WHO HAS BEEN mad enough to cut the locked hoods off city parking meters in Pioneer Square, remove city street blockades and no-parking signs, and reopen the area to sorely needed parking?
No one’s saying. But Lois Pierris clearly knows something.
In December, she and partner Rick Hubbard brought good food, bright lights, and a little night music to one of the worst drug-addled blocks in Pioneer Square. They survived the ordeal of starting a restaurant from scratch, only to get rocked by an extraordinary riot and earthquake. Having survived those brutal acts too, they ran into perhaps the scariest threat of all: City Hall bureaucracy.
“This is the city that was going to help us after the riots, after the quake, right?” says Pierris, who opened the classy new Lulu’s Piano Bar and Restaurant in a gutted space in the historic Metropole Building on the west side of Second Avenue Extension between Yesler and Washington. “Instead, they’ve cut my business in half.”
For no good reason, Pierris says, city crews blocked off the parking lanes March 31 on both sides of Second in front of her business. They set out orange barrels, strung tape and netting, hung no-parking signs, and hooded several meters. All nearby parking was effectively eliminated.
The impact was immediate, say the owners—who had invested thousands and taken months to renovate the former home of an old store and bar, where crack pipes were found in the mess. Up and running, Lulu’s was a quick success—sometimes grossing $1,500 or more a night even after the Ash Wednesday earthquake, says Pierris, a veteran of Seattle eateries (B&O Espresso, Serafina). In March, a Seattle Weekly reviewer hailed Lulu’s as “good news for disaster-wracked Pioneer Square.” But as city parking subsequently disappeared, so did customers. “People called up and asked if we were closed,” says Pierris, whose monthly rent is $5,000. One night, for example, she had four people in for dinner.
“I yelled, I screamed, I called every city department I could think of for weeks,” she says. “Nobody could tell me why the street was blocked off. At least some of them talked to me. The mayor’s office wouldn’t even call back.”
One city spokesperson told her it had to do with lack of wheelchair access to the sidewalks, so the parking places were cordoned off into a wheelchair run until an access ramp could be built.
“They’ve built it, a little wooden thing about 2-feet by 2-feet,” says Pierris. “It took them almost two weeks.”
But the blockade remained. A spokesperson admitted City Light had “forgotten” to take down some of the barriers, but promised they’d be taken care of in a few days.
They weren’t. So person or persons unknown stepped in the other day. They quietly moved barrels and took down the tape, removed no-parking signs, and cut hoods off the meters.
To her knowledge, nobody from the city has said anything, Pierris says. “They didn’t notice— that’s how important those hoods and barrels were!”
She’s still hoping the mayor or someone will drop by, if only for dinner. Hey, there’s parking out front now.
RICK ANDERSON
