On display along the Foss Waterway is the 1990s version of waterfront reclamation. There you can see a public-private partnership combining to take back a brownfield. There, commercial and nonprofit development are trying to provide activities to attract and keep people on the water.

At the other end is Ruston Way, which is what planners of the 1980s thought was the best use of urban shorelines. It is mostly a passive use, sprinkled with restaurants and a few office buildings that preceded the effort to make the waterfront public.

In the middle, however, is the legacy of the 1960s and 1970s, when planners thought the best way to take advantage of the land that industry was abandoning was to build expressways. Why not? It was flat and available and people could look at the water as they sped by, as long as the railcars weren’t parked in the way.

For students of urban planning, four decades are available in one 7-mile stretch, each a reaction to what came before, each an example of what not to do.

We would not, for example, build a four-lane highway on the waterfront today.

Ruston Way wouldn’t be developed in quite the same way either, since the current theory of waterfront development is to have active destinations – restaurants, museums, amphitheaters – that are connected by more-passive parks and pathways.

The Foss? Organizations such as the Project for Public Spaces argue against a high concentration of residential development, fearing it doesn’t contribute to 24-hour activity and creates a constituency that doesn’t really want a lot of public uses anyway. So the Foss, too, might look different if planned today.

But at least the Foss and Ruston Way provide something vital: pedestrian access to the water. That’s not the case in the middle section, where cars and trains and ships take precedence. And because we zip by, because we’re usually going somewhere else, we hardly notice.

It wasn’t until the owner of an old shipping dock asked to expand its current use – storage of ships held in reserve for military sealift – that people began to notice. Homeowners in the Stadium Way area of Tacoma protested the expansion. But in the process they began asking questions about the waterfront, about public access and about the future of the city.

Lara Herrmann, an attorney who lives in the Stadium Way neighborhood, said the biggest surprise was that no one looks at the Commencement Bay waterfront as a whole. There are plans for the Foss, plans for Ruston Way, shoreline management studies, but nothing for the entire 7-mile stretch.

“There was no entity that was protecting our waterfront, that was looking out for our waterfront,” she said.

Other cities realize their waterfront is vital for quality of life, for the environment and for the economy. Herrmann points to San Antonio’s Riverwalk and Portland’s Willamette River redevelopment as evidence that reclaiming access to the water will benefit Tacoma.

But the city has to figure out a way to unite the bookends. We’ve been nibbling at the center from both ends. Thea’s Park grabbed back the mouth of the Foss Waterway. Chinese Reconciliation Park and the Tahoma Salt Marsh are spreading the Ruston Way parkway toward the southeast. Both are stopped, however, by uses that are legacies of an industrial waterfront.

Technically, someone can walk or bike from the closed end of the Foss to Ruston. And once the old Asarco site is redeveloped, they’ll be able to reach Point Defiance. But the trek requires use of the sidewalk on the interior shoulder of Schuster Parkway, a somewhat hostile path that barely affords views of the water, let alone access.

Walk the Waterfront wants something better.

“One of the best ways to protect the waterfront in an urban dwelling is if you have a walkway, so people can learn to respect the waterfront, to enjoy the waterfront,” Herrmann said.

Ken Miller, who is serving as executive director of the group, said certain obstacles are entrenched and probably impossible to dislodge. One is the railroad tracks that hug the shore, sometimes leaving only a narrow beach between steel and shore. Another is the port-owned grain terminal.

Miller said the group doesn’t want to prescribe a solution. But pedestrian overpasses are employed in other cities. And perhaps an elevated boardwalk could pass over the roadway and tracks once it is clear of the grain terminal, he said.

The last obstacle is the dock, owned by Gary Coy, that brought them to the issue in the first place.

Miller said the group does not want to endanger the storage if it is, in fact, vital to military deployment. But if the ships can be moored elsewhere in the area, they think the owner of the dock could do as well financially with a different use.

Between now and the end of the year, the group wants to spark a discussion about what could be done and how to do it.

“The question is, Do we have the political will?” Herrmann said.

Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657

peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com">peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com

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INTERVIEW ON VIDEO

Watch Peter Callaghan’s interview with Lara Herrmann of the group Walk the Waterfront, and see some scenes from Tacoma’s waterfront.

http://tinyurl.com/6ly38t