New apartment building will mean the end to a longtime restaurant in Tacoma

A six-story apartment and retail building in Tacoma’s West End will come at the demise of a longtime mainstay in the city’s restaurant industry, Imperial Dragon.

The building at 6805 Sixth Ave. will be demolished to make way for the new structure. Early concepts submitted to the city show it could have 113 apartments paired with ground-floor retail and underground parking.

The new property owner, a limited liability company called 6th and Rochester, paid $1.2 million for the land. Requests for comment to the company’s listed agent, Bill Driscoll, went unanswered.

While parking spaces are not required for developments along Sixth Avenue in the mixed-use district, city planner John Harrington said the developer plans to have 113 spaces, one for each apartment.

The proposal also includes 9,620 square feet of ground-floor retail space, with apartment support areas also on the first floor.

These types of apartment-retail structures have been popping up throughout the city in recent years. Last year, Freddie Mac listed Tacoma as among the top 10 markets in the country to invest in multifamily projects.

The regional apartment market seemed to soften a bit last summer, with more apartments available for aspiring renters. Still, apartments are hard to find even online.

Region-wide, a gulf remains between those moving here and available housing, which has catapulted Tacoma’s housing prices in recent years to record highs.

This story was originally published January 4, 2018 at 12:35 PM with the headline "New apartment building will mean the end to a longtime restaurant in Tacoma."