Would the Quigg group be interested in an entire block instead of a single building? There are some historical facades that might be able to be preserved here. It would be nice to see something more in line with the neighborhood than either of the proposals that were submitted the first time around.

The loan they were given requires that the Winthrop to be turned into a hotel and it does have some timelines in it for performance.

The challenge for Prium is that they have been selected on the Foss Project and have Jay Heights in the works as well.

It makes sense that they might pass on the MLK project and let another developer handle it.

I’d rather MLK sat stagnant until the right plan is developed. Moving Winthrop residences to MLK would take an eternity to undo.

And for that reason, I hope, is why many supposed projects in and around downtown have not culminated into reality. Although it leaves many with a melancholy feeling about the state of downtown revitalization, I’d much rather see development take 10 to 20 years and create something really cool and architecturally outstanding, rather than 1-5 years and come up with a mediocre/halfway compromise that leaves the area stagnant and in need of another change within 20 years.

I know it can be frustrating at times, and seem as if nothing is happening, yet too many people suffer from the “Do Something Disease.” In essence, we need to do “something” NOW rather than taking the time (often years) to really think about the consequences of that action and do it right.

THINK: Sound Transit (Pacific Crossing); The Winthrop; Park Plaza North/South; city-wide road repair; downtown Tacoma, in general, from the mid-fifties through the 80’s, etc…

There are a number of underused buildings right on MLK that are for sale right now. Kevin, I have been pushing for some kind of group venture from local bloggers on several occasions. Unfortunately, it seems like most of us are in the same boat: poor yet big dreamers. For these reasons, I would suggest that we organize some sort of architectural or urban design competition. We could pick a site in Hilltop (or anywhere else) and people could develop plans, drawings, scale models or whatever and present them at a forum. There are many diverse individuals on Exit133 with a wide range of visions for how they would like to see the city develop. I think something like this could showcase our creative ideas and maybe, just maybe, it would motivate someone to bring those ideas to fruition.

I forgot to add that I think the MLK district’s proximity to downtown is also important. I’m hopeful that developments in one area will help the other.

6AM?!?

I could do 6 am, but I must admit, I work much better at night—especially when it comes to good development ideas.

The 6 a.m. meeting time post was made with some jest as that was the painful time when the Quigg used to meet for months at Tullys.

With that said, it worked pretty well as alot of people came and no one could say they had to go to work.

The Tacoma News Tribune has reported today that Winthrop Hotel has been officially transferred to Prium.

Winthrop deal finally done

The long wait is over: downtown Tacoma’s historic Winthrop Hotel is now legally in the hands of the Prium Cos., which intends to restore the century-old landmark. What a relief.

This is very good and delayed news.

The effort for the restoration of the Winthrop Hotel to get this far involved literally hundreds of volunteer Tacomans over the last two years in many different capacities who always had a higher vision and expectation of Tacoma to what the city could be.

There have been dozens of meetings, uncountable news articles, hearings before state and local governmental bodies which all seemed to have paid off.

Its a new day for Tacoma.

Although I realize low-income doesn’t necessarily mean crime (trying to be careful here), some dispersion of the concentration of the truly bad element that does exist should clean up that end of the Link, which is pretty dreadful at times.

The Winthrop Hotel is certainly designed poorly for a low income housing facility with a labyrinth of elevators, staircases, hallways and multiple entrances.

However, we are just learning how bad it was managed before. The new management team has made some progress there in a step to get the property under control:

4) Winthrop site staff followed up with eviction and removal of two tenants that had been arrested by the Police for drug activities following raids conducted under the previous management.

6) Doug Repman met personally with Winthrop tenants that had been identified as potentially associated with illegal activities or questionable traffic into the building and provided verbal warning that they would be evicted if they continued to participate in bringing a criminal element into the building.

7) We replaced the security guard, improved security surveillance, and instituted a guest sign-in process in the lobby while the guard is on duty during evening hours, which has significantly reduced visitor traffic into the Winthrop.

8) The site staff issued 3-day nuisance notices, which began the eviction process of identified tenants for association with illegal activity.

a. Established a cooperative system to trespass and remove unauthorized people from the building, documented to show cause for subsequent eviction of any associated tenant.

b. Provided security access cards and keys to the Police so that officers may get into the building at any time.

c. Established a security guard desk in the lobby and required sign-in of guests to the building when the security guard is on duty.

d. Increased direct communication with and involvement of police officers in interactions with problem tenants,including conducting “knock and talks” of apartments in the building.

10) Specifically with the active engagement of local Patrol Officers Pincham and Price, these actions directly resulted in 11 removals of suspects for trespass, 3 arrests, and the initiation of 3 evictions, during the first two weeks of January alone.

The building next to Le Le’s was bought by some friends of mine. They plan to fix-it up (it currently is pathetic shape) and offer it to Section 8 housing.