Uncertain plans for South Tacoma parcel vex Planning Commission. What should go there?
What’s next for a collection of properties in Tacoma once envisioned as a furniture outlet and retail site is now up in the air.
The company that owns the property proposed developing a new Mor Furniture for Less outlet and store on the land but has now decided to make another location the retailer’s primary Tacoma site.
The property owner still is seeking a rezone for the parcel it owns near Giaudrone Middle School, though it has no firm immediate plans for the location.
That request from a representative of Wesco Management LLC, the parent company of the retailer, led to questions from the city’s Planning Commission over how to appropriately consider the requested land-use designation change.
“With the applicant respectfully withdrawing their project, it’s hard for the commission to ultimately analyze the zoning change,” Commission Vice Chairman Andrew Strobel said at a May 17 meeting.
“I really want to avoid using commission process for potential land speculation process,” Strobel added. “The price of commercial property is much more valuable than residential property. And so ... for the record, I don’t want the commission to be evaluating land-use designation changes without a project in general.”
The commission recommended rejecting the land-use designation change as it heads to the City Council for a public hearing June 27 and further council consideration later this summer.
The council will determine whether to approve the city’s overall 2023 code amendment package, of which the Mor property is a part, over two council meetings in July and August.
Initial plans and how they changed
The proposal known as Mor Furniture Land Use Designation Change would change a privately owned vacant parcel from a low-scale residential land-use designation to general commercial. The site is one of five parcels in the area owned by Wesco Management LLC, the parent company of the retailer.
The parcel under code review is south of South 49th Street, bordered by I-5 to the west and Giaudrone Middle School properties to the east and south.
Just to the north, Wesco owns four other vacant parcels, already zoned for commercial purposes. Original plans tied to the proposal called for a Mor Furniture store on those parcels and, with the code change for the fifth parcel, a Mor Furniture Outlet, which would provide additional parking and services “for the Mor Furniture store that the applicant intends to develop.”
Those plans ultimately switched to another Tacoma site during the Planning Commission’s deliberations, with the applicant still seeking approval of its original application for the site near I-5.
New request and pushback
The News Tribune reported in October that representatives for Mor Furniture for Less had submitted plans with the city for a new Mor store in the Boulevard Center at 4044 Tacoma Mall Blvd., former home to OfficeMax, which closed several years ago.
Steve Atkinson, principal planner with the City of Tacoma, recently spoke to The News Tribune about the application. He noted that after it was learned that another site was in play, “we kind of raised that with the commission early on ... kind of reinforcing, in any of these kinds of processes, there is some uncertainty about the project specifics.”
As such, “the Commission’s review, then, was really focused on kind of what could happen ... what are the kinds of things that could happen at that site if you made this change?” he said.
Scott Clark of Larson and Associates, representing the property owner, wrote the city with an update on the Mor Furniture project in a letter dated May 1.
Clark wrote that the shopping center site would become their “primary location” but asked the city to move ahead with the rezone of the South Tacoma parcel.
”As such, Mor Furniture no longer plans to locate” at the South Tacoma site, he wrote, “including the southern parcel currently under review for land use designation amendment.”
Clark noted that based on a review of project comments, there appeared to be “confusion about the proposed amendment being compared to retaining the site in its existing [vacant] condition.”
“To confirm, this parcel is a privately owned vacant parcel that has the potential to develop under the current zoning, or potentially develop under a commercial zone if the land use designation is approved,” he wrote.
Clark added, “Since this is privately owned property, the idea that retaining it as undeveloped property or as a buffer for the school district is not possible, nor was it an expectation of the school district when the property was sold.”
Wesco purchased the roughly 1.2-acre site from the Tacoma School District in February 2018 for $280,000, according to county records.
Commission members were not inclined to recommend approving the proposal to council. Instead, as a result of the change of ownership from public to private, it recommended removing “the ‘Schools’ designation for the subject site parcel on the Parks and Recreation Facilities Map.”
