Point Ruston visitors sure to like resolution of longtime parking battle
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Point Ruston merchants declared victory after court action over paid parking.
- PROA receiver's parking fees sparked complaints and organized protest earlier this year.
- Free parking now applies to garage and non-reserved surface stalls indefinitely.
Point Ruston merchants took to social media over the weekend to announce free parking had come to the upscale waterfront shopping, business and restaurant development, replacing previous strict paid-parking enforcement.
“Christmas has come early!” posted Manic Mermaid, one of the site’s merchants. “We’ve been fighting this nonsense for you for almost 5 years. It has been exhausting: seeing wonderful people like you being sad/frustrated, other people yelling at us, negative reviews left on our business pages about parking (from people who never came into our shop), and about 20% of our day spent apologizing and walking people through the pay-to-park mess.”
Other merchants, including Anthem Coffee, were quick to post promotions about the change.
The free parking is the result of a court order issued Friday morning in Pierce County Superior Court. The News Tribune has requested a copy of the order from case attorneys, which as of Monday was not yet filed in the public court-document system online.
An email was sent Friday afternoon to Point Ruston business owners from a site-management official retained by the receiver for the Point Ruston Owners Association outlining the changes. A copy of the email was shared with The News Tribune.
PROA is the formal entity originally established by Loren Cohen, son of late Point Ruston developer Michael Cohen, to oversee site governance and administration/management, and served as its sole director.
PROA entered into custodial receivership last year.
According to Friday’s email to Point Ruston businesses, “until further notice, the Sitewide Common Area parking stalls are free of charge. This includes the stalls in the Public Garage, and the surface street stalls not marked by ‘reserved’ or ‘private’ signs specific to businesses or condominiums.”
How we got here
Merchants and residents at the upscale mixed-use site have contended that they have been caught in the middle of parking battles and other issues amid various debt-collection pursuits related to Point Ruston’s development, which serves as a cap to the ASARCO smelter Superfund site.
Paid parking was first implemented in 2018 at $2 an hour, initially at the garage, then at the hundreds of other spots.
Customer complaints about parking have appeared among various merchant and Point Ruston site reviews online over the years. They have included frustrations over trying to pay via posted QR codes in an area with reportedly poor cellular reception, including in the parking garage.
Last summer, updated paid-parking requirements were implemented at formerly free spots for the public market. For visitors, the parking rate was $4 an hour to park in the Public Garage and along the streets, with tickets starting at $59 for unpaid or unvalidated parking.
The issue came to a head after the new year when parking for employees was moved from a vacant lot to the onsite garage. Sources told The News Tribune at the time that businesses were notified shortly before Christmas that their employees would have to park in the lower level of the parking garage at a cost of $1 an hour, using a special QR code for workers to get the employee rate.
Some businesses said they also temporarily lost access to parking validation amid parking debt-collection pursuits by the Point Ruston Owners Association’s receiver (Seattle-based Revitalization Partners) against landlords.
As a result, an onsite merchants group launched a one-day protest in January 2025 over the parking regulations.
Legal action
Last month, attorneys for El Segundo, California-based TerraCotta Eight LLC, which owns various Point Ruston retail sites and the Century Theatres site, filed a motion in Pierce County Superior Court as part of the ongoing custodial receivership case involving PROA. The motion sought “to compel Revitalization Partners (the ‘Receiver’) to end the practice of charging visitors and employees for parking at the Point Ruston parking garage.”
“Making parking at Point Ruston free will benefit all interested parties,” the motion stated.
“Ordinarily, the owners in the Point Ruston development as members of PROA themselves would have the ability to form a board and make decisions on behalf of the development for the benefit of all of the owners,” TerraCotta’s attorneys wrote. “Unfortunately, with PROA in receivership, there is no board – and any changes to the current processes, procedures, or management are vested in the PROA receiver, who takes the position that it need not consider the interests of the owners for whose benefit the PROA exists in the first instance.”
In response, Geoffrey Groshong, attorney for the receiver, wrote in an opposition filing that the motion should be dismissed on procedural grounds as established by the site’s covenants, conditions and restrictions, among other issues.
Groshong also contended the change at the parking garage would cause significant loss of funding for the City of Ruston. He wrote that Ruston’s revenue stream includes 20 percent of gross parking revenues “estimated to be $400,000 for 2025, which the City of Ruston uses to pay for road maintenance and police services to the portion of the Point Ruston development located in the City of Ruston.”
Russell Knight is attorney for a group of foreign investors, AURC III, who gained ownership of the Point Ruston garage property among other parcels through foreclosure.
AURC III also asked the court to deny TerraCotta’s motion. Knight stated in the opposition filing that among other issues, “The long-term solution requires an agreement of all impacted PROA members to amend (site governing regulation) that recognizes the Parking Garage and commercial buildings are owned by separate private owners ... .”
AURC III has its own case against the receiver Revitalization Partners, launched earlier this year, and Knight added in his filing that “Many of the issues underlying TerraCotta’s motion will be tried ... in December of this year.“
Groshong, Knight and Daniel Hagen, an attorney for TerraCotta, did not respond Monday for further comment.
In the meantime, merchants are hoping for increased traffic and business as a result of the parking changes.
“This is a huge win for the guests and small businesses of Point Ruston,” said a Taco Street post on Facebook.
This story was originally published September 9, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
