It's Sunny Jim for Nickelodeons. Mayor Mike McGinn this week chose the former site of the peanut butter factory, at Airport Way South and South Snoqualmie Street, as the new, city-sanctioned home for Nickelsville.
There are no backyards in Sodo, so NIMBY-ism can't exist. The area is "100 percent industrial," according to Mike Peringer, president of the Sodo Business Association.
Not in My Backyard is now Not In My Business District: Peringer said his group opposes the site because the area lacks adequate services for Nickelodeons.
"They want to go to the store? Where are they going to go?" he wonders. "Half a mile over to Costco?"
With trucks from nearby UPS rumbling in and out, the area is noisy day and night, Peringer says. The lighting is poor, and the streets are crisscrossed by railroad tracks, and it's a hike to the nearest bus stop.
"There's just too many things against it," he says.
Nickelsville is due to move from their current location, the parking lot of University Congregational United Church of Christ on the NE corner of NE 45th Street and 15th Avenue NE in the University District, this weekend.
McGinn says the Sodo site may not be ready for move-in by next month. Before Nickelodeans can take up residence there, workers need to clear and grade the site, removing remains of the Sunny Jim peanut butter factory, which was at the north end of the site before it burned down in September. The city's traffic signal and traffic sign shop is on the south end of the site.
Nickelsville residents say they can't wait. On Sunday, Nov. 14, they plan to move to a permanent site for the winter.
The Sodo option was one of seven potential sites. Peringer believes any of the others would've been a better fit.
He's not the only one who questioned the choice. This summer City Councilmember Sally Bagshaw said the location would put people in an undesirable spot between the freeway and railroad tracks.
"Out-of-sight, out-of-mind strikes me as not being the compassionate way we want to treat people," Bagshaw said.
The City of Seattle will hold a community meeting in Sodo before Thanksgiving. An exact date and time have not yet been set. McGinn called the decision a "small step" toward addressing the more than 2,000 people who sleep on Seattle's streets each night.
To Peringer, it's a step in the wrong direction.
"This is not a case of not in my backyard," he says. "We got strips cubs. You name it, we got it. We get dumped on all the time. They (the Mayor's Office) don't understand this area at all. "