I call it the, “I can’t imagine . . . “ movement, an effort now being taken up by Councilmember Lisa Herbold to preserve what she’s calling “Legacy Businesses,” which have, as is usual with these sorts of things, been defined only vaguely and with anecdotes. According to her website,

Councilmember Herbold has been accumulating public feedback over the last several months, with nearly 500 respondents identifying small businesses they feel are worth preserving.

She goes on to say,

As the Council rep for District 1, I can’t imagine the Alaska Junction without the Husky Deli or South Park without Muy Macho.

I’m sure we can all think of the small locally owned business we just couldn’t imagine living without. Mine is Joe Bar, what I have called my living room and study. I’ve already suffered the loss of Bauhaus and Arabica. Enough is enough, it is time for the City Council to intervene anywhere and everywhere that small, locally owned business are threatened by whatever might cause them to disappear.

How do we define is eligible? Hmmm. Good question. And what’s the application process? And what defines local? What if the owner of my favorite place lives in Kent? What constitutes a chain? Isn’t Starbucks a local business? What’s the plan to compensate a building owner who can’t sell or lease space to someone is able to pay higher rents to off set increasing operating costs, like rising utilities and property taxes? What if our favorite locally owned business is closing down because it was mismanaged or just wasn’t succeeding?

You can see why this is yet another red herring being pushed by people who want our city to remain exactly as it is. There are no good answers for the questions above because this isn’t about preserving anything but stopping new development to accommodate the many jobs and people coming here to take them. Like view protection, or worries about noise, or how people don’t like the way a building makes them feel, this is about slowing and stopping change.

How about this for an idea? How about we preserve the small businesses that build and operate housing in Seattle by letting them, well, build and operate housing. Councilmember Herbold seems to think the Husky Deli is worthy of preservation at the public’s expense but not a building owner who rents out 6 or 10 units of housing, or a small builder who creates a few dozen housing units each year. She’d gladly put those people out of business with rules, regulations, taxes, and fees – because building and operating housing is all about greed and profit. The Husky Deli does what it does because, well, they just care; they’re employees must not be paid with dollars.

As I mentioned yesterday, the “I Can’t Imagine” movement is yet another tragic waste of our time; yes we ought to eliminate some existing small business permanently and forever in order to make way for housing. It’s life in the big city. Do I want that for my own favorite businesses? Of course not; but when I weigh the value and benefits of growth and change, the scale tips in favor of making room for the new even at the expense of things I deeply care about.

There are ways the City could preserve smaller businesses. They could undo the damage done my Councilmember Mike O’Brien when he killed legislation allowing smaller retail spaces in the low-rise zones of the city.

The City could create a Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) program for certain kinds of buildings in the city, allowing the development rights and housing capacity to be put someplace else in the city; blocks like the Melrose Market block could be downzoned to zero and the units possible there could be added to a project somewhere else on Capitol Hill or around light rail. The sail of those rights could benefit community organizations that raised funds to buy the existing building housing a business.

But these solutions would require work, not rhetoric, math not anecdotes, and they would allow the market to innovate and continue to meet housing demand instead of finding a villain to punish in the public square. You know what I can’t imagine? A City Council that actually looks at the reality of huge housing demand and acts urgently to create more housing of all kinds, in all parts of the city for people of all backgrounds and levels of income. I keep trying, but I just can’t.