The mayor’s blog has a summary of what was said in the meeting, and what are considered recent accomplishment, including:

North Lot
First Hill Streetcar
Only in Seattle Funding
King Street Station
Broadband
Artist Space Assistance Program (ASAP)
New Businesses
Public Safety (still needs serious help)
Restorative Justice Pilot (the first I’ve heard of it)
Restrooms (yes, this is moving forward! I’m on the committee making it happen)
Special Events Management (also needs serious attention still)

So that was the summary part of the meeting. THEN we got to the good part where the group (made up of city officials, business owners, and residents) was allowed to ask questions. The topics that came up included:

1. staggering nightclub hours
2. increased graffiti problems
3. the tolerance the city/police seem to have for bad behavior during sporting events
4. sending hundreds of more buses through the neighborhood due to the viaduct coming down
5. restorative justice for those who urinate in public in the neighborhood
6. and the major problems with drugs and loitering in Fortson Square

A lot of the answers from the Mayor were along the lines of “we’re aware it’s a problem, and we’re looking into solutions.’ Here’s the thing: if I weren’t more involved in neighborhood groups, that statement would concern me. But I know that there are incredibly hard working staff members at the Alliance and other dedicated volunteers in the neighborhood that serve on so many committees that are already battling these problems and are actually coming up with solutions. At the beginning of the meeting, Leslie Smith of the Alliance, mentioned that this neighborhood has never had so much attention and support from city officials as we do right now. So let’s capitalize on that and continue to speak out for what this neighborhood needs to make it even better than it is now.

Along those lines, can I just end this post with a comment from “Paul” on the Mayor’s blog?

Pioneer Square is simply an unpleasant place. It feels dark, dirty and unsafe and nothing discussed above will change that any time soon. There are too many bars, too many homeless and no real reason to spend any time in the neighborhood. There are a couple of good art galleries but that is not enough to get even an art lover like me to go there very often. The loss of Elliott Bay Books was huge but even before that Pioneer Square wasn’t worth the visit. More housing will help but somehow the City needs to make walking the streets more enjoyable.

If you would just indulge me for a moment to defend my neighborhood from this very short-sighted comment. Pioneer Square is made up of fascinating residents, unique businesses, and amazing historic architecture. We had a snowstorm that shut down the city. Instead of staying inside by the warmth of the fire, locals headed out to the restaurants who stayed open to show their support. We walked over to Carmine’s (who had just passed away) through an empty neighborhood, and joined a full, bustling restaurant, when it seemed the rest of the city was empty. That’s the type of neighborhood we live in.

And on our walk home, a random person ran up to me and handed me a piece of record art, then ran away — no explanation, nothing on the record that says who the artist is. That’s how unique this neighborhood is.

We have business owners, like Mike and Derek from Delicatus, who have an incredibly busy lunch crowd, and use that business to stay open for the residents in the evening, even if it can seem slow at times. There are numerous other business owners who also live in the neighborhood who dedicate their free time to committees that have accomplished things like getting portapotties set up throughout Pioneer Square on gameday, or changing the type of confetti that’s used, or researching the best options for restrooms in the neighborhood. That’s the type of neighborhood we live in.

There is a resident who single-handedly took on the alley behind their building to activate it and make it more friendly to walk through.  [And that's not even part of the group and organization that are doing this to all the other alleys in the neighborhood.]

We have the art walk, we have a summer market, we have tech mixers, and business mixers, we have art galleries, and Sounder fans who march through the neighborhood (peacefully), we have unique businesses, and small business owners, and struggling artists. We have the Storefront Seattle program, and the Underground Tour. We have walkable streets, activated alleys, gorgeous ivy covered buildings, and an ideal brick park for family, engagement, and wedding photos. This is the neighborhood I choose to live in.

