird place
that'll have like donuts and sushi.
And so this begins this conversation inside the family
about where we're going to go and who should get to decide.
And just sort of as a thought experiment,
you can imagine lots of ways of resolving this.
We could vote, just the parents could decide,
everyone could have a chance, and we would --
you know, today would be my turn
and the next would be my wife's turn and the next --
but all of these ways of deciding
how we're going to provision this question of
where we're going to eat have advantages and disadvantages.
Government is a lot of things to a lot of people.
But at root,
it is a mechanism to make these sorts of decisions society-wide.
It's a way for us all to decide together,
have some system of deciding where the bridge is going to go
or who's going to suffer
when we put up a new housing development,
and who's going to benefit,
where are we going to put the transmission line
that brings the clean energy into the city.
And the argument of my book is essentially that we, in America,
have had differing views.
We've had sort of a different zeitgeist
at different moments about what exactly
the process should be of making those decisions.
At the turn of the 19th century,
during the 20th century, the late 1800s, early 1900s,
what was clear was that the kids in the car deciding
where to go to dinner had too much power.
At the time, the kids were political machines,
robber barons,
people who did not have the greater public interest in mind,
and the public figures, the elected officials,
didn't have that much power.
So at the time,
the zeitgeist with a burgeoning middle class
in the middle of the beginning
or the middle point of the industrial revolution
was to try to give more power to the grownups,
to the people in the front of the car,
let them make the big decisions.
That meant, for the most part,
that we were going to professionalize government.
It meant putting power in the hands
of blue ribbon commissions, of true scientific experts.
And this wasn't just in government,
this was sort of society-wide. America was in a moment
where we were looking for true experts in every realm.
It's when bar associations were established,
when academic disciplines came about,
when the medical professions began to divide
into specialties.
We wanted real experts to act in public life.
And in government,
that meant blue ribbon commissions.
It meant public authorities, all these institutions
that were designed to push power above the level
of political machines
and sort of everyday work-a-day politicians
so that real professional experts would be in charge.
In the early days,
the sort of evidence of this was the creation
of the Federal Reserve in Washington,
the Federal Trade Commission
during the Wilson administration.
But it happened sort of all over the country in cities,
more and more groups like this,
which I know that this particular organization began
in 1958,
but there were sort of chambers of commerce
that began to be established around the country.
And they would become sort of powerful figures
in each civic community.
In the Great Depression, it was this way of thinking,
this notion that we should push power up
into the hands of responsible bodies
that would have real power really took off
because the country simply wasn't prepared
for the economic devastation that existed
and the existing social safety net wasn't holding up.
So during the Depression,
many of us remember from high school --
from our high school classes
that there was the Social Security Administration,
and the Works Progress Administration,
the whole alphabet soup of programs,
but maybe the quintessential New Deal Program was
the Tennessee Valley Authority.
And the Tennessee Valley Authority was
this remarkable institution that most of us
don't really know much about,
but it was designed to wire up all the poor farms
in the Tennessee Valley, which is the Upper South,
which had been neglected by private industry
because they didn't believe
that the load drawn by these poor farms
would be worth the cost of extending the wires.
And Roosevelt's intention was to dam various rivers,
to reseed various forests,
to remake the region and the people in it
into sort of modern coastal people in an advanced society.
And he gave the power to do that to essentially one single man,
name now forgotten in history was David Lilienthal.
And he ran this huge organization
that basically remade a region of the country
the size of England.
The TVA became a model,
a sort of an intellectual model for decades after.
The Marshall Plan,
which rebuilt Europe after
the Second World War was the TVA for Europe.
The Vietnamization decades after
when we were trying to rebuild Vietnam
was they were going to do a TVA for the Mekong Delta.
Before he was assassinated,
Martin Luther King wanted to do a Marshall Plan for
the Black community in America.
So this idea of pushing power up into a big institution
that would make big, powerful decisions sort of became a norm,
an ideal, and people in the greatest generation
certainly embraced it. What happened,
because we had this worldview
and we were pushing power into these institutions,
is that something developed in America
that hadn't existed before,
and it's what we now know as the establishment.
There was a phrase that was popular at the time,
which was, you can't fight City Hall.
And Mr. Mayor,
that didn't mean that you couldn't oust an incumbent mayor
if they were unpopular.
That happens from time to time.
What it meant was that there were people in public life
who were even more powerful than the mayor
or who sat behind the mayor
and no matter who was sitting in that chair,
they could control what was going on in a city.
And the establishment existed in sort of all realms of life.
There was -- we had an image --
America had an image of what these people looked like.
They were generally men in their midlife.
They wore charcoal suits and fedoras.
And they looked like this.
And they frowned with the weight of responsibility
on their shoulders.
And they were sort of an archetype.
And the notion was, in the 1940s and 1950s,
that they were the people
who were going to find America's way forward.
