(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) Nike’s popular Seattle location is closing its doors and fleeing the city under threat of skyrocketing crime, joining a growing number of high-profile corporations that have bolted from the city.
The store that was located at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Pike Street closed its doors for good on Friday, according to the Daily Mail.
Even though the woke company, which has been a consistent big donor for Democrats, has yet to provide an official reason for why it decided to shutter its store, residents told the Seattle Times that street crime was probably one of the major reasons why Nike moved out of the city.
King County, in which Seattle is located, suffered from persistently high crime rates, with 2022 being the deadliest year for homeless people.
The King County Medical Examiner’s Office reported that last year, 310 homeless people died. This is a 65 percent spike from 2021, including at least 18 homicides and 160 fentanyl-related overdoses.
The Seattle Police Department reported that, as of Nov. 2022, there were 285 rapes, 1,654 robberies and 3,258 aggravated assaults. Murder rates surpassed the 2021 figures, with 48 reported before 2022 was done, a 12.5 percent increase.
Nike regular customers from Seattle were devastated about the news as they visited the store for the last time on Friday, thinking that it might cause a domino effect when other businesses would leave the city, too.
“Downtown is a mixed bag,” said Jeffrey Rosen, a broker at Seattle Pacific Realty. “There’s some recovery going on — and there’s some folding up and going away going on as well.”
Nike is not the only company that closed its doors because of the crime rates. Aside from small businesses that suffered the most and closed their doors, too, two other major corporations — Starbucks and Amazon — decided that Seattle was not worth it. Facebook and Microsoft have also fled the crime-ridden city.
One of the driving forces responsible for the current state of Seattle is former Mayor Jenny Durkan, who allowed BLM and Antifa thugs to destroy the city and establish the city’s lawless CHOP zone in 2020, fostering an anti-law environment where crime has thrived.
