Just a few blocks west of Seattle’s two sports stadiums (Safeco Field, where the Seattle Mariners play ball, and Quest Field where the Seahawks toss the pigskin) sits a decrepit 10 acre lot.
This lot used to hold the Seattle Goodwill Thrift store, as well as the distribution center where they park all their trucks and collection trailers. It closed down and moved a couple years ago, much to the dismay of my Mother-in-Law who used to love shopping in the humungous building of clothes, knicknacks and other second-hand items.
The lot has been sold to a developer who has divided most of it up amongst a few large retailers; namely Target and Lowe’s. There will also be a few sections of strip malls going in there as well.
And the anti-Big-Box store folks are raving mad.
Across the country, large blocks of land in low-income communities that edge dense urban areas have been prime targets for big-box malls. Seattle’s 10-acre Goodwill Industries site, near Dearborn Street and Rainier Avenue South, is now the focus of a $300 million project that will include a Target, a Lowe’s and much more. The planned project lies in the heart of low-income cultural communities like Little Saigon, the Chinatown International District and Rainier Valley.
Commuters, traveling daily from downtown to residential neighborhoods beyond, might like having a huge, low-cost shopping mall on their way home. But what many don’t realize is that there’s a connection between big-box shopping and poverty. While this mall might save shoppers a few dollars, it will have a harmful impact on the people in surrounding communities and even on the lives of the workers employed there.
The rest of the rant goes on to demean corporate owned retail stores and how they take advantage of “the worker”. Nevermind that there is a high unemployment rate in the above named neighborhoods, the writers of this piece will never believe that any job, even if it pays just over minimum wage, is better than no job.
Also never mind that thousands of people in these neighborhoods can and do go at least ten miles north or south, or fifteen miles to the east, to get to any stores comparable to the ones going in there (with the exception of Lowe’s, which is just a couple miles south along Rainier Avenue).
You only need scroll to the bottom of the page to see who wrote this piece and their anti-development motivations.
To be fair, the Seattle Times did publish this excellent opinion piece, which takes a decidedly differing opinion of the development project and is from a resident of the local neighborhood. Although they did take over two weeks to be able to find space to squeeze it into their publication.