Fife tells car dealership to hit the road but has yet to give it the money to leave
A new overpass being built over Interstate 5 in Fife is going to destroy a car dealership, the owners say. They want to move from their doomed location but the city, so far, has been unable to help them.
The co-owners of I-5 Motors, Alex Spearman and Luke Wilson, have known since 2011 that their now 17-year-old business was in the way of a new Port of Tacoma Road overpass. Rather than choosing to fight progress, the two men were ready to take a settlement and move to a new location for at least five years.
“We have no intentions of chaining ourselves to a tree to stop the construction,” Spearman said.
But the city of Fife, the $88.9 million project’s builder, hasn’t been able to provide the funds although it notified them in 2011 that the overpass was headed straight for I-5 Motors’ showroom where today shiny high end cars are on display.
The buyout — first promised by Fife two years ago — has been continually pushed back by the city even as the new interchange rises around the business.
Those delays, Spearman and Wilson say, have cost them business and halved the number of their employees. When Fife does eventually buy them out, their property will cost far more that what Fife could have paid for it years ago, the men said.
Fife, meanwhile, says its hands have been tied by bureaucracy. But hope for a buyout is once again on the horizon.
Traffic and more traffic
The Port of Tacoma Road project is not related to the nearby HOV lane and Puyallup River bridge construction projects and isn’t even a Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) project.
Over a decade ago, the Port of Tacoma, Fife and WSDOT realized the 1960s era Port of Tacoma Road interchange was too small for the ever-increasing traffic coming from and going to the port, said Russ Blount, the city of Fife’s planning director.
Today, long back-ups are common as traffic waits to enter or exit I-5 at the interchange.
Rejected by the state Legislature, Fife set out on its own to build the overpass. By 2011, the city nailed down the plan that is underway, Blount said.
That’s about the time Spearman and Wilson first got wind of the project.
“We got something in the mail showing us that a road was going though our building,” Spearman said.
According to current designs, the existing Port of Tacoma Road overpass will be converted to a one-way, southbound traffic route. A separate and new overpass is being built 500 feet to the east of the existing overpass. It will be for northbound traffic. The design includes new on- and off-ramps for the overpasses.
The new overpass aligns with and connects with East 34th Street to the north. It will shoot like an arrow over I-5 and right into where the showroom of I-5 Motors sits now.
Wrecking ball
As its name suggests, I-5 Motors has a prime location nestled between I-5, 20th Street and Port of Tacoma Road.
I-5 Motors specializes in used, high-end vehicles. In October, the well maintained showroom held a 2013 Maserati GranTurismo Sport with a $51,995 price tag and a Lamborghini selling for six figures. An outside lot can hold 130 cars on the half-acre property.
For the past two years, the auto dealers say they have been periodically told by Fife that an offer was just months or weeks away, they said.
“We’ve been told that so many times,” Wilson said. “It’s so frustrating. We can’t plan anything. We don’t have that kind of capital.”
When they do eventually get the buyout, the business partners say they won’t be able to afford a prime I-5 location.
The assessed value of the I-5 Motors property is $1.56 million, according to the Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer’s Office. Its market value is undoubtedly higher, the men said.
Then there’s the I-5 Motors name which has become well known in the high-end car business and places them on I-5.
“It’s our name. Our business was built on that. Our brand is associated with that,” Wilson said.
Word is out on the move-to-somewhere, and that has hurt business, the men said. Construction hasn’t helped either.
The dealership had 20 employees in 2016. Now it has 10.
“We’ve reduced our employees because our sales have been reduced,” Spearman said.
Blount said he’s sympathetic to the business’s plight.
“We recognize that it’s inhibited (Spearman’s) ability to finance major enhancements to his business,” Blount said.
Spearman has been asking Fife for a buyout since shortly after it became apparent that their location was doomed.
“He recognized we weren’t going to buy him out immediately, but it’s probably been five years where he’s been saying, ‘Hey, you’re going to buy me out. Buy me out’.”
But, Blount said, Fife didn’t have the money.
Blount cites staff changeovers at WSDOT and other agencies plus endless bureaucracy for the delays. WSDOT controls the purse strings and the agency has criteria that must be met before money is released, both Blount and WSDOT said.
Phase 1 of the project included the building of a new ramp. That opened in October.
On Oct. 29, Fife got approval from WSDOT to go ahead with Phase 2 of the project.
“Based on that, we can go through some steps and get release of the funds to actually make a formal cash offer to I-5 Motors,” Blount said on Oct. 30. “It’s frustrating because we thought we were at this exact place two years ago and told Mr. Spearman that within a few months we expected (the funds) but basically had the rug pulled out from under us.”
The problem occurred when WSDOT rejected preliminary designs provided by Fife, Blount said. More details were needed, he said, such as the location of transformers, road elevations and where the slope toes (leading edges) would end up.
Where’s the money coming from?
Fife is contributing $13 million to the project. Federal highway funds account for $11.8 million, and $22.3 million is coming from Connecting Washington, 2015 state legislation.
The Port of Tacoma contributed $1.5 million to the project’s first phase.
“The Port of Tacoma’s commitment to the second phase has not yet been discussed,” Port spokeswoman Akiko Oda said.
The money that will be paid to Spearman and Wilson is part of the project’s design budget, said Cara Mitchell, a WSDOT spokeswoman.
“Our state has to pace itself on how it funds these projects,” she said.
The money to pay for I-5 Motors would only have been available starting in 2018 — the prescribed funding window, Mitchell said. That period was delineated by the legislation with input from Fife, she said.
“We’re not putting up any barriers on this,” Mitchell said. “We’re not holding anything back from them.”
Once the funds become available, an offer can be made, Blount said. He’s had very few eminent domain negotiations drag out during his 18 years in Fife, he said, and expects this one to go smoothly.
Blount doesn’t dispute the sky-rocketing value of the land underneath I-5 Motors. He cites the 2008 recession and its impact on tax revenues as the initial deal killer that could have saved taxpayers money by buying I-5 Motors years ago.
“We just didn’t have (the money,) Blount said.
