Last week at the Northwest Event Show, Baba Brinkman and Dizzy Senze of EVENT RAP stepped to the mic inside the Arch and freestyled a case for the commons.
"It's wrong if this building for two-thirds of the year is empty." "Let's make it for the people and not for the financials." "You open the spaces in the city, the people bring them in."
They dedicated it to Ivan. The hook was "you better read that Convention City Dispatch." The venue was the building we've been writing about.
ELSEWHERE
The case for the Commons is now on The Urbanist — the personal story behind the project, the captive-operation problem with the convention center's food model, and what CommonScore says about where Seattle stands among 32 cities.
"Recapitalize Arch? How about we use the Arch?"
Model Citizen Developer published the story behind the Dispatch itself — seven weeks from first commit to 32-city comparative framework, and a note on the contract date error that drove the whole thing.
"The choices they make are just more observable than before."
Read on Model Citizen Developer →
AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD
Feroze Motafram's GeekWire op-ed diagnoses Microsoft from weekend conversations in Sammamish. His read: an organization optimizing for self-protection over bold action, compounded by visa uncertainty that makes its most talented engineers too anxious to take risks.
The follow-up question for the Dispatch: Microsoft events have historically been among the larger bookings on the SCC calendar. If that pipeline softens, how does that show up here in Convention City?
WHAT'S COMING
NWES writeup in progress.