Those who love Tacoma’s historic structures and root for downtown’s revitalization are accustomed to raised hopes and dashed expectations – but the two don’t usually arrive on the same day.
They did Tuesday when two developers announced news that they have a promising plan to save the 93-year-old former Elks Temple in downtown Tacoma.
Grace Pleasants of Heritage Properties and development partner Rick Moses unveiled a deal to purchase the Elks building from its Portland, Ore., owner, immediately resell it to the famed McMenamins pub-and-hotel brand, and then build a grocery store and apartments next door.
Meanwhile, down at City Hall, Tacoma officials were delivering some bad news: The 119-year-old Luzon Building may finally succumb to years of neglect.
Its owner, the Gintz Group, is achingly close to securing the tenants it needs to get bank financing. But the former bank building designed by noted Chicago architects Daniel Burnham and John Root might not have enough fight left in it. A consultant’s grim prognosis: “The Luzon Building is currently in a state of progressive collapse...”
The building might yet be saved, but its near-death condition is a reminder that there is a practical point of no return for abandoned historic buildings. City administrators and city council members should keep that in mind as they consider the Elks developers’ request for public participation.
The exact scope and shape of possible city assistance is yet unknown, but developers have said they would be looking to Tacoma to build a multistory garage.
On its face, the chance to breathe life back into a lonely pocket of downtown and make the Elks Temple a social hub once again is compelling. Once the public knows what else is on the table, it can make a better assessment of whether the deal is in its interests.
The I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it crowd can be forgiven their doubts. Deals to save the Elks, not to mention another downtown gem, the Winthrop Hotel, have come and gone. But this one might have an advantage on all those, having been birthed in the recession rather than ravaged by it.
Grace Pleasants has a history of pulling off at least one impossible deal, having finagled the purchase and rehabilitation of an abandoned, run-down brick Albers Mill building on the Thea Foss Waterway.
She’s been linked to other historic preservation efforts in the intervening years, including the Winthrop, a 12-acre master-planned community near the Tacoma Dome and the old City Hall. But Pleasants isn’t given to pie-in-the-sky pronouncements, usually preferring to hold her tongue until the deal has some certainty.
It is a sad fact of historic preservation that not all buildings worthy of saving are saved. The Luzon in a sad example. The Elks Temple, it seems, will be one of the most fortunate.
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