That they were sort of a crucial linchpin
to moving the country forward.
And then something began to happen.
In the late '50s and beginning in the '60s,
people began to question the establishment,
began sort of on the fringe.
There was a Columbia professor named C.
Wright Mills, who began writing about the power elite.
Some of you will have read C.
Wright Mills in high school or college.
There were the beat poets. There was the new left
who wrote up the Port Huron Statement in 1962.
And this group began to take the opposite view
of the establishment.
Their notion was that the problem wasn't
that power was insufficiently concentrated in institutions
that could make big change.
It was that those institutions were themselves corrupt
and that power needed to be returned to the people.
And some of that was generational.
Some of that was that these were boomers
who hadn't lived through Depression,
who hadn't seen the federal government
or a local government
really have a dramatically positive impact
on American life.
But some of it was evidence
that the establishment had in fact gone wrong.
That was true in all sorts of facets of American life.
Maybe the most obvious example during the '60s was Vietnam;
a war that was pursued by the best and brightest
was the term of derision used by David Halberstam
to describe the sort of elite
who led the foreign policy establishment at the time.
It was in evidence
when the agricultural establishment allowed us
to use pesticides that caused terrible birth defects.
It was evident in the impact of urban renewal,
which was a program that Democrats and Republicans
had supported in the '40s and '50s
to basically tear down what people in the establishment
viewed as slums and replace them with bigger, better housing.
It was evident in Ralph Nader's famous book,
"Unsafe at Any Speed",
which was about how the auto industry was building cars
that weren't safe. And then finally,
two things happened to sort of nail the coffin
on the establishment. One was Watergate,
which showed that the power elite in America
really were corrupt.
And the second was a book that was the inspiration for my book,
which was a book called "The Power Broker",
which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974,
about a fellow named Robert Moses,
who had been the quintessential establishment figure
in New York City for 30 or 40 years.
He'd been never elected to anybody,
never been elected to office at all,
but he had managed to find his way
into very powerful positions across the board.
He built highways, and parks, and housing developments.
He'd built the Lincoln Center and the UN headquarters.
He was just immensely powerful.
And the most poignant story in his book
was about his effort to build the Cross Bronx Expressway.
Everyone opposed him.
Everyone thought it was a mistake,
and yet he just turned a deaf ear
and built this trench through the South Bronx,
turned it into what would later become sort of a symbol
of the American urban wasteland.
This sparked sort of a cultural shift, these changes.
And you could see it in the culture.
You could see it in the movies.
I don't know if many of you remember the movie "Chinatown",
which was a movie about a sort of an evil guy
who steals water from the valley outside of LA
and brings it into the city.
Or you remember "The Graduate" and the guy
who said plastics was the future.
Remember Nurse Ratchet in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
or the tagline from the movie "Network",
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore".
Those were all stories about the establishment being
bad rather than good.
The cultural zeitgeist had changed by the '70s.
And in reaction to that change, we, in America,
began to hold a different worldview,
which was solving our problems was not going to be fixed.
We weren't going to fix our problems by pushing power up
to powerful men, for the most part,
who would do the bidding of the broader society.
It would be fixed by pushing power down to ordinary people.
So this is a story about moving power in the discussion
among my family about where to eat dinner,
from the parents to the kids.
And what would you do if you were a kid
who wanted to have more weight to throw around
when we were selecting restaurants,
you would put restrictions on what I could choose as a parent,
right?
You would make a statement or a rule
that we couldn't go to any restaurant
that didn't have a fried chicken sandwich.
And in essence,
that's what reformers have done for the last 50 years.
In each case,
we've seen the abuse of power by the establishment
and reacted by trying to put guardrails
around what the establishment can do.
And we've done that in all sorts of realms.
I'm sure that everyone in this room
has a story in their own mind about a moment
that they saw government do something
that seemed ridiculous, and overdone,
and we should just be able to get this done immediately,
but we can't because of this regulation or that.
But you've got a whole notion across the board.
We've got environmental regulations.
We've got zoning regulations.
We've got historic preservation.
We've got transit development norms.
All of these well-intentioned
because they were born from a notion
that the Robert Moses establishment was bad,
and that they needed to be held to account,
and that we couldn't let them run rampant again.
But over the course of 50 years,
I've seen every problem as a problem of too much power
at the top and then finding a solution
in putting new guardrails around that power.
We've created a system in almost every realm of public life
where there is simply too much procedure
and we can't get to a decision.
The bad thing about the establishment
was that only a few people could influence the decision,
but those people had the discretion to decide.
We now have a system where the opposite is true.
Almost anyone can say no
because they can find some part of the process
of making decision,
of the procedures where they can hold things up,
where they can object.
Sometimes those objections are legitimate,
sometimes they're not,
but overall, we've lost the ability to ratify a trade-off.
The bridge needs to be built somewhere.
