Life Or Death by Baseball

Visiting the new Seattle's Best coffee outlet on the ground floor of PNC Park, you may notice the hours of operation had been scratched out.

The barista tells me that the hours have been changing quite frequently since opening. This is not uncommon for a new business as it takes a while to learn when the street traffic is there. The imprint on the door indicates the hours had been 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. That had been reduced significantly since today the Federal Street Seattle's Best was closing at 4 p.m. The barista tells me that's the usual closing time now, except when there's a game, and on such days they stay open for one hour after the game has ended.

On Saturdays, for now, the coffee shop--the first major one on the North Side in many years--is open from 8 a.m. until 12 noon. On Sunday's it doesn't open at all.

Oakland, California, mayor Jerry Brown has said a measure of progress in revitalizing his city is be the amount of hours Starbucks stays open. Each hour longer into the evening is seen as a measure of how much of a healthy, mixed-use life is returning to the struggling city. Perhaps an appropriate barometer for effective development on the North Shore, the "Starbucks Scale," through the hours of operation for the Seattle's Best at 105 Federal Street, can measure the successful development of the North Shore.

Like many of the other businesses surrounding PNC Park, today Seattle's Best is living and dying by baseball. When there is a game, there is business. When there isn't, the aroma of roasting beans is wasted on the wild geese that hang out on the riverbank.

If the store stays open longer, it will mean the neighborhood is moving towards the healthy "mixed-use" variety that new urbanists talk about. Instead of serving just baseball fans, Seattle's Best may come to be a favorite of increasing numbers of North Shore office workers and residents. New offices rising on the surrounding blocks are surely helping move Seattle 's Best up the Starbucks scale already. Plans to turn several of the Heinz Factory buildings into apartments could help.

But were not there yet. When Seattle's Best initially reduced its hours, it was painfully clear that all the money spent thus far on North Shore development hadn't made it into a vibrant neighborhood. Regular early opening hours indicate that the coffee shop is being used by the nearby office workers and so the area is well on its way to having a healthy mix of entertainment and office uses. The early closing hours and lack of weekend hours indicate that there aren't yet enough residents in close proximity to drink up the liquefied beans.

If Seattle's best reduces hours further, or closes entirely, what many retailers hoping to thrive around new sports stadium developments elsewhere have found out will be painfully true here too--stores can't survive on game days alone.

In 1998 University of California at Berkeley researcher Jack Sylvan of the Department of City and Regional Planning conducted a quantitative analysis of data on stadiums in California cities. He used 1972-1995 retail and business sales figures from the State Board of Equalization for seven California cities that host major-league sports teams. Analyzing sales figures for the years before and after professional sports teams moved to, or left, a city, the analysis revealed no differences in retail or total taxable sales that could be clearly related to team presence.

The results of this study could have easily be seen with a look at the former Three Rivers Stadium with its vast expanse of parking lots and absence of nearby retail. Today the hope is PNC Park is close enough to people other than game goers doing enough other things that retail can survive in the area and be helped, rather than supported by, baseball.

Not to belittle a North Shore transformation that's been no less than impressive.

Up until a few short years ago, the majority of the area served as a parking facility for downtown commuters. Before the recent developments on the North Shore, the North Side--a traditional "mixed-use" neighborhood"--didn't have any coffee shops. A few years ago one opened for a few short months on Western Avenue. There's a computer training center that calls itself a coffee shop on East Ohio Street, but no real place to go specifically for having a cup of coffee, reading the paper, or chatting with friends.

The Café at the Andy Warhol Museum--an earlier part of North Shore developments--has provided one option, but Seattle's Best is the first in recent memory to exist as a café with a seating area specifically for the purpose of serving coffee.

Café's like Seattle's Best survive where there is a steady flow of pedestrians throughout the day. Office workers buy coffee in the morning, shoppers buy coffee during the day, residents buy coffee in the evenings, and people who come in from out of town buy coffee before or after a game. The more residents and office workers there are in a close proximity to Seattle's Best, the more likely it will be to take on additional hours, and the more likely it will be that a second and even third shop opens.

There's more to come to the North Shore as plans for developing the area between Heinz Field and PNC Park unfold. Also adding to the mix will be a new office building being developed by Alcoa which will house shops and restaurants on the lower level as well as entertainment venue promised for the first floor of a nearby parking garage.

The real test of whether the North Shore can move up the Starbucks Scale, however, will be in the ability to build enough housing nearby to keep the streets alive later and Seattle's Best open longer.

Eric Miller

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