West Side Story Brings Seattle's Toughest Questions to Bellevue

Sam Jones  |  May 26, 2026

West Side Story drew a packed room to W Bellevue last Thursday for our fourth Chamber Lunch of the year. Seattle Metropolitan Chamber President & CEO Joe Nguyen, Downtown Seattle Association President & CEO Jon Scholes, and West Coast Commercial Realty President Tiffini Connell joined Bellevue Chamber President & CEO Joe Fain for a candid hour on the Jumpstart tax, a 48% drop in downtown Seattle office value, the public-safety camera system, and the 24-day countdown to the FIFA World Cup. As Joe Fain framed it up front, a strong Seattle is integral to a strong Bellevue, and our fates are forever intertwined.

Jobs Across the Lake

Jon Scholes opened with the numbers. Downtown Seattle has lost nearly 40,000 jobs in four years and $10 billion in commercial office value, a 48% reduction, while Bellevue's commercial values rose 7% over the same period. Asking rents in Bellevue now sit between $41 and $43 per square foot against roughly $35 in comparable Seattle markets, and OpenAI, Snap, Shopify, and Snowflake have all chosen Bellevue addresses. Jon laid the original 2019 promises behind Jumpstart, revitalization, resiliency, and recovery, alongside the actual result.

"The Jumpstart taxes have completely backfired. We've lost nearly 40,000 jobs. We've lost $10 billion of commercial office value in downtown Seattle." — Jon Scholes, President & CEO, Downtown Seattle Association

Joe Nguyen, four months into the Seattle Metro Chamber's top job after running the Washington Department of Commerce, pushed back on any narrative that writes Seattle off. The Chamber's regional sentiment index shows 80% of Seattle residents love living there and 73% call large employers essential to the community. For every 10,000 jobs Seattle loses, the city sheds about $50 million in revenue, and Seattle's current $200 million budget hole maps almost exactly onto the jobs lost since 2019. Jumpstart has accounted for nearly all of the city's budget growth in that window and rests on the backs of fewer than ten companies.

"The rumors about Seattle's death are greatly exaggerated." — Joe Nguyen, President & CEO, Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce

Predictability and Tone

Seattle, Jon said, is spending more than it collects in a year of record revenue, while most other major cities, including San Francisco, Denver, Portland, and New York, are cutting. New Mayor Wilson has asked her departments for 5% and 10% reduction scenarios. Jon's ask for any tax conversation in Seattle is three things at once: dollars and cents, predictability, and tone and tenor. Joe Nguyen agreed, warning former colleagues against assuming employers will stay no matter what, since even fractional movement among the top Jumpstart payers breaks the budget.

"If you want to tax rich people, you need rich people to tax. If you want to support workers, you need jobs for them to work in." — Joe Nguyen

Bright Spots and a Safer Downtown

Tiffini Connell reminded the room why retailers keep choosing the region. The Pacific Northwest carries the country's highest concentration of educated workers, with roughly seven in ten adults 25 and over holding a bachelor's degree, and Trader Joe's opened seven new Northwest stores this year, including its first Seattle store in 13 years. Smith Tower leased close to 50,000 square feet last year, almost entirely to small businesses, and Pioneer Square has come back hard.

Jon pointed to the public investments stacking up alongside the private ones: three and a half miles of waterfront from Pioneer Square to the Expedia campus, a $50 million Myrtle Edwards expansion funded by Melinda French Gates, MacKenzie Scott, and Barry Diller opening within two weeks, and a refreshed Westlake Park. He also defended Seattle's downtown camera system, which has supported 600 incidents and helped solve 17 homicides in its first 60 days.

"I've never heard anybody that served on a jury, any victim of crime, or any prosecutor say, 'I wish we had less evidence after a crime.'" — Jon Scholes

Twenty-Four Days to Kickoff

The panel closed on FIFA. Seattle is 24 days from its first match as one of 16 host cities, with an expected 750,000 visitors, $1 billion in economic activity, and roughly $100 million in tax revenue on the line. Joe Nguyen said the city has moved past the stress phase and into execution as tickets, visas, and flights land for international fans. Jon previewed the Seattle Soccer House at Pacific Place and watch parties from the Waterfront to Westlake to Occidental, and noted the region did not have to spend hundreds of millions on stadiums it would never use again.

If you missed it, our next Chamber Lunch is the Mid-Year Economic Forecast on June 18th! Also, you can watch the full program from West Side Story here!