‘We were hated. We were literally hated overnight.’
This February, Bruce Harrell, newly installed as mayor of Seattle, made it official: His city is in decline. “The truth is the status quo is unacceptable,” Harrell said in his first state of the city address. “It seems like every day I hear stories of longtime small businesses closing their doors for good or leaving our city.”
But it’s not just small businesses.
Much of Seattle’s core looks like a pockmarked ghost town.