Whose home is going to be in the way of the base?
We're going to have to take someone's home,
who's going to decide?
We need to build clean energy.
We need to bring clean energy from where it's generated,
either offshore, or solar power, hydro, you name it.
There need to be transmission lines
that bring that stuff into the places where it'll be used.
Those power lines have to go somewhere.
We need someone to be able to choose where that's going to go.
The challenge today,
and I'll try to keep this short
so I give more time to future speakers,
is that we have overcorrected for the problems
that were made so apparent during the Robert Moses era.
We've gone from a place
where powerful figures had too much discretion to one
where no one can say yes to a project.
And the solution is not to say
that we go back to the old Robert Moses era.
It's to recognize that these are two legitimate,
well-intentioned impulses' one, to empower those to decide, one,
to protect those who can't protect themselves
against the powerful.
And we need to find some new balance between the two.
So that's the central message of my book.
I want to be clear,
it's not that there is any single law
that can be written here that would change this.
It needs to be a different mentality
among reformers of all types.
We need both to protect those who are vulnerable
and to empower those who can do things for the public
and in the public interest.
So I hope you'll see it that way.
I hope I've given you some language and a way
to think about this in a helpful way.
And I say I've been in your city for all of 24 hours.
It's beautiful. You should be congratulated.
I was thrilled to be here.
I'm thrilled to talk to you
and I hope to talk to you more about it soon.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
♪♪
-Please welcome DSA President and CEO, Jon Scholes.
[ Applause ]
-Well, good afternoon, everybody.
It's great to be with you here today.
It's great to be back in the convention center.
Thanks to the team here for taking great care of us.
Thanks to their new CEO, Jennifer LeMaster,
Downtown neighbor and new to that role from Atlanta.
She's been a great partner.
And we thank her and her team for having us back.
And thank you to Mayor Harrell for his convicted leadership,
his commitment to the revitalization of our Downtown,
for his partnership.
We're on a path to progress thanks to his leadership
and his action along with that of the city council as well.
And thank you to Marc who's given us a lot to think about.
I encourage you, if you have not,
to crack open his book to take a look at some of the coverage
he's gotten since its release over the last seven days.
And Marc was kind enough to sit down with us earlier today
and record a Seattle City Makers podcast,
so you can tune into that when it drops in two weeks or so.
Just a special acknowledgment and hello to my wife Erin,
who's joining me today.
I appreciate her support and putting up with me
along with my son Parker who's grown up in Downtown
and could probably deliver this speech.
So I appreciate them being here today.
[ Applause ]
We gather here today because we all
believe in the significance of our Downtown.
We recognize that downtowns are where we come together.
They're the center of culture and commerce.
They're where we meet to mourn
as so many did following the tragedies of 9/11.
But they're also where we gather to celebrate
during big moments in our city like this one.
-They're bringing the trophy home.
Your Seahawks, Super Bowl XLVIII champions.
-That was a great day Downtown.
Who was there? Yeah.
And they are places we come to marquee moments in history.
-Seattle let loose all the pent-up emotions of three years
and eight months of war. And to the victors, the spoils.
Peace, it's wonderful.
-Who was there? Fewer hands.
And to share in experiences that we can't get anywhere else.
-♪ Yes, I get lost in my mind ♪
♪ Lost, I get lost, I get lost ♪
-I've been humming that song for three weeks
and you're going to hum it in the shower tomorrow morning.
I guarantee you.
Downtown Seattle is everybody's neighborhood.
These three square miles are responsible
for half the city jobs
and a majority of the city's tax collection.
What matter here matters to the rest of the city.
And in an age where we're more alone and lonely than ever,
downtowns are facilitators of connection and community.
Downtowns help remind us what we're a part of.
So I want to share with you a few highlights
of the last 12 months.
Some stats that demonstrate that were clearly on a path
to progress and highlight a few things to come in 2025.
And as we reflect on the last 12 months,
it's clear we're making progress after a number
of challenging years coming out of COVID.
We are making progress to revitalize our Downtown.
And there was much to celebrate over these last 12 months.
As has been noted, the Overlook Walk opened in early October.
What a home run for our city.
It was well worth the wait.
We looked at the pedestrian volume the first week
that this incredible new public space to opened
and it was a 140% higher than the week in the previous year,
and a ton of locals coming to check out this experience.
Just under that Overlook, of course,
in late August, the brand new aquarium, Ocean Pavilion,
opened its doors. The aquarium, last year,
welcomed a million people through the doors,
a record for that incredible attraction.
We had 276 cruise boats dock in Elliott Bay
with about 1.75 million passengers.
We had more ambassadors deployed on our streets than ever before;
165 total Downtown ambassadors.
We welcome 88 new street-level businesses,
retailers, restaurants, and bars in our Downtown.
