A small line extends from behind a red rope down First Avenue South. Beefy security guards check names on a guest list, listen to the pleas of women in glittery minidresses hoping to jump the line or dodge the cover charge, and pat down patrons, asking if they're carrying mace or knives. In the entryway, the silhouette of a scantily clad go-go dancer gyrates above.
Renee McMahon
Renee McMahon
Even Pioneer Square’s
stodgy Preservation Board can appreciate how well-preserved Aura’s dancers are.
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this slideshow of images caught while out and about in Pioneer Sqaure.
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Welcome to Friday night at Aura. Pioneer Square's newest nightclub advertises itself with a topless woman seductively chewing a fingernail and toying with a pink hoop earring. Inside, hip-hop is pounding as the steadily growing crowd angles for positions at the neon bar where Hennessy cognac and Skyy vodka flow. From here, you can see the dancer, shaking her white Daisy Dukes on a platform above the main floor, a small chair set behind her for use as a prop.
Three women enter the club, and immediately two men swoop in. One invites the trio to join him at the mellower downstairs bar, where the Las Vegas–inspired VIP "booths" are actually beds. The other offers to take them upstairs to the crowded lounge above the main room. The women huddle and begin negotiations. Two want to go to the crowded upstairs bar, while the third would prefer downstairs. Outvoted, she pouts a bit, but follows everyone up.
An army of barbacks and bussers sweep the room constantly, looking for empty glasses. A beer hits the floor, leaving a puddle. Within minutes, a man with a mop darts into the crowd, sops up the mess, and disappears, causing only the tiniest distraction.
Surveying all this from the balcony is owner Matthew Chu.
Aura is packed, and that's no fluke: Chu claims to have turned a profit every month this year. But all those long nights are taking a toll on the 26-year-old entrepreneur, who is battling a cold.
Chu moved to Seattle from New York five years ago. Until recently, he split his time between the Northwest, his native Taiwan, and China, where he managed his father's chain of English-language schools and bookstores. By age 23, he had money saved and the desire to open a large, upscale restaurant.
Over the next two years, landlords laughed him out of their offices—until a friend who tends bar at Venom in Belltown pointed out that booze sales had weathered the recession, and suggested Chu open a nightclub instead.
"I don't drink alcohol, I don't dance very well, and I have a fiancée," Chu laughs. But he saw the potential in selling liquor to the masses, and he started getting better receptions from property managers once he reconsidered his intentions.
Yet rather than settle in hotter areas like Belltown or Capitol Hill, Chu set his sights on Pioneer Square. "I love the history of Pioneer Square," he says. "That's why I came here."
But since then, he's found himself battling neighborhood preservationists, despite having obtained all necessary permits from the city.
When Chu opened Aura, he frosted the windows, with the name of the club spelled out in voids. After doing this, he got a notice from the Pioneer Square Preservation Board saying the windows didn't match the historic nature of the surrounding buildings, and that he needed to defrost them. The preservationists threatened to go to the state Liquor Control Board in the hopes of getting Chu's liquor license revoked—death to a business that takes in almost all its revenue from alcohol sales.
When Chu went to a Preservation Board meeting to defend his windows, he says one woman told him she just didn't think the club looked like a place she would want to go. Chu describes this woman (whose name he doesn't recall) as older, maybe in her 50s, with grey hair. "She's not exactly who we're trying to get into the club," he says, stating the obvious.
Chu has yet to alter his frosted windows. But thanks to his scrum with the Preservation Board, he vows he'll never open another business in the Square.
For decades, the operating philosophy of Pioneer Square has been to preserve the look and feel of the neighborhood as it stood in the Gold Rush days. Businesses sport signs with old-fashioned fonts, and any new brickwork must match other buildings, many of which have stood for over a century.
This m.o. has led to constant battles between developers and business owners and the immensely powerful Preservation Board. In the meantime, the Square has faltered. Scenes like the throng at Aura happen only on weekend nights. Most days and weeknights, only a handful of souls roam the streets. And the vacant feel is only getting worse: Longtime businesses like Elliott Bay Book Company and Olander Flowers recently moved out—after a spate of galleries exited the area around Occidental Park in 2006, leaving little more than a city information kiosk sitting alone on the bricks. This exodus has occurred while neighborhoods like Capitol Hill and Belltown have been erecting condos and adding food, nightlife, and shops.
"Pioneer Square doesn't have much of an identity anymore, except being old," Chu says.