Those of us who live in this neighborhood, and those that choose to open and keep their businesses in this neighborhood are the people that we want here — we’re just waiting for the rest of you to stop judging this book by its cover and recognize the good that is down here already. Change will come to this neighborhood, but it will be slow, and it won’t ever really change the feel of Pioneer Square. We will always have the homeless in our neighborhood. But that’s ok — because as housing is added and more businesses open, this neighborhood will find a balance that works a little better.

And then the rest of you will see what we see.

Why do Utilikilts appeal to many in the Northwest? (KPLU)
Whatever your feelings about them, they are part of the Northwest. The idea was born here. They’re manufactured here. They even have their own store in Seattle’s Pioneer Square Neighborhood. Why, then, are they so polarizing in their own hometown?

Homeless evicted from under Seattle viaduct (Seattle PI)
A two-block area near Pioneer Square was the latest to be swept Monday morning, but no one had to be physically removed. The homeless apparently heeded “no trespassing” signs posted Friday, said state transportation department spokeswoman KaDeena Yerkan.

State to homeless people: No more sleeping under the viaduct (Seattle PI)
But beginning Monday, the downtown dwellers of the Alaskan Way Viaduct will be gone. The state will begin sweeping away homeless people, as it expands its tunnel replacement construction a few blocks north to Yesler Way. The evictions are expected to grow through February, as construction moves to Spring Street in Seattle’s downtown core.

Hail to the chief: Sally Clark takes on new role as Seattle Council president (Seattle Times)
Clark largely got high marks for a similar rezone in Pioneer Square last year where McConachie, who serves on the Pioneer Square Preservation Board, said she found “edges and lots” that might be redeveloped without eroding the district’s historic character.

Man hospitalized after stabbing at PSq homeless shelter (PubliCola)
One man was hospitalized following a stabbing at a Pioneer Square homeless shelter Tuesday morning.

So cold, even the trees need socks (Seattle Times)
The multi-colored tree-socks couldn’t be more fitting during these cold days we are having. At Occidental Park, they also add a welcoming sense of cheer and whimsy to the neighborhood. I was pulled into the park as soon as I saw the trees from a distance.

Design Perspectives: The new North Lot: erasing a civic embarrassment (DJC – subscription only)
For more than three decades, Pioneer Square has looked south across almost four blocks of surface parking. The North Lot, first by the Kingdome and now next to its replacement, CenturyLink Field, was a civic embarrassment and a developer’s dream: a sea of paving in the historic heart of Seattle, large enough to hold a new middle class neighborhood.

City bites hand that feeds homeless (Seattle Times)
Curbside al fresco is so hip that Seattle officials have put up a website to promote the street-food craze. But not if you’re homeless, says Beverly Graham, whose Operation: Sack Lunch serves meals, mostly outdoors, to the low- and no-income.

Today in Pictures: Jan. 18, 2012 (ABC News)
A Metro bus drives under a canopy of snow-covered trees in Pioneer Square, Jan. 18, 2012, in Seattle. The city is expecting three to six inches.

Restaurateur Carmine Smeraldo dies at 69 (Seattle Times)
Carmine Smeraldo would greet customers at his Pioneer Square restaurant with warmth, offering a handshake, or oftentimes, a hug. He knew loyal crowds turned up for perfectly smoked salmon dishes and handmade ravioli stuffed with bursts of wild mushroom.

2012 guide to staying fit (Daily Helmsman)
Personal trainer Kirstin Piquette helps Paula Sampel during her morning workout at Seattle Fitness Club in Pioneer Square.

Gottesman does it again, wins Startup Weekend with home security product Iron Blanket (GeekWire)
Seattle Startup Weekend, a 54-hour coding marathon, hosted the most recent event at the Hub in Pioneer Square. Fifty four pitches were heard on Friday night, with 15 teams formed for the weekend competition.
p.s. Street Code — an app that lets you scan QR codes on homeless people (and donate) — is apparently already being used in Pioneer Square… has anyone heard about this???

