A Seattle Landlord Feels Her Tenants’ Pain

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- The One Year, One Neighborhood series follows small businesses in the Pike/Pine corridor in Seattle, the first coronavirus hot spot in the U.S., to get a sense of what cities will look like as they reopen.

Liz Dunn has been developing properties along the Pike/Pine corridor for two decades, often by adapting old buildings for new uses. Her Chophouse Row development houses more than a dozen small businesses, including restaurants, a bike shop, a salon and a co-working space called the Cloud Room. She's worked hard to help her tenants pivot their enterprises and qualify for loans and grants, but many are still struggling. That's forced her to start negotiating with her banks. “I'm not someone who likes asking for help,” she says. “As a property owner, you don't expect to go from collecting all your rent one month to collecting less than half of it a month later.”

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