That shot on the left is Olympia Coffee over there
in the city center building,
if you haven't been there --
yeah, shout out to the folks from the city center building,
a beautiful redevelopment and reinvestment in that space
and a great coffee shop.
And some of our long standing Downtown businesses
had their best year.
This is David Butler that -- I'm sure many of you
know it, Le Caviste.
He's been in that spot over at 7th Virginia
for just over 10 years.
He signed another 10-year lease.
He had his best year ever last year.
And he had his best January this past January.
He said every January over the last six years
has been an increase in sales.
So you all say you're doing dry January,
David's numbers suggest otherwise.
FareStart reopened their restaurant after a renovation
at 7th & Virginia.
As the mayor noted, we had an investment of new lighting,
and murals, and art, and a general cleanup on Third Avenue
that sparked a lot of interest in additional investments,
in more lighting, in more art,
in more beautification that will continue down that corridor
beginning next month.
Three thousand residential units were delivered
and completed in our Downtown.
And we have more residential units under construction
today than any downtown west of Chicago.
Amazon returned to five days in the office in early January.
The Seattle Goodwill says they're good with ring lights
and athletic wear, athleisure.
They're good there.
It was a big year for the arts in Downtown.
Gage Academy moved its location from North Capitol Hill
into space in one of Amazon's buildings on Westlake Avenue.
SIFF celebrated its 50th year with its strongest attendance
since the start of the pandemic.
And the Allen Family Foundation invested
nine and a half million dollars in arts
and cultural organizations in our Downtown.
And you still have a few more days to go see Hamilton
across the street. On First Hill,
Swedish's new North Tower came out of the ground.
They will double their capacity
when this project in Block 95 is complete in just a few years.
This is being designed by DSA member Perkins and Will
and constructed by Mortenson.
We are fortunate to have this kind of healthcare
in our community.
This will result in a new emergency department,
additional ICU beds,
an incredible new facility for our city and region and beyond.
And downtown leaders from across the world gathered in Seattle
in early September.
We were fortunate to host 1,400 of our colleagues
for the International Downtown Association here in Seattle
and in partnership with the City's
Office of Economic Development.
And as the mayor noted, our local leaders, in the last year,
took important actions to improve safety on our streets,
to help more people get housing and services.
I commend our mayor, our council, our county prosecutor,
our county executive,
and our city attorney for all of their leadership and action
over the last year on this front.
We have to get this right.
Downtowns and cities have never worked if they weren't first,
safe, healthy, and welcoming to everybody,
and -- --
and I want to acknowledge our new police chief,
Chief Shon Barnes, who is here today,
and our Downtown west precinct captain, Rob Brown as well.
Thank you for your work.
And thank you to your officers.
You know, we were stuck for a number of years in Seattle.
We were paralyzed in our inability to distinguish
between those who were hurting and needed help on our streets
and those who were out hurting others.
And we decided not to do anything for either group.
We were paralyzed.
We couldn't distinguish between either situation.
And we chose not to intervene as a community.
And we saw the results of that.
We saw a record number of people dying on our streets.
We saw tents on parks and on sidewalks.
We saw violent crime rise to levels
we hadn't seen since the early 1990s.
We're on a much better path today
because we are intervening.
We're helping people that need help.
And we're holding accountable those
who are out hurting others.
That's our approach if we're going to be successful
on any other of the strategies that we're implementing.
So all of these investments,
and these openings, and the actions I just detailed,
they're paying off.
And you can feel it on the streets.
And you can see it in the data and in the numbers.
And I want to share some important data points
that have been compiled by our great research team
that we're tracking regularly to measure
the health of our Downtown.
As the mayor noted, violent crime is down across Downtown,
and particularly in the core of Downtown
in the Second & Pike and Third & Pike area,
which were the blocks that had the most violent crime
and the most drug overdoses of any blocks in our city.
Thanks to the efforts of SPD and other city departments
along with our team that began in September in that area,
we are seeing significant results.
Violent crime from September to December
in that part of town is down 24% year over year,
down 50% from 2021.
Drug overdoses are down as well.
And we have a record number of people living Downtown,
about 106,000. We're seeing slow
but steady return to office with the strongest weeks
since February of 2020 back in January.
We continue to see these numbers moving in the right direction.
And nearly 10 million people that live within -- excuse me,
domestic travelers visited Downtown.
So not including international travels,
we had 10 million folks visit Downtown Seattle last year.
And we've seen an increase in locals;
folks who live within 10 miles.
We had a million folks who live within 10 miles
visit our Downtown last year.
And this is a important demographic and one
that we're tracking carefully.
And after losing market share in this area over the last year,
we're beginning to regain relevancy with locals,
which is critical to our success and our revitalization.
Locals have to love our Downtown first
and then everybody else from all other parts of the country
and world will too. And we were in the field
just a few weeks ago testing the attitudes and perceptions
of locals,
trying to understand their perspective on our Downtown.
