In a unanimous vote, the Seattle City Council voted to temporarily expand the Pike Place Market Historical District to include the legendary Showbox Theater. The temporary ordinance will prevent the historic venue from being demolished by a Vancouver-based developer, and replaced with a $100M luxury apartment building. The planned demolition of the Showbox triggered an uproar from Seattle's music community, with prominent recording artists publishing a full-page ad the Seattle Times (featured below), as well as an online petition which at the time of this writing, has generated over 93,000 signatures.
Founded in 1939, the Showbox has hosted countless legendary acts, from the Jazz Age to the Grunge Era and beyond. “The Showbox is a focal point of culture in the city,” Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie stated in an interview earlier this month. “There are three things that people know about Seattle when you say that you live in Seattle — rain, coffee, music. You can’t attract people to a city by using its cultural touchstones … and then remove those things when they become inconvenient.”
