Participants at the Bellevue Chamber’s Seattle-focused luncheon, from left: Joe Nguyen, Seattle Metro Chamber; Tiffini Connell, West Coast Commercial Realty; Jon Scholes, Downtown Seattle Association; and moderator Joe Fain, Bellevue Chamber. (GeekWire Photo / Lisa Stiffler)
BELLEVUE, Wash. — The foundational pieces that tee a city up for economic success are well established: an educated workforce, research institutions, infrastructure including ports and public transit, supply chains and strong corporate and community anchors.
Seattle has all of that, said Joe Nguyen, CEO of the Seattle Metro Chamber. “We have the hard part done.”
But public policies — namely the city and Washington state’s approach to taxation — threaten to undermine the growth and job creation that foundation has supported, Nguyen and other panelists warned at a Thursday luncheon that took place not in Seattle, but across Lake Washington at an event hosted by the Bellevue Chamber.
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It was a particularly noteworthy conversation as Bellevue and Seattle have long been competing for the companies and workers powering the region’s tech economy.
And the discussion joined a growing chorus of concern about economic slowdown that has dominated civic discourse in recent months, appearing in opinion pieces from GeekWire to the Wall Street Journal and at conferences around the region.
While those worries extend across Washington state, Bellevue still enjoys a reputation as a more business-friendly hub and a favored landing spot for tech companies — including Amazon, which despite being founded in Seattle has steadily built up its Eastside workforce.
Event panelist Jon Scholes, the longtime president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association, hinted at some gloating from the neighboring tech hub.
“I don’t think I was invited here back in 2017 or ’18 — when Amazon jobs were falling out of the sky in downtown Seattle and we had 79 (construction) cranes in the air — to talk about the good times,” Scholes joked.
The Seattle skyline in the distance, as seen from downtown Bellevue. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
The speakers, who also included Tiffini Connell, president of West Coast Commercial Realty, identified specific taxes as threats to Seattle’s economy: the city’s JumpStart tax, which targets a handful of the city’s largest employers including Amazon; a Seattle business and occupation (B&O) tax recently increased for large companies and reduced for smaller ones; and the state’s new capital gains tax on high earners.
Concentrating the tax burden on the smallest possible group of businesses and residents “is the worst idea possible,” said Nguyen, a former Democratic state senator. Targeting a narrow tax base also creates an unreliable revenue stream, he added.
Scholes was particularly pointed about JumpStart’s impact on Seattle. Since the tax took effect in 2021, “we’ve lost nearly 40,000 jobs. We’ve lost $10 billion of commercial office value in downtown Seattle,” he said.
Taxes absorb much of the criticism, but other forces are also reshaping the landscape. Nationally, companies are cutting headcount as AI tools replace certain roles and as tech firms look to offset the billions being poured into data centers. And while commercial vacancy remains a stubborn problem in Seattle, downtown residential numbers have reached new highs.
The business leaders said they have been working with Seattle officials and remain hopeful that the city’s strained relationship with large employers can improve and that taxes and spending can be reined in, as other metro areas have done. They also pointed to meaningful progress, including improved public safety, a revitalized waterfront and new transit options.
One near-term test looms large: Seattle’s turn as a host city for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, with matches kicking off next month.
Connell compared the opportunity to a high-stakes pop-up shop that provides the city a chance to show what it’s capable of.
“Pop-ups tend to tell the story of a given location for the long term,” Connell said. “So this is kind of like a pop-up — can we do this? Can we actually move people through the city? Can we handle the safety issues that are very prevalent, and can we sustain and show and prove that this is a community that can have these world-class events?”
