Homer Williams, the man whose company owns the former Tacoma Elks Lodge downtown, last week described why his firm wants to spend $12 million on infrastructure to jump-start redevelopment of a 75-acre district.
“Two things drive urban redevelopment,” Williams told a reporter. “Connections – in this case, your streetcar – and restaurants.”
Unfortunately, he didn’t mean our streetcar. And he didn’t mean Tacoma.
Williams, principal of Williams & Dame Development of Portland, meant a new, 4-mile-long streetcar line in Tucson, Ariz., that won federal funding last week to start laying track next year for a 2011 opening.
Without the streetcar network linking neighborhoods, Williams said, his firm, which built much of Portland’s trendy Pearl District and South Waterfront neighborhoods around streetcar lines, wouldn’t have invested in Tucson.
Meanwhile, here in Tacoma, the movement to install an expanded streetcar network inexplicably hasn’t generated the sense of urgency nor the momentum among our leaders to put it on a fast track to reality.
Even though it already won the seed money: $79.55 million for building the track and $3.7 million more to buy the streetcars.
Did you know the Sound Transit regional proposition voters approved in November included those amounts for Tacoma’s streetcar system?
Not only that. Sound Transit front-loaded the proposition in Tacoma’s favor. The 15-year transit expansion package gives early dibs on the available money pool beginning next year to Tacoma. That concession came because Sound Transit already has done some preliminary planning to extend the 1.7-mile downtown Link in both directions – past Freighthouse Square to the Puyallup Tribe’s Emerald Queen Casino and north through the Stadium District to Tacoma General Hospital.
And yet.
“It doesn’t happen overnight,” said Eric Anderson, Tacoma’s city manager.
Well, of course not.
But Anderson and Pierce Transit Chief Executive Officer Lynne Griffith canceled a Dec. 16 joint meeting of the Tacoma City Council and Pierce Transit Board to discuss the streetcar expansion.
Griffith said Monday that a subgroup of elected officials and staff members from both organizations must meet first – in January or February – to outline discussion points. The joint meeting will get back on the calendar after that. Then sometime later in the year, a consultant study will begin to establish an expansion plan.
Both Griffith and Anderson agreed that study – an alternatives analysis – will take a year to 18 months.
“We’re laying the foundation, doing the groundwork,” Anderson told an impatient columnist. “You can’t get federal funding without an alternatives analysis.”
Realistically then, on that snail’s pace, Tacoma probably wouldn’t see construction start on a streetcar network until late 2012.
“I don’t understand it,” said Morgan Alexander, founder and executive director of Tacoma Streetcar, a grass-roots organization devoted to building public support for connecting Tacoma’s business districts with streetcars.
“I think (the planning) could be done affordably and quickly, so we could get a shovel in the ground by the end of 2009,” he said.
Griffith and Anderson outlined the decision points they think will take time to answer:
1. Which agency – the city, Pierce Transit or Sound Transit – will oversee, coordinate, build and run the streetcar network?
2. Should the streetcar network be built like downtown’s Link, which required an expensive relocation of all underground utility lines beyond Link’s right of way so future utility work wouldn’t interrupt Link service? Or will future streetcar riders tolerate temporary shutdowns of streetcar service for utility work in exchange for less expensive construction of a much larger track network?
3. Where should the streetcar lines run?
4. Besides federal funding, who else should help pay for the streetcar network?
You and I and Alexander could answer all those questions in an afternoon over lattes at Black Water Café. Our elected and executive leaders could do it in a weekend retreat if they made streetcars a priority.
How about this for a start?
1. Pierce Transit, as the designated county transit provider, should take charge of the system. Through an interlocal agreement, Sound Transit should cede oversight and operation of Link and the expanded streetcar system to Pierce Transit.
2. Don’t require relocation of underground utilities. That singular requirement meant downtown’s Link cost roughly $45 million per mile. Eliminate that and we can get four times the distance or more. You can build a streetcar network for closer to $10 million a mile, according to a consultant’s study done for Washington D.C. Kenosha, Wisc., did it for $3 million a mile. When future utility work means a temporary interruption to streetcar service, run a special “streetcar bus” in its place.
3. Where should it run? Has everyone forgotten the report issued in May 2007 by a committee of citizens, businesses leaders and representatives from Sound Transit, City of Tacoma and Pierce Transit? For starters, it suggested 28 miles for three Link extensions – out Sixth Avenue, through the Hilltop and out Portland Avenue, to the Emerald Queen Casino and Salishan. It added another 72 miles of future track extensions.
4. While we get started building the initial network with the money we have, give Tacoma voters a chance to pass a bond package for the full 100-mile system suggested by the committee.
We can jump-start our economy if we move fast. In Portland, where Homer Williams was the first signer of the first petition for the city’s first light rail system, more than $3 billion worth of investment has sprung up along the Max light rail and newer neighborhood streetcar network. Property values jumped 35 percent within two blocks of the streetcar lines.
“I didn’t really think it was going to work,” Williams told me. “I thought it was a toy. But people love it, and it’s been great” for the economy.
We can have our own local economic stimulus package. Now, we need something to stimulate our local leaders to get moving on it.
Dan Voelpel: 253-597-8785
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