And there's some good news here as well;
85% of the 500 or so folks
that we surveyed within the city of Seattle believe
that the revitalization of Downtown
is important to the health of our city.
They get that even if they don't work Downtown or live Downtown,
what happens here matters to the health of their neighbor,
to the quality of their parks,
to the tax revenue that's important for their school,
and the human services, and other things that they rely on.
And 72% of the folks who had been Downtown
recently reported a positive experience.
So this tells us we do have a gap between those
that are coming more frequently than others
in their perceptions of their experience
and their sense of their experience.
And we looked at the folks
who are coming at least once a month compared to those
that are coming less often.
And the folks coming at least once a month
have three times more positive of a perception perspective
on their experience in our Downtown.
So these are positive metrics.
The things we want to see going down,
violent crime and people
suffering on our streets are going down.
The things we want to see going up are generally going up.
And we have much to look forward to this year.
I want to highlight some of the upcoming milestones and things
for us to look forward to in 2025.
As has been noted,
the Elliott Bay Connections Project has broken ground,
will be completed by 2026, June to be specific, of 2026.
This is, as I've described it, the cherry on top of the sundae,
which is the Waterfront Project.
It is a capstone of additional investments
in Myrtle Edwards Park and Centennial Park.
We'll have a new concession
where you can get a bite to eat and get something to drink,
public restrooms, hallelujah, in this park as well,
and a new protected greenway connecting
the Olympic Sculpture Park to the Overlook Walk.
So that experience
that we're now soon to be able to enjoy from Pioneer Square
up to the Overlook will be able to continue north
into the Sculpture Park,
and Myrtle Edwards, and Centennial Park.
Cannonball Arts will open later this summer,
an investment in the old Bed Bath & Beyond space,
66,000 square foot contemporary,
interactive art complex with 2D and 3D,
an incredible live music event space in the basement level.
I got through there a couple months ago
with Greg Lundgren pictured here, and Joe Paganelli,
and this gorilla that they have sitting in that space
that's just sitting there.
They've got framing going on.
This project is under construction
and, again, is going to be a huge addition to arts
and cultural scene in Downtown
when it is complete later this summer.
And we have two new indoor pickleball event spaces,
recreation spaces to look forward to
opening later this year.
One brought to us by Ethan Stowell,
the Southend of Downtown, and one coming to Rainier Square,
thanks to the good folks at Wright Runstad.
So pickleball fans, you've got more indoor places to play.
And those sounds will be kept indoors
and contained in those places for the rest of us.
The Port of Seattle projects a record cruise season
with nearly 300 boats coming into our Downtown.
That will begin in April, 1.9 million passengers.
And for the first time,
we will have electric shore power at all three berths.
Congratulations to the port
on their $40-plus million investment.
This is what it looks like,
that photo in the middle to plug in one of those ships.
Just like your Tesla. Just like that.
But congratulations to them
on getting this project done ahead of schedule.
This was not going to be done --
wasn't intended to be done this last year,
but it was so congratulations to them.
And in June,
we will have six Club Cup soccer matches at Lumen Field.
This is the warm-up party for FIFA in 2026
when we have the biggest party on the planet,
the biggest event on the planet coming to Downtown Seattle.
Equinox will open its first Seattle location
in the Rainier Square building in May.
And you're probably asking yourselves,
"What is that machine there?"
I learned about this a couple weeks ago.
That is what will be,
I think Seattle, and maybe probably Washington State,
and maybe the Pacific Northwest,
first AI-powered massage machine.
There is an emergency button.
It's that little red one, I think, in front of that gal.
So that's available.
About five minutes in, it whispers in your ear
and ask you if the pressure is all right.
And I thought this was a nice touch.
After your session, it's waiting out in the hall
for you with a glass of water,
and it pats you on the back and says,
"Take gentle care of yourself the rest of the day."
And there's sort of a moment going on on this block,
across kitty-corner.
And I'm not allowed to say who's coming in,
but there's a new lease
that's been signed for the former specialty space,
which is a 7,000-square-foot space that's been empty
since the start of COVID.
And a local operator will soon open their doors
there sometime between May and July.
And, of course, PCC will be coming back as well.
And we welcome them back to Downtown.
We have new ways to get around Downtown to look forward to;
light rail between Downtown and Bellevue,
which will give us about 20-minute ride
between the two downtowns, will open later this year, we hope.
And these LimeGliders,
they were being tested out on the streets of Seattle
a couple months ago.
We'll have a fleet of these out and about in just a few months.
Seattle, I learned a few months ago,
is Lime's Number 7 market out of 280 markets across the world.
The scooters, and the bikes,
and now these gliders have proved a popular way
to get around our city.
We have new food, and cocktail,
and retail destinations to look forward to.
Carmine's will open a new location
in the heart of Downtown.