The Climate Corp. picks Seattle for branch office, looks to cultivate talent to crunch weather data (GeekWire)
The Climate Corp. — a six-year-old San Francisco company that specializes in providing weather insurance to U.S. farmers — has chosen to establish a new engineering center in Seattle’s tech-heavy Pioneer Square neighborhood.

Landlord-Tenant Complaints Spiked in 2011 (PubliCola)
DPD spokesman Bryan Stevens attributes much of the increase to better record-keeping by DPD (counting email and in-person contacts, for example, in addition to phone complaints) and the fact that the Downtowner Apartments in Pioneer Square were renovated last year, resulting in the relocation of hundreds of tenants.

The rough road to a safer 3rd Avenue (Crosscut)
People in Pioneer Square, Belltown, and the International District have long struggled with public safety problems due, in some part, to the high concentration of shelters and services in their neighborhoods. In Pioneer Square, the hope for the future is to bring in market and workforce housing to restore some balance to the neighborhood, which in turn would help bring in a more diverse mix of retail businesses.

A plan to honor 130 years of fallen Seattle officers (Seattle Times)
Veteran Seattle Police Officer Mike Severance is seeking city approval to place signs near where Seattle police officers have died in the line of duty.

KK Does Aerosmith at Fuel in Pioneer Square: “Even When I Suck I’m Pretty Good” (Seattle Weekly)
Read more about how Fuel does Karaoke.

Photo test: Think you know Seattle, but can you name that sign? (Seattle PI – BIG Blog)
The State Hotel sign on First Avenue is left over from Pioneer Square’s early days.

Vulcan sells part of Merrill Place (DJC)
Records show that an affiliate of Vulcan Real Estate sold a portion of Merrill Place, an office and retail building in Pioneer Square, for just over $23.9 million.

Seattle looks to clean up Third Avenue transit corridor (Seattle Times)
The city of Seattle is trying to make the Third Avenue transit corridor, where an estimated 40,000 people arrive and depart downtown each day, safer to protect shoppers and others from a gauntlet of open-air drug deals, the homeless, the mentally ill and crowds of loitering street kids.

Developers still piling into Seattle’s South Lake Union (TechFlash)
South Lake Union will remain a hot spot for commercial development in 2012, while Pioneer Square may emerge as Seattle’s next emerging neighborhood.

Christmas Muggings, Shootings, and Robberies (PubliCola)
A man was shot outside a Pioneer Square club this weekend after he got into a fight with his ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend, according to police.

SAM’s Listening Room and “Record Store” are Painfully Out of Touch With the State of the Music Industry and Seattle’s Unique Scene (Seattle Weekly)
There’s a record store in Pioneer Square that doesn’t sell records. The Record Store, as it’s called, is a traveling installation put on by the Seattle Art Museum and Olson Kundig Architects.

Greyhound may test Seattle’s commitment to mass transportation (Crosscut)
The bus line is losing its home on the north edge of downtown. Is a move to Pioneer Square’s King Street Station the best choice, and perhaps the only way to keep the intercity service in Seattle?

A new (and well-traveled) web producer (PSBJ)
The Berliner in Pioneer Square reminds Jennifer Sokolowsky of the Döner kebab stands that are on every corner in Berlin, Germany, where she lived for three years.

Seattle wants to see shoppers in town and offline (King5)
The economy is down and online retailers continue to attract a big chunk of shoppers. However, that hasn’t slowed down the woman, who calls herself “Mouse.”

“I have a PHD from the school of hard knocks in retail,” jokes the owner of Magic Mouse Toys in Pioneer Square. “We appeal to all different ages, all different price points.” She has been in the same spot for 34 years, and won’t admit any concern over online retailers. “I would find that boring to exist, why even leave your house?” Mouse says.

Pioneer Square to Get Its Streetcar; Aloha Extension Still Up In the Air (PubliCola)
At tomorrow morning’s meeting of the city council transportation committee, council members will discuss a proposal to extend the route of the proposed Capitol Hill/First Hill streetcar into Pioneer Square, a response to Pioneer Square businesses and residents who argued that the neighborhood would benefit from the extra transportation option, especially during construction of the Alaskan Way tunnel.

