When construction is finished on the Broadway-St. Helens “urban village” in Tacoma in 2010, the area will have wider, tree-lined sidewalks with chic lighting and “sidewalk furniture.”

Then there are the improvements you won’t see: the new, bigger underground power, water and sewer lines that should accommodate plenty of development.

What you also might not see: some of the existing businesses, which fear they’ll be priced out by the cost of the improvements or the resulting property tax increases.

The $15.48 million Broadway Local Improvement District, which aims to make the area between the Stadium and Theater districts into a hip, pedestrian- and shopper-friendly neighborhood, has been controversial from the start. When the city first conducted an informal poll, so many property owners rejected it in the upper St. Helens neighborhood that they were deleted from the formal plan. The resulting LID stretches from South Second to South Ninth streets on Broadway, and from South Seventh to South Ninth on St. Helens Avenue and Market Street.

Though drawn to fit survey responses, the LID was still contentious: Property owners’ votes were weighted according to how much value their properties stood to gain from the improvements, as determined by an assessor hired by the city. When those votes were tallied, the result was about 50-50.

The LID still passed because state law provides that owners representing 60 percent of the property value would have had to oppose it in order to prevent the City Council from adopting it.

Local Improvement Districts typically are formed by property owners who agree to tax themselves in order to make improvements to their neighborhood. But in this instance, the city hatched the plan, then pitched it to property owners.

“There were a number of properties that were, in the near future, going to be developed that required some infrastructure upgrades. Instead of doing it piecemeal, (the) economic development (department) and the City Manager’s Office thought that this might be an opportunity to do something unique,” said Ralph Rodriguez, LID administrator for the city.

COORDINATION IS THE GOAL

By bundling the upgrades together and doing them all at once, the city aimed to save time and anguish, while sprucing up the condo-rich neighborhood.

“It’s got to be done,” said Blaine Johnson, a developer who owns property within the LID. He said there was no way the property owners could have known that the water, sewer and power lines were all in need of upgrades within a similar time frame, so the plan could have come only from the city.

Without the LID, the work would have been done piece by piece over the next five or 10 years, meaning streets, sidewalks and utility lines would have been torn up several times, disrupting business each time, Johnson said.

Conversely, in the past few months of construction, he’s seen what he calls an “impressive” amount of coordination between the city, developers and utilities. Construction is being done in phases between now and the start of 2010, meaning each segment will be impacted for only part of that time.

Of the $15.48 million, property owners will be responsible for about $5.5 million. The remainder will be paid by the individual utilities, and $2.5 million will be paid for by property owners who requested additional work, Rodriguez said.

Property owners have the option of paying all at once for their share or doing financing over 30 years.

What will they get for the money? The sidewalks will range in width from 10 feet to 16 feet. That’s wide enough to accommodate cafe tables, Rodriguez said, and significantly wider than sidewalks elsewhere downtown, which encourages meandering – instead of beelining – through the neighborhood.

In addition, the crosswalks will have bulb-outs, which slow traffic and allow safer pedestrian crossing. There will be far more trees on the street, and stamped concrete borders will mark all or parts of six intersections throughout the area.

New street lighting, similar to the ornate lighting on Pacific Avenue, will also be installed.

In all, the improvements will give the district a distinct feel that Rodriguez predicts will make other neighborhoods want to do similar projects.

Rodriguez said he can’t put a monetary value on the amount the neighborhood will improve once the project is done, but he’s seen big changes in neighborhood-level LIDs around the city and predicts a similar phenomenon.

“I believe that once the improvements are completed, you will see a fairly substantial increase in property values. There’s no way for me to predict the future, but these improvements expand beyond this area here. Think of this as a hub that will evolve,” he said, improving surrounding areas in the process.

PAYING THE PRICE

The increase in property value – coupled with the cost of the LID – is precisely what might change the face of businesses in the neighborhood, because not everyone will be able to afford the higher property tax on top of the LID price tag.

“My cost is somewhere close to a quarter-million and for it I get nothing,” said Alan Gorsuch, owner of Sanford & Son Antiques in the Broadway LID. “The LID is for planting, street lighting and underground power … we’ve already got.

“It’s all about the new condos up the hill that have a 10-year free tax abatement,” he said.

Some condo developments receive tax abatements, but not all, according to Rob McNair-Huff, a spokesman for the city. Regardless of whether they pay property taxes, the condos within the boundary will pay their share of the LID, he said.

Gorsuch said he’s “not paying a nickel” of the LID cost and plans to take the city to court over the LID formation process, which he characterized as illegal.

Gorsuch isn’t alone: Developer William Riley, who also owns property in the area, also thinks the city’s participation in the LID’s formation was shady.

“My concern is not what it’s going to look like. … It’s not about the money,” he said. “My concern is how they did this. What I object to is the vote,” he said, because it relied, he said, on gerrymandering and, eventually, overruling the property owners.

Rodriguez says there was no rigging of the boundaries, just refining: When the city did an informal poll of a larger swath of the area, officials saw that some blocks weren’t interested at all, so they cut them out of the formal plan.

Neither Gorsuch nor Riley has said he’ll be forced out of the neighborhood, but with higher property values comes higher rent, which could mean some current tenants can’t afford to be there.

Johnson, a developer in favor of the LID, said there are “dramatic transitions” that happen when a neighborhood is gentrified.

“Certainly if someone builds a 20- or 30-million-dollar building, somebody next to them has been dragged along into the next era,” he said. “It’s never without its sensitivities.”

But, he said, the payoff can be seen in places such as Opera Alley. Once it was a corner of downtown to be avoided. But after the buildings were painted and signs and lighting were brought in, the area was transformed.

“I don’t think people will really get it until they look at it,” he said.

Niki Sullivan: 253-597-8603

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