Matt Driscoll: Is Tacoma’s future dependent on its old buildings?

Older, smaller, better.

This will be the theme when Michael Powe, the senior research manager for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preservation Green Lab, visits Tacoma on Thursday for the first installment of this year’s Conversations RE: Tacoma.

For anyone familiar with the Conversations RE: Tacoma, the lecture series launched in 2009 by a team of local architects and urban design buffs, it will come as no surprise that Powe’s talk will focus on buildings. Old buildings, to be precise.

Conversations RE: Tacoma is an annual, three-part urban design lecture series intended to focus on “design issues relevant to Tacoma’s urban neighborhoods and downtown core,” with a “simple” goal: “to gather, share, teach and learn with the belief that a healthy dialogue can lead to thoughtful action.”

Enter Seattle-based Powe and his research for Preservation Green Lab — which suggests maintaining a mix of new and older buildings has an overwhelmingly positive impact on neighborhoods.

Powe is something of a data nerd, the kind of guy who creates maps for fun. And, yes, the maps he makes — identifying where cities have the largest concentrations of older buildings, and then applying a mix of creative metrics to measure the impact those buildings have — are downright fascinating.

Last year, Powe’s team released a lengthy report titled … wait for it … Older, Smaller Better. Analyzing data from three cities — San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. — the report reached a number of conclusions worthy of discussion in a place like Tacoma.

For instance, the report determined:

▪ Neighborhoods made up of a mix of new and older, mixed-use buildings are more walkable.

▪ Neighborhoods with a mix of small, old and new buildings have a lower median age of residents than areas packed with big, mostly new buildings.

▪ Based on cellphone activity data, neighborhoods with older buildings have more vibrant nightlife scenes.

▪ Areas with more old buildings have more new businesses and more women- and minority-owned businesses.

▪ And, of particular interest to Tacoma’s raging future growth debate, the report found that neighborhoods with a mix of old and new buildings are home to “hidden density.”

“I’ll talk at some length about our past research,” Powe told me, “but also show some new maps of Tacoma.”

Most of this, of course, is fairly academic. It’s the kind of stuff that’s intriguing to think about, with plenty of interesting tidbits to consider during a “healthy dialogue.”

Moving past talk to the “thoughtful action” part is where the challenge lies.

You don’t have to look any further than Hilltop to see the plan in action.

That’s where developer Kevin Grossman and his partners, Patrick Rhodes and John Hunt, are finishing work on what most locals simply refer to as the Browne’s Star Grill property. Some remember the restaurant in infamy, thanks to a history of alleged nefarious activity, prostitution and drug dealing that ultimately led to its demise. Others remember Browne’s Star as a former hub of neighborhood life on Hilltop, bought and shuttered by a city tired of dealing with the headaches some of its clientele created.

Either way, it’s been empty for a decade. And that’s not good for anyone.

But soon that will change.

Grossman’s Hilltop project actually encompasses two historic buildings along Martin Luther King Jr. Way — the Kellogg-Sicker building, which is where the Browne’s Star Grill opened in the late 1960s, and the Pochert building, which is next door. Both properties date back to the early 1900s.

The buildings are old, small, and — as Powe would argue — better for the neighborhood to be redeveloped than razed and rebuilt.

It wasn’t long ago, however, that the future at this stretch of MLK Way was in doubt. The city owned four parcels here, including the Kellogg-Sicker, the Pochert and the building that’s now home to Mr. Mac Ltd., a Hilltop clothing store and institution for nearly 40 years. One proposal was to develop all four parcels into a new Tacoma Housing Authority affordable housing development, a project that would have maintained the buildings’ facade but largely gutted everything else.

Through negotiations with the city, Grossman and his partners were able to buy the Kellogg-Sicker and the Pochert last year. If everything runs on schedule, the project will debut 10 market-rate residential units above four or five commercial spaces by December. Grossman tells me they’re currently negotiating with a local theater company and a coffee shop, among others.

“I love old buildings,” Grossman told me from the roof of the soon-to-be reopened property.

Meanwhile, THA still has plans to soon break ground on a new 50-unit mixed-income development on the corner.

In other words, we’ll have a mix of old and new.

“That story of that building, I think is perfect,” Powe said.

This story was originally published September 14, 2015 at 1:00 PM with the headline "Matt Driscoll: Is Tacoma’s future dependent on its old buildings?."