The Great Evaporation of Commerce at 7905 S. Hosmer St. has left a gasp, and an opportunity.
After hours Sunday, Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse made closing time permanent. It shut the flaps on its big box store in South Tacoma. It scraped the signs off its building and brought in trucks to relocate the merchandise.
None of us customers saw it coming. We don’t know if the staff will find jobs at the end of the yard-work and painting seasons. We would’ve appreciated the chance to wish them swift and happy re-employment.
We wish the same for the building.
An empty slot is the dead fish in a retail complex. It does not invite you to stick around. It’s a target for vandals, a convenient collection of shadows for car prowlers, a set of walls to catch wind-drifted trash.
In the right spot, busyness is good for business, and no one brings busyness quite like a certain retail giant from Arkansas.
The dead Lowe’s is a location ripe for a Walmart.
The proposed Elks’ Lodge site by South 19th Street and Union Avenue is not.
The Elks are downsizing out of a building that’s too big and expensive for them. In June 2009, the group said it had rejected Walmart’s offer to buy part of the property. In July, the group announced it intended to sell much of the land for development as medical and retail buildings. It would keep the remainder, build a smaller lodge and upgrade the golf course.
With that, the Elks told their Central Tacoma neighbors that the character of the property would remain essentially unchanged. It might even be a more attractive and useful fit for a neighborhood that already has senior living apartments, medical facilities and two high schools.
It also is a neighborhood with good shopping access, including a Top Foods, T.J. Maxx, Office Depot, PetSmart, Target, smaller retailers and, a few blocks away, a Fred Meyer.
There’s enough activity to snarl morning and afternoon traffic.
No wonder, then, that Central Tacoma residents felt snookered in August when it came out that the Elks had, in 2010, contracted with a new developer, JLO Washington Enterprises, and that it has plans for a Walmart.
The supercenter would be 150,000 square feet and change the character of the site and the neighborhood.
Anyone who has followed Walmart’s attempts to get into Tacoma could anticipate the fight.
Opponents would argue against the size of it. They would predict that it would crush surrounding commerce, reduce options for consumers, oppress not only its employees but workers in China, screw up traffic beyond redemption and possibly hasten the 2012 Mayan apocalypse.
On Aug. 30, the Tacoma City Council slapped a six-month moratorium on new applications for stores bigger than 65,000 square feet. Though it doesn’t name Walmart, that’s the target.
Now the vacant Lowe’s makes the situation more interesting.
If Walmart is interested in opening a Tacoma store, the four-year-old, 116,000-square-foot Lowe’s with an attached garden center adds another option.
Repurposing a nearly new building, instead of building fresh in a neighborhood that does not want it, would bring some green credentials to Walmart’s reputation.
Opening in a neighborhood that’s likely to want it, rather than one that’s fighting it, is always good business.
We might not admit it, but many of us shop – even like – Walmart. That’s why it is the nation’s largest retailer. That’s why its parking lots are so full so often.
Lowe’s former parking lot off Hosmer is vast and yearning to fill up. The building faces a frontage road and Interstate 5. It is part of a commercial strip that includes hotels – several with residential suites. Behind it are homes, and beyond them, high-density affordable apartments.
Walmart would be wise to consider an adaptive reuse of this alternative site.
It’s unclear whether the council’s moratorium would prevent a different business from moving into the Lowe’s site. If it does, it should be amended.
The Lowe’s property was zoned for a superstore. Whether it sells goods beyond hardware and plants makes no difference. It should be generating jobs, affordable shopping and tax revenue.
It should be an asset, not an attractive nuisance.
Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/street
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