Hotel Boom in SeaTac Is Unfettered by $15 Minimum Wage
When SeaTac, Wash., became the first city in the nation to pass a $15-an-hour minimum wage in 2013, Jeff Robinson, the city’s director of community and economic development, said critics warned him that it would scare away businesses.
But the higher minimum wage hasn’t done that at all. The hotel industry is a prime example: Nine hotels are in development, which will increase the available rooms by 25 percent, to 7,000.
SeaTac is home to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, now the ninth busiest in the nation, and a new light rail line links the airport to Seattle. Nearby are the corporate headquarters of Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco and Nordstrom, and Seattle’s unemployment rate has been hovering around 3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Michael H. Mahoney, president of the Dallas-based development company Western International, said his company had not built anything in the Seattle area for more than 10 years, but it was drawn to SeaTac because some available property there bordered a lake and the light rail system had just been built. Business travelers can stay near the airport where it is a bit less expensive than in downtown Seattle, he said, “and close to their flight home,” but they still have easy access to downtown for meetings or entertainment.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/business/hotel-boom-seattle-15-dollar-minimum-wage.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
