A group of neighborhood business representatives calling themselves the Pike/Pine/Broadway Safety Coalition are calling on the city and the East Precinct to do more to combat street disorder and what they call “open air drug markets” at Broadway and Pike and near Cal Anderson Park.

The group led city officials including Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess and District 3 representative Joy Hollingsworth on a tour of the areas Friday that included plenty of ideas for change — and a flaming reminder of challenges after someone set fire to a portable toilet in Cal Anderson during the tour.

There was another stark reminder over the weekend after a woman was hospitalized in an overnight shooting in the parking lot above the Broadway and Pike QFC just up the stairs from a stop on Friday’s tour.

The coalition group including representatives from QFC-parent company Kroger, the Broadway at Pike Harvard Market shopping center’s ownership, local developers and building owners Hunters Capital and Dunn & Hobbes, and the GSBA, has placed drug dealing fueled by the fentanyl crisis at the center of its calls for help, citing areas outside the Pike QFC, in front of 11th Ave businesses south of Pike, and on Nagle Place next to Cal Anderson as “drug markets” and “a massive health hazard and public safety problem.”

“There are visible weapons and frequent violence. Addicts are in crisis and people don’t know who to call to help,” the group wrote in an “issues and requests” document distributed by the GSBA’s Laura Culberg for Friday’s tour. “Business owners and property owners are cleaning up bloody messes and dangerous drug waste.”

Last spring, the drug trade on Nagle turned deadly. CHS reported here on the aftermath and hopes for improvements around the park following the murder in the street of brothers Ray and TT Wilford.

The coalition says that businesses in the area are turning to private security and is asking for Mayor Bruce Harrell to assist businesses in “deferring security costs, recognizing the financial strain many are experiencing in this regard.” One property owner put annual security costs for their portfolio at more than $30,000 per building which gets passed on to commercial tenants.

During the tour, one business representative said the city was putting too much of its focus — and its spending — on downtown programs leaving nearby areas like Capitol Hill in the lurch.

Harrell’s office this week is rolling out a larger “One Seattle Safety Framework” with his latest public safety forum scheduled for Tuesday night at Garfield High School. Harrell’s plan is focused on increasing the number of police, cracking down on street disorder and drug use, and increased spending on police alternatives including the city’s new Community Assisted Response and Engagement department hoped to provide better, more direct response to issues around homelessness, addiction, and mental illness while allowing police to focus on more serious crimes.

Friday, deputy mayor Burgess told attendees of the tour that the biggest issue that needs to be addressed continues to be the number of police in the city. “The staffing crisis is real. We still lose more officers each month than we hire,” Burgess said. He pointed to efforts to increase hiring and secure a new agreement with the Seattle Police Officers Guild union as key next steps.

In the meantime, Burgess encouraged the attendees to continue calling 911 even if responses are slow so officials can track public safety problems.

The Pike/Pine/Broadway Safety Coalition says it wants more than security and a police crackdown and is asking city officials to do more to encourage activity in Cal Anderson including staffing the park with a concierge and working to reopen the bathrooms — and either keep them open or bring in “daily serviced” portable toilets. The group says Hunters Capital, which owns the mixed-use Broadway Building development adjacent the park, is prepared to donate to help the city pay for the concierge.

But every good idea for Cal Anderson and Broadway/Pike comes with caveats. Friday, one appeared during the tour in the form of a smoking Honey Bucket chemical toilet that someone had set on fire. The tour group quickly tracked down a fire extinguisher before the flames could spread.

There is more to save around Pike/Pine and Broadway. The Pike/Pine/Broadway Safety Coalition is also worried about the effect large empty commercial spaces are having including the 10,000-square-foot space left empty by the abrupt exit of Amazon Fresh from the neighborhood amid new strategic initiatives for the tech retail giant. Other recent closures leaving large holes include the shuttering of the Bartell Drugs at Harvard Market and the shopping center’s Chase Bank.

The group is hoping city leaders will extend programs created for other parts of Seattle to activate empty storefronts “and foster community engagement.”

The neighborhood’s streets and sidewalks could also be included in a broad strategy, the group contends, with requests for “implementing proper light cycles, especially in high-turning areas like the Pike and Broadway Intersection” and exploring “measures to promote caution among cyclists passing through areas where cars exit garages, such as painting concrete yellow, adding speed bumps (would be very helpful) to indicate potential hazards of collisions.” More businesses should be able to add sidewalk bollards, the group also says, to help prevent smash and grab burglaries.

The coalition said factors like vandalism and graffiti need to be addressed asking for increased city support and possible funding for security gates “for businesses to mitigate property damage and theft risks.”

The requests will likely lead to some easy crackdowns from officials. The group says waste, loud music, and “obstruction” from unpermitted food vendors needs to be addressed in the area and suggest a program allowing “storefronts to choose their own food vendors” might be needed.

As for police, the group’s requests include a return of staffing at the East Precinct’s front desk at 12th and Pine and to “strategically place police vehicles in areas of concern to deter illegal behaviors.”

District 3 councilmember Hollingsworth took part in the tour despite a recent injury and talked about new resources she believes will help including a new [email protected] email alias set up as part of a wider new service system at City Hall that will include messages sent to her office being categorized and tracked. The result, Hollingsworth says, is a system that allows her constituents to reach her office directly and produces data and insights about important categories and public safety issues.

“I like it because we’re able to identify similar problems in the district,” Hollingsworth said.

“We’ll check back in with you. And then we check in with departments to be, like, ‘Hey, did this get resolved?'”

Hollingsworth said her office is also starting early discussion around extending a similar program to the $15 million-a-year Downtown Seattle Association’s ambassador program up into Pike/Pine that would put workers onto streets to help keep sidewalks and alleys clean and deal with low level public safety issues.

“We gotta stop putting pressure on our small businesses handling our what we’re not doing on our social service side,” Hollingsworth said Friday.

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