Notorious Morgan Motel sold. ‘It will be a very good place,’ Tacoma developer pledges
One of the first orders of business, according to Amber Moreno, will be changing the sign.
Gone, soon, will be any reference to the “motel” along Pacific Avenue that Moreno purchased this week.
On Tuesday, Moreno became the proud new owner of the Morgan Motel, the infamous property near South 72nd and Pacific Avenue that has been nearly a constant source of community concern over the years.
Moreno has big plans for the redevelopment project, she said, which first and foremost involve assuring neighbors that the history of crime, drugs and prostitution that long plagued the Morgan are now a thing of the past.
Moreno, who has previously partnered with her former husband Eli Moreno on Tacoma projects like The Union Club, said she plans to turn the Morgan Motel into as many as 11 micro-units of affordable housing, which she’ll manage and lease to renters for less than $1,000 a month.
On Wednesday, the day Moreno officially purchased the foreclosed motel for just under $730,000, she said she was already working to prove herself to her new neighbors.
She quickly got to work cleaning up the property, she explained, while preparing to remove reminders of the past — like the old neon Morgan Motel sign.
“There were a lot of problems here, and I don’t want that to continue,” Moreno, 53, said by phone.
Long, sordid history
For a neighborhood in Tacoma’s South End that has long struggled with the crime and blight the Morgan Motel has attracted, news of the motel’s sale has understandably been met with a mixture of genuine optimism and healthy skepticism.
For good reason.
The people who live here are tired, according to Tacoma City Councilmember Chris Beale.
Beale is elected to represent the neighborhood, and for years — even before his time on the City Council — he said the community’s strong desire for change at the property was clear.
Beale’s constituents had endured too many drug busts and prostitution stings at the Morgan, he said, and had heard too many false promises from former owners. They had watched as the city attempted to use business license suspension to curtail the nefarious activities, he added, only to see the motel reopen and return to harmful business as usual.
The history at the Morgan Motel is long and sordid, Beale explained.
In 2013, a 42-year-old man was murdered at the Morgan in what authorities described as a drug deal gone wrong.
In May 2017, the Morgan Motel was temporarily closed after police received 171 calls for service related to criminal activity at the property in a roughly 15-month span.
Later that year, the Morgan was closed again, after high levels of methamphetamine contamination were found at the motel.
The most recent high-profile transgression to close the hotel occurred in April 2019 when a search warrant service resulted in the arrest of four people, including the motel’s previous owners, on drug-related criminal charges.
All of it — including the slew of more minor offenses that have failed to garner headlines — have taken a toll on the neighborhood, Beale said, which is why he believes some of his neighbors will take a wait-and-see approach before judging the property’s new direction.
While Beale shares in the history of frustration surrounding the Morgan Motel, he described preliminary plans shared by the property’s new owner as “exciting news.”
“The prospect of new housing on the site of the Morgan Motel is more than encouraging, it’s a beacon of hope for our neighborhood and for Southeast Tacoma,” Beale said. “It would be an incredible development to see investment in neighborhood and a new, positive use for the Morgan Motel property.”
City, nonprofit showed interest
One way or another, transforming the Morgan Motel has been a priority for Beale during his time on the City Council.
He previously urged the city to buy the property, he noted, though the price of acquiring the motel never penciled out.
Prior to the Morgan’s recent sale, Beale had been working another angle, he said.
He had hoped to secure a local owner with a positive vision for what the property could be, including assisting the relatively new nonprofit Next Chapter, which works with single mothers and pregnant women experiencing homelessness.
Kathryn Hedrick, who leads Next Chapter’s board of directors, told The News Tribune the nonprofit hoped to turn the Morgan into short-term housing for the women and children it serves. Acquiring the property would have allowed for a significant expansion of services, she said.
The sale of the motel, which Hendrick learned about in recent weeks, came as a disappointment, she said.
Next Chapter — which already occupies a small residential house between the Morgan and Spud’s Pizza Parlor — applied for grants and was preparing to launch a fundraising campaign to purchase the property, she said.
Now, the Morgan’s sale to Moreno means going back to the drawing board, Hedrick explained.
“We don’t give up. We’ve learned that. And that’s a good thing for our mothers to learn as well,” Hedrick said of Next Chapter’s desire to find a bigger home. “When you face challenges in life you have to keep your head up and keep moving forward.”
‘Critical’ affordable housing
Like everyone who spoke to The News Tribune, Hedrick stressed her desire for the property to be an asset to the community.
“We hope that the new owner ... will move quickly to make sure the property is cleaned up and developed into something positive,” Hedrick said.
Moreno said she isn’t planning on wasting time.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has made certain aspects of redeveloping the property more challenging — including permitting — the property’s new owner said she hopes to be renting micro-unit apartments by the end of the year.
Eventually, Moreno envisions small private seating areas outside of each apartment and communal amenities indoor and out, including a common “living room type area.”
While the units will be small, Moreno said, they’ll help fill the critical need for affordable housing in the area.
It’s the kind of project Moreno is familiar with, she said, noting that her former husband recently finished the redevelopment of the Merkle Motel downtown.
Moreno also understands many neighbors will need to be won over.
The old Morgan Motel put its neighborhood through the wringer, and the proof will be in the pudding, Moreno said.
“It wasn’t a very good place,” Moreno said bluntly. “Now, it will be a very good place.
“I want to make it a great place that people love being a neighbor to, and where people love to live.”
This story was originally published September 2, 2020 at 5:05 AM with the headline "Notorious Morgan Motel sold. ‘It will be a very good place,’ Tacoma developer pledges."
