Jackson Street and downtown from the Ding How Center
With all the changes coming to Little Saigon in the next ten years by way of the streetcar and the redevelopment of Yesler Terrace, it’s not hard to imagine the very integrity of the neighborhood being threatened. But while taking things of value from the poor is a sad, time-dishonored tradition, I’m optimistic that the potential exists for a much happier ending this time.
Rainier Valley was in a similar position a hundred years ago, when redevelopment came by streetcar to the ethnic enclave disdainfully known as Garlic Gulch. Today, but for Borracchini’s, you’d barely recognize its Italian roots. I worry that if the city has its way, that’ll be Lam’s Seafood in fifteen years, a hard-bitten, privately owned survivor from the area’s utilitarian glory days, while the rest of the community scatters to diasporas on MLK, in Renton or on North Aurora (such was the fate of Seattle’s Filipino community after its social core was razed for Hing Hay Park forty-odd years ago).
In the 1960s, as the sun set on Jackson Street’s vaunted jazz nightclub scene, the area uphill from the underpass became an urban eddy of low rents, few services, and transactions negotiated in back alleys. I’ve emailed a friend to confirm this, but I suspect there weren’t many celebrity restaurants here at the time.* Not until after the fall of Saigon and the tide of boat people a generation later did a distinct character emerge here — a natural spot for new immigrants with little material wealth to set down roots.
Now that character will be forced into clear focus, which is why the coalition Friends of Little Saigon recently sent out an RFP for the design of a big splashy wayfinding kiosk. Here are the finalists for you to vote on. Here too is an entry that didn’t make the cut. It’s noted, with a faint puckering from the taste of sour grapes, that the most architecturally viable finalist is submitted by a firm that also answered the call for the Yesler Terrace remix.
Now more than ever — to coin a phrase — it’s important for the community of Little Saigon to step up and prove itself. The scale of the Yesler Terrace project, currently in rezoning phase, is ridonkulous: 30-story buildings, 50,000 square feet of office space, 5,000 parking spots. It’s like the Emerald City, rising straight up out of the plains outside Munchkinland in gleaming Deco perfection. You’ll recall that in the first book, people who agreed to enter the Emerald City were made to wear green-tinted eyeglasses, obstensibly to protect them from its blinding brilliance, but in fact this requirement was a “humbug” to protect the illusion that the city was greener and more magnificent than its surroundings.
Despite the brilliance of its plans in overview form, the city (Seattle, not Oz) has yet to address some core inconsistencies between word and deed: the net loss of very low-income housing on site, for example, or the devastating impact on Little Saigon’s small business owners. In addition to your standard environmental vetting of projects like this, what they need is an agreement that includes citizens, particularly immediate neighbors, in redevelopment plans at every stage: design, construction, and eventual habitation.
The citizen groups have one particular high-profile success to crib from: the agreement that came out of talks over redevelopment at the Goodwill site on Dearborn. Many of the same line items should also be agreed on for Yesler Terrace to be a healthy, sustainable expression of what Seattle values: traffic mitigation in surrounding neighborhoods and on site; the use of contractors that hire local residents, pay prevailing wages, and mentor another generation of workers through trade apprenticeships; affordable rents to community nonprofits, and material contributions to a community center and local small businesses. If all the players can manage this, they might avoid having to destroy the neighborhood in order to save it.
*UPDATE: My Seattle-born friend Ray (far left) wrote back to paint a different picture of the neighborhood in the 60s and 70s. He went to Bailey Gatzert at its old location at the north end of the José Rizal bridge. He says it wasn’t deserted at all, but rather more of an industrial area, with a chicken processing plant, some restaurant supply stores, and a place that made gloves (Macpherson’s Leather?), as well as the state liquor store and sweatshops for REI and Eddie Bauer (who in the 20s had a retail store on 2nd & Seneca). Ray also says he remembers seeing the sign for the Black & Tan, but never went in.
Tags: Garlic Gulch · Little Saigon · Yesler Terrace
