After 25 years, is a McDonald’s the best we can do for a vacant lot? | Opinion
It’s been 25 years since Connie’s Donuts was at the corner of South 38th and Pacific. The shop moved further down Pacific in the late 1990s, and the old property was combined into one lot with some of the surrounding land.
Wrecking crews demolished the commercial building that Connie’s, a laundromat and other businesses moved out of, plus some houses, as locals recall it. Then it sat.
It’s still empty now. There have been rumblings from a variety of national chains on developing the property. It was at one point owned by Rite Aid, according to a 2018 article from the News Tribune. But the newest proposal for the property, outlined in a plan filed with the city last week, would have the lot become — drumroll please — the city’s 10th or 11th McDonald’s restaurant.
Buh duh duh duh … Bruh.
I’ll get into the history of this particular corner in a minute, but it’s not hard to figure out what should be on that land instead of a McDonald’s. Housing. We all know this city needs housing. It needs another McDonald’s like it needs a new pothole on Pacific Avenue.
In the decades since the lot became vacant, several things happened to the region’s demographics. The city’s population grew nearly 18%. In Pierce County generally, as a series of housing crises unfolded, the median house price roughly tripled. We now face extreme challenges in keeping everyone in the county in homes and off the streets.
In the same time period, the intersection of 38th and Pacific changed dramatically. A Walgreens came to the corner north of the vacant lot where Connie’s had been. A strip mall came to the corner west of the vacant lot, and a Shell station added a Jackson’s convenience store in the catty-corner lot.
The intersection is, in other words, full up with nearly every convenience except for a place to live. The only other thing missing is a grocery store. That’s what residents hoped they’d see when Rite Aid seemed to be sitting on the property, according to the 2018 News Tribune report.
That’s also what Chenda Ouch, the current owner of Connie’s, said should go in the lot. I told her about the McDonald’s plan on Wednesday, and her eyebrows shot up.
“But there’s one there, and there,” she said pointing west and south from behind her counter.
Ouch said residents are in serious need of groceries, with both an Albertson’s-turned-Haggen leaving a spot near that intersection in the 2010s and the recent closure of the Fred Meyer at 72nd and Pacific. There are a lot of local residents who take the bus and struggle to get to outlying stores.
I live in the neighborhood and happen to agree the grocery situation is dire. I’d also argue it’s possible to build both housing and a grocery store.
It’s not just the other developments that make this intersection ripe for housing. The corner also joins two bus arteries. Both bus lines pass through commercial districts like downtown, 6th Avenue and the Tacoma Mall, and both connect to regional transit hubs.
The lot has been used productively at least once since it became vacant. In 2018, neighbors saw construction trailers and supplies move onto the space. It wasn’t for a building, though. A contractor for Sound Transit staged its materials there for constructing the new T Line light rail extension in the Stadium district.
It’s easy to play armchair developer, and I don’t know all the factors that led to a proposed McDonald’s. The developer filed a pre-application for the project in 2024. But I do know what it looks like to residents from the outside: a disappointment.
The East Side and South End are already plagued by housing and grocery disappointments. The situation at another intersection — Pacific and South 72nd Street — is another example of things failing to come together at the right time.
Just as new housing units opened up around the shopping center that Fred Meyer had anchored on that spot since the 1970s, the grocery chain announced the store’s closure. The benefit of building denser housing near convenient shopping in that district is now greatly reduced. (There is, however, still a McDonald’s at the intersection.)
Both these intersections speak to a need for a holistic understanding of the health of our commercial districts.
More than anything, we need leadership in local government and the business community to take action on opportunities like the one at 38th and Pacific before they get squandered.
