Plans to renovate Pacific Avenue are moving ahead, though the source of the money to fully fund the $8 million project isn’t clear.
An open house will be held Wednesday for people to see the latest, which will include signs and kiosks designed to help visitors find their way around. Such “wayfinding” has been a desire of downtown businesses for years.
Other upgrades will include:
• Eighty new street trees, which will be planted into special material under new sidewalks. (That avoids trees in planters, or, in the words of architect and Councilman David Boe, “trees in jail”).
• New bike and turn lanes.
• Rain gardens to filter stormwater, which currently flows into Commencement Bay untreated. Stormwater upgrades are a major source of funding for the project.
As the City Council grapples with a $26 million shortfall in the general fund, it’s going through a parallel process to prioritize a list of capital projects with funding gaps. Streetscaping is among them.
“There’s a bunch of moving parts to this thing,” city Public Works Director Dick McKinley said Monday.
Tacoma has about $15 million from previous long-term general obligation bonds that could be shifted to new projects.
Compared with the $118 million needed to fully fund the project list, that’s peanuts. So council members and staff are figuring out what projects rise to the top.
Streetscaping fits many of the measurable criteria, as laid out in a presentation to the council last week: The project leverages funding from others, and the amount needed to close the gap and complete the project is relatively small.
The price tag for streetscaping is about $8 million, and the city has $5 million of it in hand, much of it related to stormwater upgrades.
The sources are about $1.8 million in the Federal Highway Administration grants; $1.5 million from the Environmental Protection Agency; $1.5 million of local surface water funds to match the EPA grant; $200,000 in city funds for street signs; and $175,000 from the city’s real estate excise tax fund.
Streetscaping also hits the subjective categories of “aligning with city strategic planning” and “achieves City Council goals and objectives.”
Renovating Pacific Avenue was among the things the city pledged to do to improve downtown as dialysis giant DaVita and Russell Investments were making major decisions about their offices three years ago. Rep. Norm Dicks was among many heavy hitters involved in attempting to persuade the businesses to stay in Tacoma. During that process Dicks helped the city identify federal funding sources to help accomplish those goals, which city leaders said would be done regardless of the businesses’ decisions. His office asks the city regularly for updates, McKinley said.
The Pacific Avenue project is scheduled to go to bid in January, begin this spring and be finished by the end of next year.
At the last open house about streetscaping design, on Oct. 20, McKinley said the city understood businesses were worried about the impact of construction.
“There’s never a good time to work in downtown,” he said. The city’s project team will “walk the project every week and put a flier out every Monday that (outlines what) is going to happen this week.”
Kathleen Cooper: 253-597-8546
kathleen.cooper@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/business
Twitter: @KCooperTNT
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.