A huge slice of old Lakewood was endangered. The city says saving it is worth the cost
James Guerrero has tackled plenty of weird and unusual projects. Once, the 59-year-old architect — a self-described “Lakewood guy” — was hired to draw up plans for a shoreline residence on a steep hillside. His answer: a street-level garage with an accessory dwelling unit tucked underneath, connected via underground elevator to a waterfront home below.
That, as Guerrero told me by phone this week, “was an architectural problem.” His bread and butter. The kind of stuff he’s accustomed to.
Guerrero’s latest challenge is just odd, he explained, and massive — weighing more than nine tons.
Colloquially, it’s known as “The Big One” — a huge cross-section of Douglas fir dating back to the 1300s.
Forty feet in circumference, it was proudly unveiled at the Flora Tenzler Memorial Library in Lakewood in 1965, heralded as a prime piece of the largest Douglas fir ever felled (whether the claim is verifiable or not). Previously, the tree it was part of — 238 feet tall, chopped down in 1946, according to Lakewood lore — had been milled and put on display at Northwest Door Co. in Tacoma.
Recently, Guerrero and his team were tasked with designing and building a new permanent home for The Big One at Fort Steilacoom Park, where it will be moved on a huge flatbed semi truck this spring.
The scheduled relocation comes almost two years after the Lakewood Library was forsaken by the Pierce County Library System, declared too far gone to be saved and closed to the public. The aging, flat-roofed building is now slated for demolition.
The good news? Earlier this month the Lakewood City Council signed off on an agreement granting the city ownership of the giant, old log, fair and square. It’ll cost taxpayers at least $150,000, but Lakewood officials and elected leaders say it’s worth it.
For Guerrero, coming up with a way to safely support and protect The Big One represents a challenge and a hyperlocal honor … in a very weird way.
“It’s certainly in the top five unique projects I’ve worked on,” said Guerrero, who attended Hudtloff decades ago, back when it was still a “junior high” and the mascot was still offensive.
“We do get oddball projects on occasion, but this is the first one that’s been quite like this,” he told me.
“It’s a pretty impressive piece of wood. ... I think saving it is worthwhile.”
Preserving The Big One
Playing a small role in helping to relocate The Big One is a strange job that Guerrero, who opened up a small architectural shop in Lakewood in 1992, is taking seriously.
Using technical terms, Guerrero told The News Tribune that plans call for a giant plinth — or “concrete pedestal” — to be erected at Fort Steilacoom Park, designed to hold the 20,000-pound chunk of old-growth timber in place.
Since the display will be outside — along the trail to Waughop Lake — a picnic-style structure will be built to provide cover, Guerrero indicated.
The historical artifact will also be coated in a hard, clear sealant, he said, and a fence will be installed to help prevent damage and vandalism.
For some Lakewood residents, that last part — protecting a piece of a proud city’s history — is what’s important, and why tempers have flared over the last two years in a city of roughly 60,000 people.
The Pierce County Library System’s apparent disinterest in preserving The Big One — after the regional agency shuttered the local branch, offering only promises for the future in return — has rubbed some residents raw, acknowledged Mary Dodsworth, Lakewood’s director of parks, recreation and community services.
As Pierce County Library spokesperson Mary Getchell put it this week, the agency has worked for more than a year to find a taker for the old log and “has never been in a position to preserve artifacts, including the Douglas fir slice.”
That much has been clear since the start, and some in Lakewood have taken note, Dodsworth said. Given the likely alternative — the demise of The Big One — she told me this week that the city’s only choice was clear.
The library is paying to move The Big One, with late April as a target.
Financially, everything else falls on the city, Dodsworth said. She traced conversations regarding a potential transfer of The Big One back to 2022.
Getchell described Pierce County Library System as “very happy” with the deal.
The eventual price tag for relocating The Big One could approach $250,000, Dodsworth indicated.
“The city said, ‘If you’re going to just disregard it, we’ll take it and we’ll protect it’ — not really knowing what that meant. … You can’t just roll it somewhere. You can’t just prop it up on a stick,” Dodsworth told me.
“The library made it clear that they didn’t have intentions of moving it to a new location. They didn’t know what they were going to do,” she continued.
“It’s important to our community. So the city stepped up.”
‘Amazing artifact’
Besides the modest paycheck The Big One provides, Guerrero described helping to relocate the old log as meaningful — on a personal level.
The artifact has been part of his life since childhood, he said with a slight nostalgic pang after some prodding, looming in the background of countless book reports and school research projects over the years.
Like most who grew up in the area, Guerrero gazed at its enormity and marveled at the dates marked in its rings, he told me.
According to Dodsworth, who has worked in Lakewood for more than two decades now, that’s precisely why saving The Big One matters.
“We might not agree on a lot of things in this world, but I think a lot of people in this community agree on open space and trees and beauty. We have this beautiful piece of wood — an amazing historic artifact — and we have the ability to keep it around for a while,” Dodsworth argued.
“If you don’t appreciate your history, it just disappears. It’s gone,” she told me.
“I’ve seen the log. I know the log. I love the log. It means a lot to different folks in this community.”
This story was originally published March 14, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
