Howard Schultz once apologized to Seattle. Sort of. The former Starbucks CEO confessed he made his “biggest mistake” in 2006 when he sold the SuperSonics to a non-Seattle businessman out of Oklahoma City. Although the new owners made half-hearted promises to keep the basketball team in Seattle, they realized their original intent and moved the team to Oklahoma two years later.
Writing in “From the Ground Up,” the book he authored in 2019, Schultz conceded, “I created a wound I cannot heal and for which I will always be deeply sorry.” He added that in retrospect he wishes he’d “held on to the team until someone local wanted to buy it.”
After talking about what he called “the biggest regret of my professional life,” Schultz insisted that he continued to value “the spirit of Seattle, this magnificent city and its pioneering spirit.” He explained he’d fallen in love with the city in 1981 when strolling through the Pike Place Market and visiting “a small coffee roaster called Starbucks” and came here to realize his dreams.” He claimed that he had helped others build a better life heading the “first company in America to give part-time employees health-care coverage and stock ownership, as well as pioneering a program allowing employees to get a college degree, tuition free.”
His self-serving apology about the loss of the city’s basketball team was issued during his presidential bid, running as a “centrist independent.” He argued that his aim was to remove Trump (then serving his first term) from office and “helping to fix our broken two-party system.” But Schultz’s presidential bid didn’t fare well and he eventually dropped out. Nor did his apology to the city work out. Unforgiving cynics said his mea culpa was undertaken simply because Schultz recognized selling a beloved sports franchise remained a sore topic in Seattle.
In that running-for-president book, Schultz tried to patch things up, saying a lot of good things about Seattle and the city’s “pioneering spirit” and innovative ideas. However, despite his tribute to the city and his belated regret about selling the team, he now is singing a completely different song. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal May 11, he contended Seattle has changed. He claimed that, after once nurturing businesses like Starbucks, Amazon, Costco, and Microsoft, the city has “turned hostile to business.”
As reported in March, Schultz has purchased a $44 million penthouse in Miami and is leaving Seattle. By moving to Florida, he’s joining other monied entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google.
Not one to depart with grace, Schultz aired a litany of complaints about Seattle including chronic homelessness, persistent budget deficits, declining public safety, falling foot traffic and downtown vacancies.
His vitriol came after the Washington State Legislature passed 9.9 percent levy on any income over $1 million, the so-called “millionaire’s tax.” Adding to his dystopian view, Schultz targeted Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson for her “socialist rhetoric” when she spoke during a November rally of Starbucks workers, saying she wasn’t buying Starbucks and “you shouldn’t either.” He also singled out Wilson’s demeanor at a Seattle University event where she rated as “overblown” concerns over millionaires leaving Washington and waved “bye” to companies wanting to depart.
Schultz’s qualms about the city’s business climate comes at a time when Starbucks has announced a new office in Nashville, pledging a $100 million investment in Tennessee. It’s projected the Nashville office will grow up to 2,000 workers over five years or more than half as large as the approximately 3,000 workers at Starbucks headquarters in Seattle’s Sodo neighborhood.
But Schultz denied that his relocation to Miami was linked to Starbucks’ opening the Nashville office or to Washington’s taxes. He said the Florida move was a matter of “family choices” and his “stage of life.” Although no longer Starbucks CEO and having stepped down from the board of directors, Schultz still has the title of “Starbucks Chairman Emeritus” and remains a significant individual shareholder.
In response to Schultz’s claims about a “hostile climate,” Wilson’s office has responded with a conciliatory press statement affirming that Starbucks is “part of Seattle culture and identity and the mayor wants the company and other large employers to continue their success in the city.”
The release added that the mayor’s office “has regular communication with the executive team at Starbucks on shared priorities including homelessness, public safety and affordability.” It quoted Wilson saying, “Seattle is a special place because of our history, our culture, our workforce and shared understanding that companies and workers can succeed together.”
Nevertheless, Schultz deplored the state’s reliance on sales tax, calling it “a broken tax system” and saying the state focuses too much on taxation to solve its financial problems. Instead he advocates simplified regulations, reformed tax systems and investments in workforce development. He didn’t say how he proposes governments can operate without a funding source involving some form of taxation.
Some years ago, Schultz publicly acknowledged he has had a “complicated relationship” with Seattle. And that is the frankest and most revealing thing Schultz has ever said about his relationship with the city where he spent decades building the home-grown coffee company into a global empire.
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