Tacoma's Old City Hall sits empty, awaits plan

Almost a year ago, a broken sprinkler pipe flooded Tacoma’s Old City Hall and washed away the building’s few remaining tenants.

Two of them have set up new storefronts, but it wasn’t easy. Meanwhile, the historic building and city icon sits empty.

It’s been cleaned of most of its water-damaged debris, and it has adequate heat and fire-suppression systems. But Old City Hall isn’t out of the woods. Since early this year, the owner has been working with the City of Tacoma to resolve a derelict building complaint spawned by the day-before-Thanksgiving flood.

Many of the key items have been resolved, but Seattle-based The Stratford Co. faces a Dec. 31 deadline on other items such as repairs of doors, floors, walls and ceilings.

“At this point, the building has been stabilized. It’s weather-protected at a minimum,” city code inspection supervisor Dan McConaughy said Tuesday. But by the end of the year, McConaughy said Stratford must have a plan to complete the work at 625 Commerce St.

Stratford founder and president George Webb said Monday that re-doing the interior doesn’t make sense until it’s clear who will be using the space.

“We’re not going to restore everything the way it was,” Webb said. “We’re going to do what the new user wants. It might be a residential use, like apartments.”

Webb, whose investment group bought Old City Hall in 2005 with the idea of converting it to condos, said he’s now focusing on apartments. Because bank traditional bank loans are hard to come by, he has hired a specialist in federal tax credits to put together a financing plan.

McConaughy said he hopes a new project happens. But no matter what, he said, Webb must have a plan by the end of the year to deal with the interior.

“I totally agree with (Webb). It would be much nicer to do this as a full project. But we have to meet the minimum building and structures code,” McConaughy said. “If a project does not come to exist, then he just needs to go back in and tighten up some of the things that he’s already started.”

After a year of heartache and financial pain, one of Old City Hall’s former tenants celebrated her new storefront last week.

“For me, this was the biggest challenge ever,” said Trina Jones, a photographer whose studio on the north end of the building was ruined. “I’m pretty sure it took several years off my life. The stress was horrible. I had to deplete all of my savings and my daughter’s college fund to get opened again.”

NOT GOING AS PLANNED

Since Stratford bought Old City Hall, nothing has gone as planned.

Built in 1893, it was the headquarters for city operations until 1959 when it moved into private ownership. In 2005, with plans to convert the building to condos, Stratford forced tenants out. Then the economy crashed, killing the condo plans, and the building fell into disrepair and financial distress. Stratford switched gears and started to lease to commercial tenants again in 2008, but by then the market was drying up.

Stratford’s lender threatened to foreclose on Old City Hall in early 2010, though Webb has been able to bring current the $3 million loan with Union Bank. But as last winter began, the few commercial tenants began having trouble getting their landlord to respond to maintenance requests, particularly for heat.

“Our furnace didn’t work,” said Carrie Hutchinson, owner and president of Halo Construction, an Everett-based insurance restoration company that opened a Tacoma office in 2009. Halo hired its own contractor to fix the furnace because Stratford “didn’t respond when we requested help.”

Jones tells a similar story. She said she spent $6,000 on her own to try to heat her studio.

The week of Thanksgiving 2010, a winter storm hit Tacoma, dropping temperatures below freezing. When things began to thaw, pipes burst all over Tacoma. Old City Hall, the United Way building on Pacific Avenue, and the Center for Urban Waters on the Foss Waterway all had floods. The difference was in the response.

United Way and Urban Waters started mitigation immediately. At Old City Hall, little happened for about a month. Webb said the difference was that the flood in Old City Hall involved water running through asbestos and lead, so more care was needed. Contractors began cleaning up in December.

Hutchinson relocated Halo’s Tacoma office to a shopping center in Parkland, near McChord Air Field. They weren’t able to re-open until May. Jones moved a few blocks away, to 728 Broadway.

WELL-BUILT

Historic building advocates are concerned about Old City Hall, but they’re not sounding alarms yet. The roof has been repaired. A Tacoma Fire Department spokesman said the building’s fire-suppression system was tested this summer and was working.

Webb said insurance will cover some of the costs of rehabilitation, but not all.

“The envelope of the building is pretty good. It’s really well-built,” said Tacoma preservation expert Michael Sullivan. “It’s not a crippled building. It’s in pretty good shape. The biggest threat to the building is the city public works people making up their mind that they say it’s a hazard. There’s nothing to warrant that.”

City code enforcement supervisor McConaughy said plenty of options exist, including mothballing the building under the city’s vacant and unoccupied building standards. But failing to comply with city code will result in civil penalties.

“If the building gets worse, the city could go with an unfit building violation,” McConaughy said, but that’s further down the road. The goal is to keep the structure sound. “You start (allowing) the elements into the building from the weather, and the damage (can happen) quickly.”

One of Old City Hall’s neighbors is keeping a close eye. He’s an architect and a city council member.

“The building still has incredible potential. I don’t see it in peril from its physical state at the moment,” David Boe said last week. “With McMenamins coming online in a year and a half, we hope, I think it will put incredible development pressure on Old City Hall, in a good way.”

Webb acknowledged he’s waiting for the Portland-based brew pub owners to renovate the Elks Temple, across the street from Old City Hall.

“We’re neighbors, and we have talked to the McMenamins,” Webb said. “We’re just excited to see it come to fruition. We think it will reenergize the neighborhood, and hopefully we’ll draft on their efforts.”

Kathleen Cooper: 253-597-8546

kathleen.cooper@thenewstribune.com

http://blog.thenewstribune.com/business

Twitter: @KCooperTNT