🍻 Three beloved bar closures

Lessons From The Closing of Three Beloved Bars

The end of 2025 brought the closure of Ballard’s Waterwheel Lounge, Lake City Way’s Shanty Tavern, and Columbia City Ale House. Our friends over at CHUM News attended the closing nights for all three, spoke to expert sources, and compiled a list of takeaways. [CHUM News]

• A vicious cycle: Vanishing Seattle’s Cynthia Brothers points to the cycle of rising costs impacting both business margins and the wallets of the average customer, leading businesses to up their prices and customers to tighten their budgets even more. Plus, she says record-low rates of alcohol consumption mean people spend less money at the bars they frequent, and delivery apps can decrease in-person patronage.
• Bright spots: It’s not all bad news. The community has rallied to save or bring back some favorites like Bush Garden, which reopened on June 3, and Scarecrow Video recently completed a successful fundraising campaign. And the city has many programs to help new businesses open or weather emergencies.
• “Not to be all ‘vote with your wallet’”: CHUM lists a range of ways the city can step in the further support businesses and offset culture shifts and national impacts, but they also say it does make a difference to go down the street for everyday purchases and to pick up your own to go order to allow local favorites to keep more of their money in house. We discussed CHUM’s report in-depth on Friday's podcast. Go listen!

📣 Amazon employees speak out against building AI data centers: A group of Amazon engineers joined a city council meeting this week to speak in favor of the data center moratorium. At the meeting, one speaker pointed to Amazon spending $200 billion on capital, with most of it going to data centers and AI, while laying off more than 30,000 corporate employees since October. [CNBC]

🏞️ Report finds more parks mean more money for cities: A new report found that for every dollar invested in parks and recreation, communities reap $3 in local economic benefits each year. What does that mean for Seattle? Well, Parks and Recreation manages a 6,441-acre park system of over 489 parks. That’s a lot of dollars! Parks also improve city residents’ physical and mental health, so this is your reminder to go enjoy the green space nearest to you! [Grist]

🛏️ Seattle won’t get the mayor’s promised 500 shelter beds: At a Seattle CityClub event on Wednesday, Mayor Katie Wilson told FOX13’s Hana Kim: “No, we're not going to make 500 [shelter beds] by FIFA." She said the larger goal of 4,000 shelter beds over her term will be “an ongoing effort." During the Civic Cocktail Q&A, she also shared her rather strange Starbucks order, saying, “I guess I broke my boycott.” [KUOW]