For those unfamiliar with Seattle’s politics, Royer’s staying power is extraordinary and a testament to his performance. In recent years our mayors seem to come into office with a “one-term-or-less” expiration date stamped on their foreheads. Our most recent two-term mayor was Greg Nickels, who was voted out in 2010.
Royer was a well-known face in Seattle as a KING-TV commentator and journalist. He was elected to office in the late 1970s, on the heels of the Boeing recession. This was a period when the city’s cultural dynamic was in its fertile grassroots: neighborhood activism, P-Patches, Bumbershoot, Gay Pride, the launch of alternative media sources like The Seattle Sun, The Rocket, and Seattle Weekly. Pioneer Square was starting to blossom with galleries and bistros, and the city was inching its way toward being more urban with the very beginnings of the high-rise condo boom in places like First Hill and Belltown.
Charley Royer was a breath of fresh urban air. Good-looking and charming, media-savvy, he was a champion of both progressive politics (pushing for more low-income and senior housing) and ambitious civic makeovers. He was a cosmopolitan advocate. Though a native of Oregon, he brought a bit of San Francisco spirit to make the city and its governance less musty-dusty.
He weighed in on the remaking of Westlake Center and Westlake Park. Like everything in Seattle, it turned into a quagmire of Seattle lawsuits and process. But ultimately the plan included an urban park and commercial mall to replace the space-eating World’s Fair Monorail terminal and a rabbit’s warren of small businesses. Westlake did not become the grand civic space many hoped for; still, it was an improvement.
Seattle Mayor Charles Royer greets police officers in vintage uniforms during an anniversary celebration at Pike Place Market in 1978. (Courtesy the Seattle Municipal Archives)
Royer backed the Washington State Convention Center development, which enabled the city to host large conventions in what was a blighted bit of Downtown cleaved by I-5. It also lidded part of the freeway, a partial correction to the 1960s misstep of not lidding it in the first place. He was mayor during the construction of the Downtown transit tunnel — when first built, used only for buses, but designed to accommodate the hypothetical light rail that finally started in 2005. He invited Disney’s Imagineering team to propose a total redo of Seattle Center. It didn’t happen as Seattle choked on a $335 million price tag, but it was indicative of Royer’s restlessness with old Seattle and his desire to inject life into places he saw as moribund.
And it was the ’80s, era of the yuppie. Some areas, like Pioneer Square, where Royer became a longtime resident, attracted young urban professionals. By then, Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market had survived urban renewal projects, and the two historic districts spurred a return to Downtown living.
This was an era when Seattle was routinely touted as one of America’s “most livable cities.” If some feared lights-out due to the 1970s Boeing downturn, Seattle’s 1980s revival turned the lights on in the eyes of many observers. Royer left office in 1990 nationally recognized as a good mayor— he was dubbed Distinguished Urban Mayor of the Year by the National League of Cities. He seemed destined for bigger things. He was appointed director of the Institute for Politics at the Kennedy School at Harvard University.
But he returned to Seattle and took an active civic role, most notably as co-chair of the Friends of the Waterfront Committee, shepherding and cheerleading the epic transformation of the Downtown waterfront: removal of the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The project rebuilt the seawall, added and expanded amenities and connections with Downtown, and rerouted traffic through a new waterfront tunnel bored by Bertha.
Royer’s interest in remaking the waterfront was long-standing. In the mid-1980s, he complained about its dependence on tourism kitsch: “I don’t think our people want the waterfront to be wax museums and models of the Space Needle,” he said. Of, course goofy tchotchkes live on, but the tourism has scaled –up, and Seattle now has a waterfront porch revitalized for both locals and cruise-shippers.
It’s indicative of Royer’s civic commitment that he remained a force before, during and after life in office. Seattle mayors have not gone on to higher office since 1940, when mayor Art Langlie was elected governor of Washington, but they need not become non-factors. Royer’s longevity in office and ambitious vision set a standard that is hard to imagine coming around again anytime soon.