Tom's watch Bar,
a great sports bar out of Denver will open two locations,
one by Climate Pledge, the other by Lumen Field.
Death & Co, a incredible cocktail bar
will open in Pioneer Square. And a new rooftop lounge,
that's what's pictured there in the middle,
will open atop the Westland Hotel in Pioneer Square.
Yeah, a good number of new retail, and restaurant,
and cocktail experiences for us to look forward to.
And at the corner of Fourth & Pike,
in the former Arc'teryx space, Portland Leather Goods,
obviously out of Portland,
they've got one location in the Pearl District
and they've expanded to Austin.
They'll soon be expanding to Seattle
with a shop at Fourth & Pike.
So we welcome our friends from Portland
and their investment in our city.
And next month,
the YWCA will open after extensive renovations
at Fifth & Seneca,
100-plus year-old building improving the experience
for women and kids,
and providing additional housing as well
at that important location.
Over at the Seattle Art Museum,
next month, Ai Weiwei,
an incredible exhibit will open its doors.
This is huge.
It's going to be a huge invitation for people
from around the state,
around the country, and beyond to visit Seattle
and to visit SAM.
And hats off to the great team at SAM for landing this
and to their new CEO, Scott Stulen,
who's somebody that I've enjoyed getting to know,
just an incredible leader in our community,
and we look forward to working with him and his team.
This is going to be phenomenal for our Downtown
and the whole city.
[ Applause ]
And thanks to the leadership of the mayor and
Council President Nelson,
we will soon deploy 30 digital wayfinding kiosks
in our Downtown
that will give folks new information on how to get around
and enjoy all these new attractions,
whether it be the Waterfront or new restaurants and retailers.
And it's also a platform
for us to promote all the great things happening in Downtown
and also, to bring more digital art into Downtown.
So after a long wait,
we look forward to locating these in the public right-of-way
in Downtown, and helping people find their way,
and find their way to great events and attractions.
Memorial Stadium is such a great project
and public-private partnership to celebrate.
Congratulations to the folks there
and the partnership between School District City
and the One Roof Foundation for getting this unstuck.
It's been stuck for so many years.
And we're going to have an incredible facility
that will seat 8,000,
be a great experience for all the kids
in our city and athletics.
But we'll be able to have a lot of other events there too;
concerts and other community gatherings.
It's going to be terrific for Seattle Center.
We have a busy convention center to look forward to;
93 conventions booked between this building
and the arts building.
Nearly 370,000 visitors expected to come through.
This is one I'm looking forward to.
The 12th annual Rubik's Cube World Championship will be here.
I didn't know this was a thing until a week or so ago,
but they will be here June or July Third through the Sixth.
I went down a rabbit hole
the other night watching these videos of these guys.
Guys and gals, they do this in like four seconds.
I think the world record is like 3.7,
but it's -- I was transfixed by this.
So mark your calendar's July Third,
Rubik's Cube World Championships.
And then finally,
the completion of the Waterfront Project
is going to be worth the wait later this year
when it is finally all done.
It's spectacular to see what's been opened and delivered today.
And there's more to come with the playgrounds,
and bike lanes, and landscaping.
That has all yet to be complete.
And we're doing more than opening a new park in our city;
we're creating and opening up a whole new set of experiences
for people to enjoy
without allowed dirty double-decker highway
that served an important purpose for quite some time,
roaring overhead. And there's not many downtowns
where you can walk along an incredible public space
like this, and look out to your west
at a national park in the Olympic Peninsula,
and have these great urban amenities; arts,
and entertainment, and sports, and food, and music,
and shopping to the east.
And this is well worth the wait.
And congratulations to every single person
that played a role in delivering this to our city
over these last many years.
It's going to be a big invitation to locals
to come back Downtown,
either for the first time since COVID
or more frequently than what they're visiting today.
And Seafair will kick off its 76th year at Pier 62
on the waterfront on June 20th, the first day of summer,
with a big block party
to kick off Seafair's summer of activations,
and events, and traditions.
And I look forward to seeing all of this
take shape under the new leadership of their CEO,
Emily Cantrell, who's here with us today.
So when you add up what we've seen over the last year
and what we have to look forward to,
and you look at the numbers of the things
that we want to see go down,
go down, and the things we want to see go up,
go up, it's clear we're on a path to progress.
And I think this path in our trajectory is, you know,
really fueled by what's always made Seattle great;
perseverance, innovation, daring to think big.
In Downtown, we've got this great mix of residential,
and arts, and culture, and sports, and entertainment.
We didn't spread everything out like many downtowns.
That's been one of our assets.
We're continuing to invest;
the private sector, the philanthropic sector,
local government, the public sector.
And we're partnering again.
We're working together; the city, the county,
the business community.
That's always been the recipe to the great things
that we've been able to deliver in our Downtown.
And we've avoided the doom loop.
