Think of Tacoma searching for developers to invest in downtown like a single person searching for a date on Match.com.
The online dating service allows you to e-mail an electronic “wink” to whomever you might be interested in. But it takes a lot of winks to find one hot prospect willing to go on a date, my single friends tell me. So you can’t get overly picky.
But folks from City Hall, the Economic Development Board, the Foss Waterway Development Authority and the Chamber of Commerce have worn out their semi-colon keys over the past decade trying to woo condominiums, hotels, office buildings and name retailers.
You’d have to call Tacoma’s wink-and-date record dreary at best. A handful of notable condominium projects, a hotel and one office building have nuzzled up for some urban lovin’ in the last seven years. But not much else.
Now, the unlucky-in-love city thinks it wants to date only beauty queens.
It’s about time.
The City of Tacoma has hired a consultant to tailor what’s called in planner parlance a “design review” process for new development projects. No one’s quite sure yet how rigorous Tacoma should be as it scrutinizes the look of future projects. Nor does anyone know yet whether the design review requirement will apply to just downtown or to all the city’s business districts.
But folks generally agree Tacoma shouldn’t accept just any ugly building that someone with money wants to build.
“Tacoma has got such a personality of its own. It’s very distinctive. So it’s really in the city’s best interest, strategically, to have new development in the city reflect its regional context,” Reuben McKnight, Tacoma’s historic preservation officer, said last week. “The other thing is, part of attracting and developing a strong entertainment and retail downtown is to have attractive development.”
It sounds counterintuitive for the City of Desperation, which has had too little private investment, to add a new layer of requirements for future development.
Think of it like this, McKnight says: “A lot of times, people who develop properties will do what’s asked of them if it’s clear. If you’re not asking for anything, you’re stuck with what you get … The city really has the opportunity to tell the world what it wants, to have some goals … and to have an influence on what the city’s going to look like for the next 100 years.”
Such a design review process could have come in handy already. No. 1 case in point on my list? Pacific Tower, the 14-story, 95-unit condominium monolith that rises over I-5 at Pacific Avenue like a tombstone. Built in 2002, design review may have prevented developer Oscar Hokold, who made his fortune in South Tacoma apartments and the King Oscar motel chain, from wasting a prime hillside view with an exterior reminiscent of 1960s Soviet-style concrete blah.
Which leads to this suggestion for City Hall: Don’t just limit design review to downtown. (Pacific Tower sits just outside the official downtown boundary.) Instead, require design review for any buildings visible from downtown.
While Tacoma deserves a say in the look of new buildings, having a say doesn’t guarantee critical acclaim.
Want proof? The most-often cited published reference in favor of design review for Tacoma comes from a 2006 article written for The Oregonian by Randy Gragg, the newspaper’s architecture and urban design writer. Gragg advised that Tacoma “desperately needs some sort of design review: Witness the vacuous new Pacific Plaza urban park (since renamed Tollefson Plaza) and new Courtyard (by) Marriott Hotel.”
Both got critically panned – the plaza as a plainish dead zone, the hotel for its suburban style in a setting that demands urban. But guess what? Both projects went through their own versions of design review by City Hall.
The plaza originally had a grander design. But a shortage of money caused the Public Works Department to eliminate expensive flourishes that might have made the space more inviting.
Hollander Investments, meanwhile, built the hotel on property owned by the city and under terms of a design and development agreement negotiated with city officials. Tacoma was so desperate to house guests of the Greater Tacoma Convention & Trade Center across Commerce Street, it gave in to Hollander’s preference for an exterior hotel-style ill-suited for the heart of a renaissance city.
But design review can work. Tacoma already has design review for historic districts. It requires the city’s Landmark Preservation Commission to approve demolition and construction in historic districts.
Last year, the Seattle developer of a hotel slated for the brewery district near the University of Washington Tacoma presented its preliminary design to the commission. It looked exactly like what it was – a stock blueprint for a suburban Holiday Inn Express. The commission told the developer, Han Kim, to come back with something more befitting the historic district. Kim has said that he hopes to submit a new design by the end of February.
Tacoma, like anyone scouring Match.com, needs the self-confidence to become more selective rather than settle for less.
“The general consensus,” McKnight said, “is that everything we’re getting isn’t everything we want.”
Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785
dan.voelpel@thenewstribune.com
What: The public can ask questions and offer opinions about a design review program at a final workshop.
When: 6-8 p.m. March 10
where: Evergreen State College, Tacoma Branch commons, 1210 Sixth Ave.
ONLINE: For information or to give input via a questionnaire go to www.cityof tacoma.org/designreview.
JOIN THE DISCUSSION | Register here
We welcome comments. Please keep them civil, short and to the point. ALL CAPS, spam, obscene, profane, abusive and off topic comments will be deleted. Repeat offenders will be blocked. Thanks for taking part — and abiding by these simple rules. A thorough explanation of rules of conduct can be found in our Terms of Service. If you have any questions, including why your comment may not be showing immediately after you submit it, be sure to visit the commenting FAQ.