page_title: Pike Place Market
section_title: Conflicts
hierarchical_section_title: Pike Place Market / Operation / Conflicts
caption_attribution_description: English: Pure Food Fish, Pike Place Market, Seattle, Washington, U.S.
context_page_description: Pike Place Market is a public market in Seattle, Washington, United States. It opened on August 17, 1907, and is one of the oldest continuously operated public farmers' markets in the United States. Overlooking the Elliott Bay waterfront on Puget Sound, it serves as a place of business for many small farmers, craftspeople and merchants. Named after the central street, Pike Place runs northwest from Pike Street to Virginia Street. Pike Place Market is Seattle's most popular tourist destination and the 33rd most visited tourist attraction in the world, with more than 10 million annual visitors.
  The Market is built on the edge of a steep hill, and consists of several lower levels located below the main level. Each features a variety of unique shops such as antique dealers, comic book and collectible shops, small family-owned restaurants, and one of the oldest head shops in Seattle. The upper street level contains fishmongers, fresh produce stands and craft stalls operating in the covered arcades.
context_section_description: The PDA is a public trustee charged with many potentially conflicting goals. Its charter mandates it to "ensure that the traditional character of the Public Market is preserved." It is specifically mandated to
  ...afford... a continuing opportunity for Public Market farmers, merchants, residents, shoppers, and visitors to carry on their tradition and market activities...  upgrad[e] structures and public amenities... initiate programs to expand food retailing in the Market Historical District, especially the sale of local farm produce; to preserve and expand the residential community, especially for low-income people; to promote the survival and predominance of small shops, marginal businesses, thrift shops, arts and crafts, and other enterprises, activities, and services which are essential to the functioning of the Public Market.
  The City Auditor's office has stated that there is an "inherent conflict... between the PDA's need to operate the Market as a successful business entity and its Charter obligation to support small owner-operated tenant businesses."
  As early as 1974, a Seattle Department of Community Development study noted space conflicts between farmers and craft vendors. Conflicts can be exacerbated because the stakeholders with conflicting needs are not talking to one another. Quoting the same City Auditor's report:
  Most Market tenants do not routinely communicate with tenants in other areas of the Market. As a result, they sometimes criticize the PDA for not implementing suggestions they believe would work for them and their close neighbors—e.g., closing all or part of Pike Place to auto traffic—not realizing that their “solutions” would create problems for tenants in other parts of the Market. Then they conclude that the PDA is not taking their comments and suggestions seriously.
  Language barriers also play a role. For example, most of the flower vendors in the Market are Hmong; during the difficult negotiations in 1999 over replacing the Hildt Agreement, many were apparently under a misimpression that the proposed agreement would have halved the vending space they received for a day's rent; in fact, this was unchanged.
  Further, the farmers who were the Market's original raison d'etre do not necessarily do well when the Market becomes more of a tourist attraction than venue for shopping for produce and groceries. "Craft vendors, antique and curio merchants, and booksellers…" wrote the City Auditor's office, "derive much of their business from tourists; fresh food vendors do not." Conversely, farmers have far more selling opportunities outside the Market than in the early and mid-20th century. As late as 1990, there were about ten farmers markets in Washington. By 1999 there were more than sixty. Most are seasonal weekend markets without most of the Pike Place Market's amenities, but they are not swarmed with tourists, parking is free or inexpensive and relatively plentiful, and food is the main focus of those markets, not crafts or flowers.
  As a result, increasingly Pike Place Market daystalls are devoted to flowers and crafts rather than edible produce. "The Market," wrote the City Auditor's office,
  ...can be “lost” in either of two ways: It can stray from its traditional character or it can fail financially as a business entity. If the Market is to survive and thrive as a business entity in the face of increasing competition from other farmers’ markets, modern full-service grocery stores, and retail shopping destinations in Seattle’s Central Business District, the PDA must strike a balance between the Market’s original old-world market character and modern business practices.
caption: A fishmonger's stall in the Main Arcade. Open-fronted, but rented on a lease, not as a daystall.
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