Seattle Press on Line - Don't Send Pioneer Square's Drinking Problems to Other Neighborhoods

My Two Cents

Don't Send Pioneer Square's Drinking Problems to Other Neighborhoods

Sep 19, 2000 -- To the Mayor and Seattle City Councilmembers,

Although I support the efforts of downtown neighborhoods to make their streetscapes pleasant to move through, I am truly dismayed at the action the City Council has taken to designate the greater Pioneer Square area an Alcohol Impact Zone.

At first glance the Good Neighbor policy promoted in the downtown neighborhoods (coinciding with the Downtown Business Improvement Area neighborhoods) makes some sense: sellers of cheap, high-alcohol content beverages agree to limit those sales in the interests of clearing out chronic inebriates and their associated unpleasant qualities.

Leaving aside the very good argument that more affluent drunks cause a substantial share of alcohol-related problems (public urination, defecation, throwing up, noise, vandalism, etc.), my complaint is that a Good Neighbor Policy confined to one area of the city is a Bad Neighbor Policy for the whole city.

Limiting sales to drunks in one part of the city does what, I ask, to solve the problem? That depends on what the problem is. It helps to solve one Pioneer Square problem.

However, in "solving" such a problem for one part of the city, you are merely pushing it into other neighborhoods. The downtown "Good Neighbor" becomes its neighbors' Bad Neighbor. Kate Joncas, formidable as she is, is wrong when she says that the neighbor "dumped on" has recourse to the same remedy and leaves it at that. That is a recipe for feuds served up by bad neighbors.

I find it hard to believe that a responsible City Council would adopt such a Balkanizing approach to problems. During the WTO, Pike/Pine and Capitol Hill found downtown's "problem" swept to its doorstep. Did that solve any problems? Make the whole city an Alcohol Impact Zone or let it be.

Chronic public inebriates will find spaces in which to live out their lives, such as they are. Our new Civic Center is not being "built out"; perhaps you could make room there.

Jill Janow

Reader Comments

Discuss this article in the forums!

No comments yet!