The watercolor landscapes were designed to inspire, not anger.
Produced by the team of planner Bert Winterbottom and architect Bruno Freschi, they showed what the Foss Waterway might look like in 20 or 30 years. Pretty pictures were necessary to convince 1993 Tacoma that the abandoned and badly polluted stretch of industrial waterway might be reborn as an urban neighborhood. High-rise residential towers, museums, esplanades, parks, canals and even a man-made geyser in the center of the waterway were reminiscent of the Inner Harbor in Baltimore or False Creek in Vancouver, B.C.
It was all pushed aggressively by the Executive Council for a Greater Tacoma, a group of business leaders trying to shake the city out of its economic doldrums with big ideas and big – usually tax-supported – projects.
But for one group of residents, the paintings were suspect not for what they depicted but for what they didn’t – them, and their businesses on the east shore of the waterway.
Over the years, the Tacoma City Council was able to resolve the conflicts between what the waterway was and what it could be. The entire Foss – both shores from Commencement Bay to the closed end – would be part of downtown and in a single mixed-use zone. Maritime uses were supported but no new industrial uses would be allowed and existing businesses were prohibited from expanding beyond their footprint. But the Council allowed all to remain on the east shore while preparing for the day when some of those owners might decide to transition to other uses.
It was a pipe dream that very few thought was anything more than the latest in a series of grand-but-never-realized Tacoma renaissance plans. Yet this one is being realized. The west side, where the executive council first spread grass seed to make it look slightly less hideous, now holds a museum, a condo building, apartments, restaurants, an esplanade and moorage.
Political adjustments were made along the way, particularly in 2005 with the Foss version of the Great Compromise. The Council banned residential uses north of the Murray Morgan Bridge in a concession to Tideflats industry. It also decided to push forward with a restoration of the bridge and made other concessions to try to make sure nonindustrial uses on the Foss shoreline didn’t conflict with existing industrial uses.
The deal triggered huge investments by the city, in bridge restoration and for the Center for Urban Waters. The center not only ended any chance of condos on that shore – yet another benefit to industry – but was to seed the development of clean-water technology and anchor a reborn shoreline north of Murray Morgan.
Why am I retelling this history in such detail now? Because after 20 years and tens of millions of tax dollars, the current Council last week abandoned the east shore of the Foss north of the bridge. In revisions to the shoreline master program, this valuable shoreline is once again zoned industrial, not mixed-use. The compromise has been shredded. After 20 years, that shoreline has been removed from the downtown zone. Urban Waters has been orphaned, relegated to a zone for future industrial uses that either don’t exist or wouldn’t qualify for a shorelines permit if they did.
My old boss Kelso Gillenwater was on the executive council that pushed the Foss dream in 1993. He spoke frequently about how a city rots from its core outward and the only way to bring it back is to restore that core. It was clear to him that a 21st century Tacoma would be centered on the University of Washington Tacoma and the Foss.
Kelso died too young in 1999. Not to be too maudlin, but I have followed this issue as something of a memorial to him. As I sat and watched how quickly this City Council conceded, I wondered what he would think of this retreat from the Foss vision – not just that it happened so easily but that no one, not even the executive council that gave it birth, voiced a single objection.
Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657 peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com blog:thenewstribune.com/politics Twitter: @CallaghanPeter
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.