Lars Larson: Time for lights out in the Rose City

By Lars Larson,
NW and national radio host

50 years ago, a couple of real estate guys put up a billboard near SeaTac Airport that said “Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights”.

The city was coming apart at the seams after massive layoffs at Boeing.

The time for the sign has come for the former “Rose City”.

This time businesses are fleeing and not people…but without businesses, people don’t have jobs or food for that matter.

Walmart just added its name to the list.

It includes Stanford’s, Starbucks, and Cracker Barrel.

Green Zebra grocery gave up after a decade.

Nike fought the wave of crime and lost…closing one of its signature stores…just a dozen miles from the company’s world headquarters…but safely outside the Riot Zone Portland has become.

Nike even tried to hire cops as off-duty security…but just like the city, it found no one wants THAT job.

Downtown Portland businesses like Apple suffered literally millions in losses from broken windows and government forced lockdowns.

Their pleas for help fell on deaf ears at City Hall.

Elected officials do plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on homeless drug addicts…the same so-called “solutions” that have failed for literally decades.

So, before the last businesses give up…someone should borrow that Seattle slogan one last time.