Pioneer Square: Seattle's poster child for recession

When Luigi DeNunzio looks out at the street from his restaurant's 100-year-old windows, he sees nothing but brick, Romanesque beauty.

"It is the most gorgeous part of town," he says. "They won't let you make it like this anymore."

The rest of Seattle doesn't seem to see it. Not lately. It's been looking away, muttering: "No way I'm going down there."

No part of this city shows the economic doldrums as visibly as Pioneer Square. Empty storefronts mar most blocks. In the core 12-block area from Yesler to South King Street, I counted 21 shuttered businesses — with more rumored to be on the way.

The Smith Tower is arguably Seattle's most famous address. Yet today, 13 floors in the tower sit completely vacant (about half the square footage.) The street level is empty except for a Starbucks.

Down along Occidental Avenue South, the First Thursday art walk marches on. But "for lease" signs dot the bricked path. Fisher Fine Arts is gone. Last month the Susan Woltz Gallery folded.

"I think most of them are barely hanging on," said Robert Sargent, who runs The Press, an art and design specialty printer. On both sides of his little office/gallery on Occidental are empty storefronts.

Last week something happened in bankruptcy court that sums up the gallows atmosphere in Pioneer Square. The J&M Cafe and Cardroom is up for sale. Everything from the name, two bars, chandeliers and beer glasses to the business license.

Someone offered just five grand for one of Seattle's historic saloons. Later that got bumped to $25,000, but the court still rejected it as paltry. A full auction is set for May.

The whole episode was like a modern-day version of the Square's famed neon hotel sign. "Rooms 75¢," it shines.

"We're not back to those days yet," laughed Dany Mitchell. "But I would say this is the worst I've ever seen it down here."

Mitchell started Trattoria Mitchelli on Yesler 32 years ago. He announced last month he's closing the late-night Italian eatery. Too little business, too much crime. He's been like a canary for the Pioneer Square coal mine ever since.

"We're neglected," he sighed. "I've served three different mayors, trying to get more focus on Pioneer Square. Now I'm leaving that job to someone younger."

Mitchell said the Square does have a growth industry: drug dealing.

"After dark, it's like the spice markets in Casablanca," he said. "I can't believe, with this going on, they just made Gil Kerlikowske the drug czar."

Others say crime isn't that bad, historically speaking. Violent crime is down since peaking in the 1990s.

But after the theaters and some of the live music clubs closed, after the dot-com bomb, and especially since the Mardi Gras riot in 2001, the Square has been "like Seattle's bastard child," DeNunzio said.

Take the issue of the streetcar.

It hasn't escaped anyone's notice here that the city shut down Pioneer Square's streetcar only to open one in Allentown, aka South Lake Union.

A high-school dropout who calls himself "a nobody," DeNunzio, 56, nevertheless managed to open three restaurants in the Square (Al Boccalino, Cafe Bengodi and the underground DeNunzio's).

He says Seattle's relationship with Pioneer Square "is like any love story — there are good times, there are bad times. There are fights."

"Boom and bust. Vice vs. virtue," is how an exhibit at the Pioneer Square Community Association tells the story.

DeNunzio said the only problem with Pioneer Square is that we don't seem to believe in it. Not the city, not its citizens.

To that end, a few months ago he persuaded the mayor to designate the foot of Yesler — a block consisting of a single building, 1 Yesler Way — to be Seattle's "Little Italy."

He's got big dreams of street festivals down there. Maybe an Italian grocery. (Pioneer Square has no grocery store!)

The real point, he says, is to try to put the neighbor back in the city's first neighborhood.

"It's the littlest Little Italy in the world," he laughed.

Little it may be. But we know this about Pioneer Square: Something will turn bust back toward boom. It always has.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.