“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood … Make big plans; aim high in hope and work …”
Daniel Burnham, architect and urban planner (1864-1912)
Try this: stand at the corner of South 13th and A streets in downtown Tacoma. Look back toward Pacific Avenue. Try to align the north wall of the Luzon Building with the building behind it.
Tacoma, like Pisa, has its own leaning tower.
The vacant Luzon – arguably downtown’s most wretched eyesore and most significant treasure – has deteriorated so much that its owner may part with it for $75,000 and throw in a 14-foot-wide strip of the parking lot next door as a buyer bonus.
Why so cheap?
Because over at City Hall, the hammer has started to come down on Horizon Partners so that its building, hopefully, won’t.
Building inspectors fear the vaulted sidewalks on two sides of the Luzon could crumble and take the building with it. At least two interior floors have collapsed.
Horizon Partners missed a summer deadline to file a structure stabilization plan with City Hall and start repairs. So, a City Building and Land Use Services inspector has classified the Luzon as derelict and issued two citations, one in August and another in September.
Rumors and hopes for restoration of the 1891 structure have come and gone like the seasons ever since Golden Chopsticks, a Chinese food restaurant, shut down in 1986.
The latest concept to rehab the building into office and retail space appears as shaky as the building itself. It hinges on multiple uncertainties:
• First, the willingness of Mike Bartlett, president of Horizon Partners, to not only sell the building but a strip of the parking lot next to it to accommodate an elevator, staircases and steel superstructure to anchor the building.
• Second, the Tacoma City Council must vote this fall to lend the buyers $1.65 million at no interest during the 15-month construction period.
• Third, the city also must agree to create a Local Improvement District just for the Luzon, which allows the new owners to repay the cost of vaulted sidewalk repairs over 30 years rather than up front.
• Finally, a bank would have to agree to a loan for the balance of the $6.2 million project.
If all that happens, Gintz Group, a Tacoma development company currently restoring the former Mecca Theater building on Broadway, would shoulder the Luzon’s salvation.
And still lose $46,800 doing it, according to a draft financial pro forma provided by Gintz Group Chief Operating Officer Ron Gintz.
“The biggest issue with this thing,” said David Gintz, CEO of the family-owned firm, “is every major contractor in town has looked at this over the last years. And it costs more to fix it up than it’s worth at the end of the day. That being said, the only way to make it work is to sell the floors as commercial condos, so we can pay down the debt where we’re close to break even.”
Gintz Group would occupy the top floor, hold the Pacific Avenue level for retail space and sell the four 4,000-square-foot floors in between.
If anyone can do it, Gintz Group can, said Jim Merritt, principal of his own architecture firm, Merritt Arch.
“They’ve got great vision,” Merritt said. “They’re great for our community. They’ve got the willingness to get these things done and the tenacity to see it through.”
But can it all fall together before the Luzon falls altogether?
I hope so. Because the Luzon, originally known as the Pacific National Bank Building, has national significance. Its Chicago-based architects, Daniel Burnham and John Root, headed one of the 19th century’s preeminent architectural firms that pioneered commercial high-rises. Root died from pneumonia just before the building opened.
Their Tacoma bank building sold in 1892 to George W. Vanderbilt (son of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt), who invested $1 million in Tacoma properties, according to a 1996 master’s thesis on Burnham and Root’s work in Tacoma.
Banks of various names took space in it through 1920. Over the years, it housed a military surplus store, an adult theater, a furniture store, Golden Chopsticks Chinese food restaurant and an arcade known as the Fun Circus.
The Luzon made it onto the Tacoma, state and national registers of historic places.
Pierce County owned the Luzon block from 1992 to 2003 with plans to develop it as a new government administration complex. Instead, Rainier Pacific Bank bought part of the block for its headquarters. And Horizon Partners bought the Luzon and vacant lots next to it for slightly more than $1 million.
For Horizon Partners to consider selling the Luzon for $75,000 shows that, in monetary terms alone, it’s worth more dead than alive.
The city’s inspection sheet reads like a hypochondriac’s complaint list: mold and mildew; pigeons and rodents; structural hazards which constitute a danger to life and limb; collapsed floors; cracked and crumbling concrete walls; rotting wood; inadequate wiring and plumbing; broken windows and other holes; shrubs growing out of the walls.
“It’s a nightmare to rehab,” Ron Gintz said. “Selfishly, we see it as kind of our trophy building for the Gintz Group. It’s kind of an ego-driven thing for us. Beyond that, that’s not something you launch forward on as a profit center or other people would have done it already.”
Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785
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