Commission Chairman Christopher Karnes referenced the area’s history of absorbing industrial and interstate highway development at the meeting, which was also mentioned among residents’ opposition to the project.
“In my view, environmental justice is ... not a sweeping act. In most cases, it’s a cumulative effect over a long period of time,” he said, referencing changes to the area spanning decades. Among those, that included “paving over of a lot of natural areas for commercial development,” he said, and the resulting diminished air quality.
Kirk Kirkland of Tahoma Audubon Society told the commission as much in his testimony at a public hearing in April.
“This is not a neighborhood that needs to be having a commercial district created. It’s not ... a regular part of the city that has arterials and transit and other things,” Kirkland said.
“This is an environmental injustice issue where we have a lot of pollution coming off of I-5, and we don’t need to add more traffic to the neighborhood,” he said, adding that commercial development there would “disproportionately affect low-income people and people of color, and it’s an environmental justice issue in this ZIP code.”
The recommendation came almost exactly one month after the city announced its permitting decision giving conditional approval for Bridge Industrial to move forward on a massive warehouse project in South Tacoma. The project has attracted vocal opposition, including an appeal filed May 5.
At least one of the warehouse project’s past critics weighed in with written remarks.
“Reject the Mor Furniture rezoning, and stop rewarding poor land purchase choices with the expectation of bullying the city in bad planning at the expense of public health,” wrote Heidi Stephens.
She cited earlier written comments also provided to the commission from the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department that raised concerns over short-term and long-term health implications and air quality concerns.
Atkinson told The News Tribune, “in terms of the applicant, there’s no indication” whether the Bridge Industrial project played into their decision making.
That said, he added, “it’s been clear” the commission has been concerned with “cumulative impacts in South Tacoma of different development projects, and specifically around air-quality issues in an area that is I think, from an air quality standpoint, probably more overburdened than other communities in Tacoma.”
At the May 17 meeting, Karnes pointed to his doubts about the proposal, asking rhetorically, “Is this a step in the right direction with this potential change?” he asked. “I can’t concur with that.”
In the formal recommendation to council, Karnes wrote that while the commission “recognizes that reasonable use must be accommodated, we are concerned that the site was previously transferred from public to private ownership, and in the process, that this community lost an opportunity to establish and maintain an appropriate buffer area between I-5 and the uses to the east, with particular concern for the health and safety of the students at Giaudrone Middle School.”
So if not this proposal, what could happen?
“That property is still designated as a low-scale residential area,” Atkinson said. “For analysis purposes, we really considered the baseline to be residential development scenario. There’s nothing that requires that it stay vacant and undeveloped.”
After Home in Tacoma is adopted with any associated zoning changes for that area, he noted, “that would affect this property as well. You could potentially be talking about some lower density multifamily.”
“Even the four properties to the north that are currently zoned C to general commercial allow residential,” he said, which could further combine to add new residential development.
For more information
Online: Visit City of Tacoma’s 2023 amendment page, with supporting documents
The public hearing for the 2023 Annual Amendment to the One Tacoma Comprehensive Plan and Land Use Regulatory Code, is set for the June 27 City Council meeting. The hearing will occur after the regular meeting agenda is completed.
▪ To attend in person: The meeting will be held in the Council Chambers, on the first floor of the Tacoma Municipal Building, 747 Market Street.
▪ To attend remotely: Call 253-215-8782 or go through Zoom at www.zoom.us/j/84834233126 and enter meeting ID 848 3423 3126 and passcode 349099 when prompted.
Oral comments will be taken during the council meeting.
Written comments can be submitted by email to the City Clerk’s Office at cityclerk@cityoftacoma.org or by mail to 733 Market St., Room 11, Tacoma, WA 98402. Written comments must be submitted by 5 p.m., June 26.
Council is expected to consider the 2023 amendment package in a first and second reading at council meetings July 25 and Aug. 1.
