Economic Revitalization
Tracking downtown revitalization
Since the onset of COVID-19, DSA has been tracking the impact on our local economy. As downtown bounces back, we continue to follow dozens of metrics to trace the path to full economic recovery. A few of these metrics are below.
Downtown Revitalization Dashboard
July 2024 (June data)
Downtown Seattle was the first American urban center to experience the impacts of COVID-19, enduring a sudden economic downturn. As downtown continues to evolve, DSA will publish a monthly Revitalization Dashboard examining key metrics. The data sets provide a comparison point to the same time period in 2019. Additionally, the dashboard will feature notable stories that provide context regarding downtown’s renewal and reemergence.
Please credit the Downtown Seattle Association Revitalization Dashboard for use of charts, data and images on this page.
Total monthly visitors since 2019
Nearly 2.9 million unique visitors came downtown in June 2024. This represents 91% of the visitors seen in June 2019.
Average daily worker foot traffic (Monday–Friday)
In June, downtown averaged more than 90,000 daily workers — the highest daily average since March 2020. This figure represents a 14% increase from June 2023 and is 58% of the daily worker foot traffic seen in June 2019.
Monthly hotel rooms sold compared to 2019
Nearly 400,000 downtown hotel rooms were sold in June 2024 — the highest monthly total since March 2020. This figure represents 105% of demand in June 2019 and a 3% increase over June 2023 demand.
In June, the number of occupied apartment units was more than 58,000. This represented a 3% increase in occupied units compared to Q3 2023 and a 17% increase compared to Q3 2019.
Of Note in Downtown
There are currently more than 18,000 residential units planned, proposed or under construction in downtown Seattle.
The DSA/MID Clean Team collected 1.4 million gallons of trash from downtown sidewalks and alleys over the last 12 months. That is 200,000 more gallons than in the previous 12 months.
According to Visit Seattle, during the final week in June, Seattle ranked 3rd nationally for hotel occupancy, trailing only New York City and Oahu.
Coming Up in Downtown
Forest For The Trees is back! Multiple floors of Pioneer Square’s RailSpur development will house installations from local and international artists from July 27–30, with an additional viewing on Aug. 1 during the First Thursday Art Walk.
A downtown Seattle summer staple rolls down Fourth Avenue on Saturday, July 27. The Alaska Airlines Seafair Torchlight Parade begins at 3 p.m. and will feature more than 100 entries, including DSA/MID ambassador teams.
Also on July 27, Seattle Center will host an all-day celebration of music, culture and diversity. BLASTFEST, an Afrobeats music festival, runs from 3–10 p.m. and is all ages with a 21-plus beer garden.
COVID-19 Downtown Recovery Weekly Snapshot
These charts show weekly statistics from March 2020 through the most recent week available. To indicate the level of recovery, data is displayed as a percent of the same metric for the comparable week of 2019.
Notes on Sources
Downtown foot traffic data are provided by Placer.ai and are based on cell phone location data. Each person is counted once per day. International visitors are not included. Subsets of this data in the charts are as follows:
- Office worker presence is estimated based on visits by workers who were present between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays in the downtown neighborhoods with the heaviest concentration of office space.*
- Total visitors includes those who do not live or work downtown. It does not include international visitors.
- Hotel data are based on monthly reports from STR, provided by Visit Seattle.
- Apartment occupancy data are from CoStar. This is reported quarterly but the current quarter data are updated in real-time as new information is added to the database.
- Domestic visitors counts those who do not live or work downtown.
- Total foot traffic includes all visits to downtown by domestic visitors, residents and workers.
- Pike Place Market visitors includes domestic visitors who do not live or work at the Pike Place Market.
*Note that workers who have not visited their work site in the past 90 days are classified as “visitors” until they are regularly visiting their work site at least three times in a one-week period.