It was predicted that cities like Seattle, and San Francisco,
and, you know, these top-tier high-flying downtowns
that suffered so much through COVID
would sort of spiral into this doom loop.
That's not been the case here.
And I would suggest we're on the precipice of a bloom loop,
but we can take nothing for granted.
I think all of this is incredibly fragile.
And it wasn't too long ago
that we made public policy in this town by,
you know, listening to the loudest voice in the room,
or by slogans and hashtags,
or in some cases by intimidation
of people going to councilmembers' homes at night
and shouting across their lawns.
And our inability to distinguish between those
who were hurting on our streets
and those that were hurting others
and to not intervene
was probably the most significant encapsulation
of what wasn't working here in Seattle.
But we're on a better track now.
And I'm grateful for the public officials in this room,
for the investment of the private sector
and the philanthropic sector.
And grateful for all of you for your membership,
your continued participation
in the Downtown Seattle Association,
and in this Downtown,
so thank you, and thank you to our incredible team
who has an incredible commitment to our mission,
to this event, to attention to detail.
I couldn't work with a better group of people,
wouldn't ask for a better team,
and couldn't be in a place that had more to work with;
more resources, and assets,
and commitment than what we have in this Downtown.
So let's not squander it.
Let's take it into the next gear as we enter 2025.
This place is worth it.
What matters here matters to the rest of our city,
to our region, and to our state. And with that,
it is my pleasure to welcome to the stage
the 24th governor of the State of Washington,
Governor Bob Ferguson. He's the 24th governor
who celebrated his birthday on the 23rd of this month.
He's at the 20th State of Downtown
on the 25th of this month.
I don't know what any of that means,
but he's a fourth-generation Washingtonian.
And he is lived and worked on both sides of the mountains.
He's a son of a school teacher and a Boeing employee.
He's a dad of twins.
He's somebody who's committed his life to public service
and we appreciate him being in the neighborhood
and coming over to share a few remarks.
-Thanks, Jon. -Thank you.
-Thank you very much. [ Cheers and applause ]
Okay. Thanks so much.
And first, please join me in a round of applause
for Jon and his team and all the fantastic work
they do for our community.
I'm mindful that the only thing standing
between you and a wonderful reception,
and great food and drink are my remarks.
So this will be very short. I'll keep this brief.
But I do want to mention a couple things.
Number 1, I think you heard earlier from Sung Yang,
I think he may be wrapping up after I speak,
Sung and I went to college together.
We shared an office in student government together.
He was my campaign manager when I ran for student body president
at the University of Washington -- successfully, by the way.
So don't get any ideas about asking him about my college days
because he and a bunch of college friends all
signed very airtight non-disclosure agreements
before I ever ran for attorney general.
So that's locked in.
And a couple things I'll say real quick,
but Number 1, you know, about Downtown.
So I grew up on Queen Anne,
Jon mentioned my parents,
special education public school teacher.
My dad was just a career guy at Boeing for 40 years.
They had seven kids. I'm one of them.
And, you know, that was back
when you could afford a house on Queen Anne Hill
with that kind of life.
And so I grew up -- they were not helicopter parents, okay?
To put it mildly.
The seven kids just roamed free back in those days.
And I certainly did.
So at a very, very young age, I was coming Downtown.
I was taking the bus Downtown.
When I went out to the last exit on Brooklyn
at the University of Washington
where I played a lot of chess,
I was taking buses through Downtown.
Downtown has been a part of my life my entire life.
I spent more than 20 years of working in Downtown
at the King County Council and in the Ag's office.
So I have a deep appreciation, you know,
for all that you do to keep Downtown Seattle
what it needs to be vibrant for everybody, for businesses,
for individuals, for commuters, you name it, for workers.
And so first, thanks for all you do.
You know, Number 2, I want to mention I know -- I'm sorry,
I missed the remarks of the author Marc Dunkelman.
And Marc, are you still here somewhere, by the way?
Where -- hey, it's good to see you.
So I've listened to you on a podcast about your book,
by the way.
And I read a chapter of your book,
I think about Massachusetts trying
to get a clean energy project, I think was one that chapters.
So I'm deeply interested in what you're writing about
because look, I just will tell you that --
so I'm new at this job as governor,
but if I want you to know one thing about me,
it would be this,
few things drive me more crazy in the world
than bureaucracy in government
that gets in the way of serving the people, okay?
Thank you. It drives me insane. I mean, it really does.
And look, I'm in politics
because I believe the role of government
is to help make your lives and the lives
of all Washingtonians a little bit better
and to not make your life more difficult, right?
That's why I'm in politics.
But, you know, when I gave my inaugural address,
you know, I gave a sentence
that I didn't think will get quite so much attention,
but I said something like I'm not here to defend government.
I'm here to reform it, okay?
Was a line I said in my inaugural address.
