The Seattle Times took a broad look Tuesday at Tacoma, connecting some of the city’s recent and potential losses downtown and asking whether we’ll ever be able to recover.
A few points on that report: The Children’s Museum won’t “break ground” on its new space, since it’s moving into a building that’s been around for more than 100 years. And, the McMenamins complex won’t have a movie theater.
It will sometimes have a living-room style space to show a movie every now and then, according to the developer on Tuesday.
As for the rest of the details in the story, The News Tribune reported on them all in great detail. But one particular quote struck a chord:
“There’s no question Tacoma is a depressed market,” a Seattle investment broker said.
To support that, statistics from Colliers International show Tacoma’s Class A office vacancy rate at 30 percent now that Russell has left. It was 7 percent before. That’s a big jump, no doubt.
What’s lacking is some perspective. The same Colliers researchers also know the size of Tacoma’s and Seattle’s markets. Seattle has 52 million square feet of office space.
Downtown Tacoma’s market is 13 times smaller, with about 4 million square feet of office space.
That means in Tacoma, one big tenant – like the one that used to fill 909 A St. – can have a disproportionate effect on statistics. Maybe it can on the market, too. But one empty office building doesn’t necessarily mean that Tacoma is depressed. In fact, Colliers’ quarterly report from the end of 2010, the most recent available, said this about Russell’s move:
“If this one tenant had not moved to Seattle, the Pierce County office market actually would have seen moderate growth.”
Kathleen Cooper, staff writer
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