The City's Maritime Industrial Area is No Place for Housing
In a guest editorial, advocates for the maritime industry argue that the city should shelve a proposal to site housing in Seattle's stadium district.
By Lars Turner, Gabriel Prawl, and Chris Voigt
Seattle’s trade-based economy operates like a beating heart at the center of a regional circulatory system that pumps sustainable family-wage jobs, growth opportunities, and economic prosperity into the city as commerce flows out across the US, from Edgar Martinez Way in Seattle all the way to Boston.
The arteries of this system are freight mobility corridors that facilitate ingress and egress around Seattle’s bustling port district. This system will be compromised if the Seattle City Council approves a bill that would allow housing development in the midst of incompatible industrial land uses. The upzoning effort threatens to erode our local maritime economy and would put future residents in harm’s way.
Local governments have invested billions of dollars into our unique deep-water ports, rail corridors, and road infrastructure to ensure transportation networks operate efficiently to supply dozens of trade-dependent sectors, both large and small, with reliable freight transport to and from the Port of Seattle. Our status as a leader in international trade was made possible thanks to forward-thinking industrial land-use policies, which preserve industrial land for a diverse array of industrial uses.
The legislation the council is considering would lift the prohibition on residential properties development within 200 feet of designated Major Truck Streets in the “Stadium Transition Area Overlay District,” (STAOD) which comprises several blocks of land around the SODO arenas. Permanent residents will send more traffic into a small area, with limited transportation capacity, that is already overcrowded during regular stadium events.
City leaders are on the cusp of putting putting 58,400 jobs across Washington state at risk—including on the Seattle waterfront. Marine cargo operations along the waterfront create $4.5 billion in annual business output, $1.5 billion in labor outcome, while supporting an additional 30,600 secondary jobs.
Pinching freight thoroughfares in Seattle would impair our state’s thriving agriculture producers as well. Washington’s potato industry, as an example, has the highest yield in the nation—producing 93 million pounds annually. Washington potatoes flow through the Port to major export markets like Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan. This activity produces an economic benefit to our state of more than $7.3 billion , and the production supply chains support approximately 32,000 direct jobs.
Although industrially zoned lands make up only 12 percent of the city’s total land, they contribute about 30 percent of the city’s annual tax revenue. It’s clear that maximizing maritime uses in these areas pays off. Port jobs provide sustainable economic benefits that have supported family-wage careers across generations. Maritime workers can still afford to live in the city where they work—an increasingly rare quality in Seattle’s downtown core.
City leaders must also consider the urgent public health and safety issues that would face future residents seeking affordable housing in SODO. In 2022, Seattle’s Industrial & Maritime Strategy Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) outlined potential harms that could result from siting housing in areas that are adjacent to maritime industrial lands.
The EIS explicitly highlights Seattle’s history of redlining as a motivating framework for the analysis, noting the detrimental impacts of prejudicial land-use policymaking on city residents over time. The SODO subarea where the city is now contemplating residential development is rated lowest on the city’s “Access to Opportunity Index.” By moving forward with this bill, city leaders would be doubling down on residential land use policies that have already failed low-income communities and communities of color.
As the city decides whether to place affordable housing next to a very busy working waterfront, they must be clear-eyed about the significant risks that will face future tenants. Permanent SODO residents would be placed right in the middle of inhospitable maritime industrial land uses. SODO is one of the hottest areas of the city with constant noise and light pollution, complete with a 24-hour average decibel rating that exceeds federal standards for residential noise levels. The proposed development would house residents on top of an earthquake liquefaction zone that could be subject to catastrophic collapse when disaster strikes.
Existing maritime economies and future SODO tenants can’t afford the high-risk tradeoffs inherent in this proposal for the stadium overlay district. Fortunately, city leaders can look to the negotiated alternative that stakeholders, including land developers, agreed on in 2023. Opportunities for mixed-use development in Seattle could be found in the Georgetown neighborhood, where an affordable “makers district” could thrive without similar impacts on residents, or to local maritime operations.
As family-wage jobs and affordable housing opportunities in Seattle continue to contract, we need legislation that invests in the long-term wellbeing of all city residents, not just a few wealthy landowners in SODO. This proposal is a bad deal for Seattle’s working families, and our thriving maritime industry. It risks the viability of scarce maritime industrial lands that we cannot afford to lose.
Lars Turner is the International Secretary-Treasurer of the Masters, Mates, and Pilots, AFL-CIO. Gabriel Prawl is the President of the Seattle Chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute. Chris Voigt is the Executive Director of the Washington State Potato Commission.