Well, I believe that, right?
Government does great things, but does it need to be reformed?
You better believe it does.
And there are numerous examples of that.
There was a Seattle Times article just recently,
many of you might have read it.
And it was about individuals who have mental health issues.
For folks who work Downtown or spend time Downtown,
you know what we're talking about.
And it's a group of folks with mental health issues
who are really in a difficult situation
where they become a threat to themselves or to others
and they need to be involuntarily committed, right?
And there's a whole legal process for that,
as you probably know.
Well, the University of Washington stepped up recently,
opened a new $250 million center
for behavioral health and learning.
And it's designed to house 75 patients
who are involuntarily committed because they are
a potential threat to themselves or to others.
What the Seattle Times wrote about in their article
was the fact that because there was a disagreement
between the public defenders who do the work and others
in the county, and funding,
that literally of the 75 essentially beds
that were available to this population, only 19 were filled.
The number was decreasing.
And the University of Washington --
this is a quarter-billion-dollar operation
they've set up to really address a real need,
that the University of Washington
was going to have to start laying off their workers
who helped these people because there's no work to be done.
So there was a Seattle Times article
about this a few weeks ago.
So I read that article.
So I said to my team,
look, it's not the governor's job necessarily, right?
But I said, "Let's see what we can do to break this logjam."
Long story short, a member of my team,
David Frockt, the former State Senator,
brought the stakeholders together
and hammered out a deal.
So in a matter of weeks,
we'll be reopening all that space for those individuals,
right? That is -- -- that's a good thing.
It's a good thing for those additional nearly 60 people,
right, who will get the help that they most certainly need.
It's certainly good for folks
who are otherwise interacting with them
if they're a threat to themselves or to others.
That's good for public safety.
That's good all the way around.
But it's an example of where government breaks down,
okay, and is not solving problems.
It's the kind of article that if a Washingtonian reads it,
they say to themselves, "This is crazy.
Why can't we solve that problem?"
So I had a cabinet meeting on Monday,
by the way, and -- with my cabinet,
and I used this as an example.
I said, "I literally want every single week,
I want one of you to bring me a problem like that,
that we can try to solve.
Beyond your normal work of helping folks out,
like something that just seems like there's a bottleneck
and it would benefit from the governor being involved
or the highest levels of my administration being involved
to try and break the logjam."
Hey, if you've got ideas, send them to me, right?
I've already told you about Sung.
Send them to Sung. Let me know, right?
He'll get it to me, believe me.
But I'm serious about this, right?
We're not going to be perfect as a government.
We certainly are not,
but we need to do a better job of breaking those things down.
Last thing I just will say real quick is, you know,
we're facing a big budget challenge as a state.
It's many billions of dollars.
And, you know, I'm determined to change the way
we budget as a state, okay?
I've said many times, we're not in a recession.
We should not be facing a $14 billion budget shortfall.
I get when there's a recession,
there are challenges for any government.
Just like for a family, if you lose a job,
there's some budget challenges or for a business
if something happens,
you've got -- that's not the situation we're in, right?
The state made certain decisions about spending,
okay, and assuming certain revenue growth,
that was not realistic.
I just want to be clear,
we're going to solve this problem
in this legislative session,
but I've told everybody who will listen to me,
I don't plan on every year
as a governor going through this exercise of trying
to face a multi-billion dollar shortfall, okay?
That makes no sense to me.
And so I'll be announcing on Thursday, you know,
multiple billions of dollars of efficiencies and cuts
that my team and I have gone through the budget
pretty much every day since I got in office to identify that.
That's not going to get us all the way there yet.
We've still got a couple months of legislative session.
But I want to communicate to each and every one of you, okay,
that, hey, we are taking this budget shortfall seriously.
We're going to look at our government and say,
"Hey, can we improve how we're doing this?
Do we need to make changes in how we do business?
Can we find efficiencies? Do we need to make cuts?
Do we have to cut certain spending?"
So stay tuned for that announcement.
There's more work to be done. But we have a lot of challenges.
The good news is, as a state,
we have the most beautiful state with the best people,
the most resilient people, the most innovative people.
Folks, I'm looking at you, right?
And that, as a fourth-generation Washingtonian,
that's what gets me excited every day
to go to work on your behalf.
Send me your ideas to how to improve government.
I'm serious. Send them to me.
And we're interested in tackling these issues.
Jon, thanks to you and your team for the work you do.
Thanks to all of you for letting me
crash your meeting for a few minutes.
I hope you all have a great evening.
Thanks so much, everybody. [ Applause ]
-Thank you, Governor Ferguson.
Okay, folks, that is the end of the program.
I want to thank our sponsors, speakers, Mayor Harrell,
Governor Ferguson,
and all of you for attending the 2025 State of Downtown.
Now, time to get out to the hall
for some great music, food, and booze.
Thank you, all.