Pioneer Square forms its own home team of defensive specialists

By MARK HIGGINS
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

COMMUNITY BONDS are tight in Pioneer Square. Residents know one another, and the beat cops are considered friends. In 1996, the neighborhood groups banded together to form the Pioneer Square Community Development Organization, an umbrella group targeting some of the area's thorniest issues. Patrick Soricone is the new executive director.

All this cohesiveness was born of necessity. It took an unprecedented effort in the 1960s to save Pioneer Square as Seattle's first historic district. Back then, downtown interests wanted the area bulldozed for parking lots and a loop road serving downtown.

The community spirit that defeated the plan led to the creation of Occidental Park and its charming mall in the 1970s, and much of the landscaping that now forms a green canopy over streets, sidewalks and cafes.

With its low-rise, historic buildings, cafes and clubs, Pioneer Square is the closest thing to European ambience anywhere in Seattle.

Like any community, Pioneer Square's harmony is occasionally shattered by a sour note or two. Tensions still run high over construction of the sports stadiums and an exhibition hall. As part of the football stadium package, $10 million was set aside for surrounding neighborhood improvements. But that money may not go far enough, residents say, considering the needs in Pioneer Square, the International District and the community south of the stadium.

At a minimum, all three communities are calling for more parking and pedestrian improvements -- amenities that residents say were promised but never delivered when the Kingdome was built.

The years of upcoming construction and the conversion of the Kingdome's north parking lot to more housing has some merchants worried, and others counting their blessings.

For restaurants and clubs such as Larry's Greenfront Cafe on First Avenue South, the prospect of a new football/soccer arena, exhibition hall and baseball stadium promises more customers.

The Kingdome already generates a lot of activity in Pioneer Square on game days. When the Mariners made the playoffs, business surged at Larry's, a breakfast and blues place, say brothers Larry and Charlie Culp, who bought the former longshoreman's haven from their dad.

Pioneer Square bookseller and baseball fan David Ishii is equally upbeat about the neighborhood's future.

"In the long run, Pioneer Square and SoDo (south of the Kingdome) will be able to handle it," Ishii says. The impact of the stadium construction will "hurt some (businesses) and encourage others. But Pioneer Square will more than survive."

Ishii himself is a survivor. Since 1972, his bookstore has been a fixture at Grand Central on the Park, one of the first buildings to be refurbished by Anderson and his partners in the early 1970s.

Ishii's store is a cozy cubbyhole filled with collectable books, some of which Ishii values so highly that he has been known to balk at selling them. Yet, at other times, he admits he has given away some to favorite customers.

Longtime Pioneer Square gallery owner Sam Davidson is more fearful of the years of stadium construction and the possibility of dueling events at the new exhibition hall and Mariners ballfield.

He also worries that the twin sports palaces will attract more souvenir shops, national restaurants and chain stores Ð to the detriment of Pioneer Square's unique retail mix.

Seattle residents may not realize the galleries there have an international reputation, says Davidson, who fears they are at risk of being choked by stadium traffic and a lack of parking.

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