Careful — tampering with industrial lands

The Seattle City Council needs to act carefully but decisively on the issue of industrial land.

Industry is valuable here. The belief that it is outmoded, or is all moving to Kent, is incorrect. Many companies have moved outward and some have folded, but Seattle's industrial lands have not emptied out. New enterprises have replaced the old ones. Industry still keeps people at work at good-paying blue-collar and white-collar jobs, and its place in the city needs to be protected from the pernicious nibbling of nonindustrial users.

That is the theory behind Mayor Greg Nickels' proposal to lower the size of new freestanding office buildings from 100,000 square feet to 10,000, and of freestanding retail stores from 75,000 square feet to 10,000 in the city's industrial areas. A manufacturer — such as Filson, the Alaska outfitters — could build a retail showroom larger than that, but an ordinary developer couldn't. There is sense in this idea, and Nickels' proposal is a good starting point.

But there are problems. What is retail? A store, surely. What if it sells nuts and bolts, buckets of tar, fishing nets? Or tiles and shower doors? Even "industrial" may be hard to pin down.

There is a building near First Avenue South in which workers are casting metal parts — and one next door in which they are printing custom decals for the sides of commercial vans. The first place is dark, gloomy and smoky; the second feels like an architect's office. Both may be "industrial."

The mayor's proposed rules would apply to a great swath of the city, most of it in the Duwamish, but also in Interbay and in Ballard along the ship canal. As Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck points out, these areas are not the same.

Within Sodo, Sixth Avenue South has a different feel and use than Fourth Avenue South, where the city allowed Costco to put its first store. First Avenue South has the headquarters for Starbucks — and it is not where they roast the coffee. It's a million square feet of office space — and Starbucks is hungry for more.

Would Seattle not accommodate Starbucks? It is inconceivable. But then what about the owners of the land around it?

We raise these questions not as reasons for inaction, but as reasons not to expect simplicity. The work of industry is varied. It changes. The zoning law has to allow variety and change of one kind, while forbidding variety and change of another. The current code does this very poorly, and has allowed too much nibbling.