Losing The Swiss hurts. It’s also a reminder Tacoma has bounced back before
Jack McQuade described it like a funeral, or an estate sale — except he was alive to see it.
As we spoke, the co-owner of The Swiss watched people file through the expansive and iconic Tacoma bar looking for deals and keepsakes in the form of pieces of his heart to take home.
For McQuade, it was an indignity that would culminate the following day when an online auction at The Swiss closed once and for all. The hastily arranged bidding was designed to quickly sell off everything at the bar, from the Chihuly glass art to the pool tables and neon signs.
Everything must go.
By phone last week, McQuade acknowledged the prospect left him “choked up.”
Over nearly three decades of operation, The Swiss had woven itself into the fabric of the city, McQuade said.
He was hurting, and he knew the community was hurting, too.
That’s what stung the most.
“The city of Tacoma, I think it’s almost in mourning. It’s a death in the family,” McQuade said of The Swiss’ closure.
“I just never thought it was going to end this way.”
In the tortuous year 2020, the demise of The Swiss is just one more brutal blow we’ve been forced to endure.
Beyond the supreme human cost of COVID-19 — which should never be understated and must always take center stage — the financial toll that the pandemic has taken on Tacoma and its many small businesses has been staggering.
Days earlier, the coronavirus claimed Pacific Grill. Meanwhile, the cold COVID reality is that these significant losses likely represent just two of many, with more sure to come.
For Tacoma, the two closures also help to bring a future into focus that’s almost as hard to fathom as a Saturday night on Jefferson Avenue without live music emanating from The Swiss.
Whenever we finally emerge from this nightmare, and whatever form that emergence takes here, there’s little question it will change Tacoma forever.
Iconic hallmarks will be gone, and — once again — we’ll be forced to rebuild and re-imagine parts of our city.
“Losing The Swiss is a heavy blow to Tacoma. Not just to the music community but to everyone who lives here,” said drummer Bon Von Wheelie of the band Girl Trouble, one of the few acts in the city old enough to remember a time before The Swiss.
“We lived our lives there,’ Von Wheelie said. “That was Tacoma’s home away from home, and we are all going to miss it.”
While there are no silver linings to paint or rose-colored glasses to conveniently slip on, it’s worth remembering that the the story of The Swiss is one of rebirth, renewal and Tacoma’s renowned grit.
When The Swiss opened its doors 27 years ago, the block near the University of Washington Tacoma it anchored was a far cry from the destination we know today. Ravaged by years of neglect and disinvestment, at the time many thought McQuade, his wife, Bob Hill and chef Gayl Bertagni were being foolish.
We know how that gamble paid off.
Post COVID, it will now be up to a new generation of entrepreneurial Tacomans to help remake downtown.
“It’s going to mean we look different, that’s for sure,” said Pierce County Councilmember Marty Campbell when asked about the way our downtown landscape is likely to change.
Campbell knows the pain of closing a business firsthand. Nearly a decade ago, he made the difficult decision to shutter Stadium Video and, separately, Buzzard’s used CDs, which until 2012 was located next door to The Swiss.
Campbell launched his business career by selling and trading used CDs at the old Star Lite swap meet off South Tacoma Way in Lakewood, he recalled, and said watching The Swiss close affected him personally.
Along with pain, the news brought back memories, many of them good, from a time when Jefferson Avenue was “the hoppingest block in town,” he said.
Though Campbell’s businesses were ultimately the victim of societal shifts and not a pandemic, it also reminded him of the inevitably of change, and how Tacoma has a history of getting off the ropes.
“Like Legos,” Campbell said, “things get rebuilt.”
That resiliency is one of many things Quincy Henry is banking on.
Not far from the now closed Swiss, Henry and his wife Whitni recently opened Campfire Coffee.
The timing was equally precarious and terrifying, Henry said last week.
He had hoped to open Campfire late last year, but construction and permitting delays were compounded by the onslaught of uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, Henry said, the Campfire brick-and-mortar store didn’t open for business until August.
So far, business has left Henry cautiously optimistic. Buoyed in large part by online sales, Campfire has fared well and recently was able to hire a single employee.
“Now we’re just trying to hunker down,” Henry said.
Amid a pandemic, Henry also said he’s planning for a future in downtown Tacoma.
Despite what sometimes feel like long odds, he said, he has faith in his city’s ability to rebound.
For perspective, Henry recalled the Tacoma of his youth when he’d visit his grandma on Hilltop.
At the time, the 37-year-old said, the city looked “bombed out” and “war-torn.”
“In a way,” Henry explained, the memory makes him “feel like this is the kind of situation that Tacoma thrives under.”
The city’s “underdog spirit,” he said, gives him hope that Tacoma is “going to bounce back, band together and do something great.”
“We’ve seen Tacoma change a lot, but usually, we end up on the other side with sunshine. That’s what I’m thinking is going to happen out of this,” Henry said.
“What that looks like, we don’t know yet.”
Unfortunately, one thing we know the future in downtown Tacoma won’t include is The Swiss that McQuade spent 27 years helping to operate.
It’s a fact the 58-year-old was sadly resigned to last week.
Tellingly, McQuade maintained faith in Tacoma, even in despair.
As he watched a lifetime’s worth of memories prepared to be sold off, one by one, he foresaw better days to come.
“Tacoma will survive,” McQuade predicted.
“It will bounce back. I just don’t know when.”
This story was originally published September 30, 2020 at 5:10 AM.
