[mhays]

Does the area around Petco require retail on every street? If a lot of it is vacant, maybe they're building too much retail.

It works that way in Seattle too. Neighborhoods that concentrate retail on one street do fine. But ones that require it on every street never get any retail critical mass in one place, and we get crappy retail dotted with vacancies. That's how Belltown works.

The East Village sounds similar to our Pioneer Square area. Football, soccer, and baseball collectively dominate the area. I'm fans of all of them, but it's a tradeoff. Not so much chains (the area has been too gritty for most of those) but game crowds tend to dominate, and some businesses do a lot worse on game days because people are afraid of the crowds and/or parking.