Heroes Catering Is a Blue-Collar FareStart (Seattle Weekly – Voracious)
With far less fanfare, Pioneer Square’s Bread of Life Mission has since 2003 operated a similar program, Heroes Catering, albeit one which sports a far bluer collar than that of its uptown peer.

Dudley: Dinner with Zynga CEO a game-winner (Seattle Times)
Seattle’s Cara Ely, created the blockbuster “Dream Day” franchise for Oberon Media’s I-Play, went to a Zynga recruiting dinner and ended up sitting next to founder Mark Pincus. Now she’s been commuting constantly to Zynga’s San Francisco offices, where she’s the creative director on a new hidden-object game called “Hidden Chronicles.”

At the Seattle Art Museum, listening to old records is the show (KPLU)
SAM has also launched a second pop-up installation called “Record Store.” It’s another kind of listening lounge (no actual records are for sale) where visitors can practice the art of looking and listening to albums. It’s located in a Pioneer Square storefront at 406 Occidental Ave.

Why a $490,000 viaduct museum now? (Seattle Times)
The government-waste question of the week is: Why is our state opening a viaduct museum, of all things, in Pioneer Square?

With Pioneer Square, a historic district, “we are going to mess up their lives for four years with this project,” Hammond said. “So we see this as a small price to pay to mitigate that.”

New Museum in Pioneer Square (PubliCola)
Erica has already made it clear that she thinks the uproar over the new museum in Pioneer Square dedicated to the tunnel project is faux populist journalism (and GOP rhetoric) at its silliest.

Viaduct replacement museum fulfills state’s obligation to protect Pioneer Square (Seattle Times)
An exhibit devoted to the project that replaces of the Alaskan Way Viaduct has generated some controversy over government expenditure. Guest columnists Charles Royer and Kevin Daniels say the law requires such a treatment because of its effect on historic Pioneer Square.

Schrammie: Wasting $485,000 on viaduct museum (KOMO News)
Secretary Paula spent some time with me explaining why the state DOT is opening a museum in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. She says its focus will be on providing a history of the neighborhood as well explaining the tunnel project that will replace the viaduct.

Midday Scan: Viaduct museum; see you in court over liquor jobs; Kalakala’s ‘significance’ (Crosscut)
In fact it’s mitigation (or horse-trading or politics). Pioneer Square will take a hit during the tunnel’s construction, and this is a tangible way to say “sorry about that.” As Westneat writes, “It’s just a cost of doing business.”

Turks, Looking To Do Business with Native Americans, Say They’re Related (Seattle Weekly)
You might think this is just the art of schmooze. But Sedat Uysal, the Turkish-born proprietor of Pioneer Square’s Cafe Paloma, lights up when asked about this affinity. He says he was struck by the same thing when he immigrated here 26 years ago.

Crystal Palace or Legoland for new Pioneer Square development? (King5)
The new “Stadium Place” development is now being built in Pioneer Square in the north parking lot of the Seahawks’ Stadium. It’s 25 shiny stories that will be one of the most unique buildings in the state. The defining points are several two-to-four-story sections of the building that are stacked askew, kind of like 50-foot Jenga blocks. But does it fit with the Square’s red brick and turn of the 20th century charm?

Slide show: North lot project to rise near Pioneer Square (PSBJ)
When completed in 2015, the project will include three residential towers, a hotel, offices, retail space and a parking garage. The developer started work last month, clearing away some contaminated soil on the site. Daniels expects he will be able to make up some of the time lost on the project.

Seattle seeking affordable space for artists (KPLU)
“We’re working on programs that would help bring artists back into the downtown. We’re expanding our partnerships and our work on the Storefronts program to really look at how we can use arts to help revitalize empty retails areas. So, there are a lot of challenges that we face.”

The developers of part of CenturyLink Field’s north parking lot are unveiling the first detailed designs for their project’s first phase this week — including a 25-story apartment tower that promises to be one of the city’s most visible and architecturally distinctive new buildings.

