Last year, the city launched a plan to create new Music Venue Zone parking spots to help bands dealing with load in and load out and help foster the city’s neighborhood live music scenes. Now the program is launching and City Hall is looking for Capitol Hill venues to join the program and add the signs and street markings to Pike/Pine’s maze of parking restrictions.
Qualifying music venues can apply for one annual Music Venue Zone permit each, creating up to three designated spaces at the curb, which SDOT will install. Music Venue Zones allow parking and loading 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with a valid permit displayed.
To qualify for the permit, music venues must:
- Have a valid City of Seattle business license
- Host live music events at least two different days each week
- Charge a fee for entry for live music events
If your venue qualifies, you can now apply here for a Music Venue Zone permit.
CHS reported here on the legislative efforts to create the program last fall.
The new permits will cost venues $250 a year and the legislation has established rules limiting where they can be deployed. Each permit allows up to three Music Venue Zone
spaces per venue. Restrictions on parking and loading will be 24 hours a day, 7-days
a week. Vehicles in zones without the valid permit displayed will be subject to citation and impound, the city says.
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The program will only displace around 60 street parking spots around the city but many will be in the heart of Pike/Pine which was identified as a core area for the program by a council staff analysis.
The city says the loss of the spaces will cost it around $178,000 a year — a tiny fraction of the $41.7 million of parking meter revenue it expects to generate this year from the approximately 11,000 paid on-street parking spaces in Seattle.
Learn more at seattle.gov.
Why must venues “charge a fee for entry for live music events” to qualify? Do free shows not provide value to the city?
The reason being there’s lots of music acts. But the ones with a bus? they are the ones with a cover usually. So equipment hauler etc.
I used to load in/out. It’s a royal pain. Not only are distances absurdly far in some cases. But rain makes it worse. Then factor in brick streets and cracked sidewalks and the obligatory bump up the curb to the sidewalk. Most load throught he front door and first come first serve parking is an issue. The classy venues? Have reserved parking.
The 1.2 billion bucks Climate Pledge is a dream. Load in and out is soooo nice. The only thing they do not have is catering and a valet. The band loads and unloads at small venues…lol
What a steal!
it’s a laudable idea. unfortunately in the near-complete absence of parking enforcement after 6pm, all of those various categories of signs (pickup/dropoff, food delivery, etc) are widely ignored.
They will be towed vehicles ‘widely” with fines. It’ll be enforced for sure by the venues. It’s not even a question. Next gripe that has no basis please?
@smooth – it’s not at all a gripe – as I said, I think it’s a good idea.
it’s also request to actually enforce the rules, borne of observing cars sit all day in 5 minute dropoff zones with no ticket or enforcement.
side note – businesses in this neighborhood generally tend not to want parking rules enforced, mostly because many of them use street parking. to wit, the widespread snickering when parking enforcement came up at the ‘safety forum’
can’t have it both ways, kids.
I see the meter maid put putting around here. They do exist.
ffs, I don’t understand why this has to be so difficult.
their existence is not in question. sufficient presence to change behavior and keep loading zones available for loading is the issue.
Seems like a shady giveaway to Big Music. Permits should cost $5-10k at least.
So math says that for each spot, they’re losing 3000 in revenue. 1 permit is 3 spots. So why isn’t the permit fee $9k for the rights of easy prepaid parking on public land.
$250 is redic unless they’ve made a hardship case that is legit.. but cities like New York deal with far worse ‘reserving’ spots.
Because the city has decided that there’s value in having smaller live performance venues in denser areas and in those venues not having to block traffic to load in and out. This isn’t a nefarious scheme to funnel taxpayer dollars to Big Small Music Venue, it’s trying to encourage those venues to apply for the spots to keep traffic moving. If the city charged market rate, I’d bet more than a few venues would say no to an extra 9k a year fee (we’re talking about places that are still trying to dig out of the pandemic hole) and just keep doing what they’re doing now.
I’m not implying anything nefarious from this arrangement but I think the value of the city allowing reserved parking directly outside of one’s business is the gift the city is granting in the first place. Monetarily businesses should pay, at a minimum, market rate unless a hardship case is made.
The fact that the city is allowing public space to be reserved at all is the gift and incentive for these small live music spaces. Remember, most of the time it’s just going to be the manager or bar staff that parks here. Who’s anyone kidding.