A California-based developer has pulled out of a proposed deal that would have developed two tracts adjacent to Tacoma’s Elks Lodge as a shopping center and an office complex.

The deal’s collapse has left the Elks Lodge looking at options to optimize the use of its valuable but underused property fronting South Union Avenue and South Cedar Street, Robert Cooper, the chairman of the lodge’s board of trustees, said Wednesday.

Sacramento’s Panattoni Development Co. had marketed the shopping center property on the western half of lodge parking lot along Union Avenue as 23 Union Square. The developer planned four buildings totaling some 42,000 square feet. It also planned to erect medical and dental office buildings along the Cedar Street side of the property. The Elks’ main lodge building and a smaller parking lot would have remained in place between the two new developments.

Cooper said several prospective tenants including some restaurants had expressed interest in leasing, but in the end Panattoni had decided the deal wouldn’t make the company money.

“They reorganized the company, and they decided our deal wasn’t right for them,” Cooper said Wednesday.

No Panattoni executives were available for comment Wednesday either in the company’s Sacramento headquarters or at its office in Seattle.

The lodge’s executive board is now studying several ideas for how to make use of the property that it no longer uses intensely. The parking lot on the lodge’s west side is used for recreational vehicle parking for visiting Elks members and for leased parking for employees of the adjacent Allenmore Hospital.

The east side of the lodge’s property is an outdoor running track and a green space.

Since 1965, when the Elks moved to its Union Avenue lodge from its old quarters in downtown Tacoma across from the old City Hall, the fraternal group has sold off parts of the original lodge site. That property once stretched from South 19th Street to the Highway 16 freeway, said Cooper. On the north side of the Elks complex now stands Allenmore Hospital and several medical office buildings associated with it. On the south are a group of large office buildings and a shopping center that includes Target, Top Food & Drug, Office Depot and PetSmart, among other stores.

The lodge, once the nation’s largest with 10,000 members, has seen its membership fall in recent years to about 4,000 members, said Cooper.

Aggressive recruitment drives have brought new and lapsed members into the lodge and decreased dramatically the rate of decline, but the membership is still falling, albeit at a much slower rate, said Cooper.

“We’re like most fraternal organizations nationwide,” said Cooper, a Stadium High School vice principal. “We’ve seen our popularity and our membership declining for many years.”

The decision to allow women to join the group several years ago resulted in the departure of a significant number of male members, he said.

The lodge in recent years has been moving more actively into the rental market, leasing to outside groups its extensive facilities for corporate and organization banquets and its athletic facilities such as its swimming pool for scuba training to outside groups.

The club has been studying how to optimize the efficiency of its restaurant operations and has leased its excess parking to several different groups including neighboring Bellarmine Preparatory School.

Cooper said the lodge’s finances have stabilized, but the board is constantly searching for ways to get the most return on its assets.

Elks trustee Gwendolyn Guay said the lodge has continued to pursue its multiple charitable activities, including a Christmas program for needy children and veteran assistance programs.

Cooper said the lodge in the past studied and rejected proposals to sell all of the land west of Cedar Street and move the lodge to a new building on the Elks Allenmore Golf Course.

Since the demise of the shopping center and office park deal, the board has been studying a broad range of revenue-enhancing options, Cooper said. There’s no urgent timetable to get those done, he said.

Whatever the board decides to recommend will be thoroughly researched and then vetted to the membership, which will be asked to vote on any proposal.

“If the membership approves, we’ll move forward,” he said. “If it doesn’t, we’ll go back for more study.”

John Gillie: 253-597-8663

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