Piroshky Piroshky owner Olga Sagan launches campaign for City Council

The owner of Seattle’s popular Piroshky Piroshky bakery is running for City Council.

Olga Sagan announced her campaign for District 7 — which includes downtown Seattle, Belltown, Queen Anne, Lake Union, Magnolia, Interbay, Uptown and the waterfront — on Tuesday. She seeks to replace Councilmember Andrew Lewis, who has occupied the council seat since 2019.

Small business, public safety and revitalizing downtown Seattle are at the core of Sagan’s campaign for change.

Sagan wants to work with community partners to address homelessness, support small businesses, lower the cost of doing business in Seattle and ensure that people are able to enjoy the city’s parks, sidewalks and public spaces, she said.

“That’s not happening right now, and it’s why Seattle deserves a fresh perspective and a change in leadership,” Sagan said in a statement announcing her campaign.

A string of crimes outside Sagan’s downtown bakery at Third Avenue and Pike Street led to a temporary closure in February 2022, propelling her into community leadership.

At the time of the closure, Sagan emphasized that criminal activity in the area drove her decision to close. Sales at the downtown Piroshky Piroshky were down about 85%, compared to the restaurant’s Pike Place Market site, which remained open and had already rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

Sagan said she had been trying to reach out to city government since the pandemic started, and “no one responded when I needed them, no one reached out when I needed them.”

“I believe that government should be accountable to the people who got them elected, and that means listening to and responding to the people in the districts that we serve. I want to help make that a reality for people like myself who feel like they have been ignored,” she said Thursday morning.

The downtown site of Piroshky Piroshky reopened in December, 10 months later.

Lewis, the incumbent council member, is campaigning with a focus on investing in housing with supportive services for addiction and behavioral health conditions, implementing a new public safety strategy that diversifies first responders and advancing sustainable climate change policies.

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“We’ve been getting a lot of work done with downtown stakeholders to really advance downtown recovery and shared public safety priorities that myself and the coalition I’m leading want to see completed,” Lewis said Wednesday.

Lewis cited his partnership with the Downtown Seattle Association, which led to the clearing of homeless encampments in downtown Seattle “that were dramatically increasing the amount of crime in the city core,” he said.

Lewis also highlighted the start of the Third Avenue Project, which is a combination effort of the Downtown Seattle Association, Seattle Police Department and nonprofit We Deliver Care.

The Third Avenue Project places a stronger emphasis on public safety to address the drug use, sale of stolen goods, severe mental illness and fights that often characterize Third Avenue. “That work is ongoing, really, really critical and important and will make a significant difference,” Lewis said.

In Sagan’s email announcement of her campaign for City Council, she asserts that Lewis has “out of touch policies and ineffectiveness.”

In response, Lewis said Wednesday that he is proud of the work he sponsored during the pandemic “which made sure small businesses could stay in place and not be in a position to have their life savings or their houses taken away,” as well as proud “to have worked on initiatives to get encampments off of the street downtown.”

“My opponent’s critique is just not based in the reality of the coalition and leadership we’ve been building,” Lewis said.

In response, Sagan said Thursday that the Columbia Tower location of Piroshky Piroshky has not been able to reopen, in addition to many of the food court businesses in the building that have closed permanently.

“Look around and see how many businesses have closed their doors and never reopened. Look at how many vacant buildings there are downtown,” she said.

Lewis also said that Sagan has not voted in a city election since 2013, to which Sagan responded: “I have not been a good voter historically, especially in local elections. I’m very honest about that. I don’t like pointing fingers when I’m part of the problem. When I realized that I was unhappy with the results I have seen I knew that it was up to me to be a part of making that change happen. I want other people like myself who have not been civically engaged to be able to see that it is never too late to jump in and learn, to jump in and vote, to jump in and take action. It takes all of us.”

Orrin Evans, a strategist for the Sagan campaign, said Sagan and her real-world business experience will “bring back the charm and comfort of District 7’s neighborhoods.”

Sagan immigrated to America from Russia in 1999 and later became a manager at Piroshky Piroshky, eventually becoming its owner. Sagan employs more than 70 people across four Seattle sites of the bakery. In 2020, Sagan was named Washington’s “Business Owner of the Year” by the Small Business Administration.