Here are the newly released images (also available on Stadium Place’s website):

Viaduct project gets its own museum (Seattle Times)
Called Milepost 31, it combines the history of Pioneer Square with the gee-whiz technology of the massive undertaking to dig a tunnel to replace the aging, and now partially gone, Alaskan Way Viaduct.

New late-night taxi stands coming to Fremont, downtown, Capitol Hill (KOMO News)
On Nov. 29, Mayor Mike McGinn announced the locations of the five late-night taxi stands that are part of his eight-point Seattle Nightlife Initiative. The stands, which will restrict curb space to cabs-only between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. every night, will be located in Pioneer Square, Capitol Hill, Belltown, Pike Place and Fremont.

This is Necessary for the Immediate Preservation of Public Peace (PubliCola)
The south portal of the tunnel would be next to Pioneer Square, and would dump an estimated 59,000 cars—via what one planner called a “linguini-type” system of ramps at yesterday’s meeting—onto streets in that neighborhood. But perhaps more jarring than the extra traffic through Pioneer Square is the size of the operations buildings that will house the tunnel’s emergency systems, batteries and generators, ventilation system, maintenance trucks, and pumps. That building—which will stand about 45 feet above street level, take up 20,000 square feet, and have no street level uses like cafes, shops, or restaurants—will be plopped right in the heart of the dense, mixed-use neighborhood of Pioneer Square.

BuiltBurger Closes in Pioneer Square (Seattle Weekly)
In less upbeat news, Eater Seattle reports that BuiltBurger at 217 James St. in Pioneer Square serves its last patty on Friday, December 2. Its owners are now on the East Coast and have decided to “pause the BuiltBurger brand.”

New detour lanes, parking for viaduct project (Seattle Times)
A new kind of traffic detour is coming to the Highway 99 tunnel construction project, where some lanes and 80 parking spaces are being removed at Pioneer Square.

Homeless women speak out, sharing tales of grief and joy (Real Change)
In 1985, Desiree Hellegers went to work at the Compass Center in Seattle’s Pioneer Square. There she encountered an astonishing and diverse array of women whose lives had been shattered. In her cogent introduction to “No Room for Her Own,” Hellegers declares that “anyone who’s experienced homelessness can attest to the fact that homelessness can, and does, cause mental illness and drive people to drink. Lose your housing in the United States and you run the risk of losing both your mind and your life.”

Is the new Neptune Theatre a rock scene hog? (Seattle Times)
It wouldn’t be the first time Seattle’s music epicenter shifted. Pioneer Square was a rock powerhouse in the ’80s, with a string of busy venues. Now it hardly rocks at all. Pioneer Square’s loss was Belltown’s gain, but 20 years of Belltown rocking are almost completely forgotten, too, with The Crocodile now out of place in a glitzy Top-40 singles scene.

Nordstrom rolls out same-day delivery service (Seattle Times)
Nordstrom has begun offering same-day delivery at its downtown Seattle and Bellevue Square stores to customers who live and work nearby. For a $10 fee, customers can order something on Nordstrom’s website by noon and — assuming it’s in stock — have the item hand-delivered to them by 6 p.m. the same day, including Saturdays and Sundays.

Seattle photo test: What are you stepping on? (Seattle PI)
See pic #5 for Pioneer Square’s purple glass

Microsoft No Longer Alone Playing Games in Seattle (Fins)
The city’s other tech sectors have also grown over the past decade, led by Amazon. It’s one reason why Chung and Tsai decided to move Zhurosoft into a loft-like office in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood earlier this year rather than move to a more well-known city to the south.

Annual charity event aids the homeless, struggling (West Seattle – KOMO News)
Pierre Borsh waited a long time. He, along with so many others who don’t have a home, got a little help at the annual Surviving the Streets giveaway at the Pioneer Square office of Real Change newspaper, which helps the homeless and low-income individuals.