Mike McGinn Embraces SE Seattle With New Campaign Office & Two Town Hall Meetings

For those who don’t recognize the address (I know I didn’t), it’s King Plaza. So happy to see a candidate setting up shop in SE.

Kind of surprising that they can hold a political rally in a city owned building.

Sorry, setting up an office here doesn’t entitle McGinn to any special status or recognition. McGinn wants more (much more) density and TOD housing. We’ve already got plenty of TOD housing and it hasn’t sold well because it’s so expensive. McGinn doesn’t understand southeast Seattle. If McGinn understood what’s wrong with SE Seattle he’d know that more TOD housing is precisely what we DON’T need. We need economic development and jobs. (Something besides another Pawn X-Change, now TWO in SE.)

McGinn supports creating big TOD overlay zones that will will change the zoning in our single-family neighborhoods. Taxes will go up as the zoning density goes up. That will displace low-income residents, forcing low-income and minority residents to leave the community, demolishing modest, affordable homes, and rebuilding new, dense, and more expensive housing units. “Preservation is the highest form of sustainability”, but McGinn doesn’t subscribe to preserving affordability by retaining our older housing stock. Instead, he supports radical redevelopment, but only in SE Seattle. What McGinn supports amounts to social engineering, aka ‘gentrification’.

Why isn’t McGinn showing an interest in TOD housing in other busy transit arterials in Seattle? You know like 35th SW? Or, Aurora Avenue North? Or, Lake City Way? Or, 15th NW in Ballard? These are busy arterials that are underdeveloped with housing. TOD would be perfect in many north Seattle neighborhoods so why the focus on only SE? We”re already more densely populated than West Seattle. Southeast Seattle neighborhoods are at least 75% of the way to meeting our 2024 Growth Management Act population density goals. Other Seattle neighborhoods have done next to nothing about compliance with the state’s GMA goals. Why no push for TOD in those neighborhoods that have fallen behind creating more housing density?

The answer is; light rail ridership is well below expectations and the politicians expect SE Seattle residents to accept more density in order to increase ridership. Never mind about economic development or quality of life in our neighborhoods. With McGinn, we’re just going to get more, denser, housing development.

No thanks, Mike.

Not excited about either choice for mayor at this point but I believe McGinn does deserve some credit for showing up in the neighborhood. Him and Malanan may both be ignorant about what we need, but until we see more effort, Malanan’s is a willful ignorance.

I too would like to get to my tech job without leaving the neighborhood. Fremont became something of a hub for tech companies, I’d love to see Col. City do the same. I don’t know how much affect the mayor can have on that happening however.

@Deja Vu,
No, I think they used CRA in Bremerton — it took CRA.