The whole south lake union area used to be pseudo-industrial with the exception of a camera shop, Jafco (which became Guitar center) and a few other retail places. But a couple of years ago I came back for a visit and was shocked at what Amazon had done to the area.
There is something I used to say about the city about twenty years ago, but it is many times more true today than it was then:
Seattle is a gold plated garbage can.
And you can now use Google street view to see it. They visit areas a lot and archive the photos. You can now go to a location and choose from a backlog of dates to see what it used to look like. The changes in South Lake Union are shocking. And it does “look” better than it did, but it is truly a cold place for humans.
Thanks for the pix. Looks like Arlington VA where I work. Completely sterile and unlivable. There are a few people who live here who look like concubines for the weathly foreigners who dump their dollars in the overpriced real estate. The other input is of course the billions of taxpayer dollars going to contractors and government drones. Most people would be considered well-off outside of the coasts, but are scraping by here.