Several tipsters noted with excitement that a fence has gone up around the building this morning and the sidewalks are blocked. It would appear that work is to begin soon.

That’s great to see.

I have been told numerous times in the last year that work was about to start on the Luzon but somehow, nothing happened.

With the possible exception of the Elks, I can’t think of a building that has thwarted so many efforts to restore it than the Luzon.

The Luzon’s central presence downtown by Tacoma’s largest commercial buildings has made it’s delapitated state a highly visible thorn in Tacoma’s side.

I can’t wait to see how it looks in the end.

It’s about time!!!

Luzon Building on city of Tacoma website

Same owners as…

and…

and…

and a bunch more.

Hopefully, the developer won’t waste the parking lot next to the building on a 2 story parking lot, but will use every square inch of space to include verticle space

One one redeeming policy that Tacoma has in its parking requirements is that no parking is required for existing buildings in the downtown core.

However, any new building next to the Luzon would unfortunately have to be built something similar to the new low lying building and 2 level parking garage down the street on Pacific below the Convention Center.

The developer is planning a 100,000 sqft building on the parking lot. If they use the whole parking lot (27,000 sqft) it would be a 4 story building. The zoning allows about 40 stories.

Is it a 100,000 square foot building including the parking or excluding it? I believe the floor area ratio calculation used by the city excludes areas used for parking from the building square footage. If the developer is operating with the same postulation, then the building could be six+ stories (assuming that the entire site is occupied by a building).

Nice to hear that the area is being infilled. Maybe the additional office space (assuming it is office space) will fill up quickly enough to inspire more developers to invest in downtown office buildings. Maybe then we’ll get a high-rise.

Yes it will be exciting to see all the buildings be torn down to build the highrises because we used all the available land that could hold a highrise building on 4-6 story buildings.
People need to remember the Downtown Commercial Core is the only zoning that will allow over 100 ft. The DCC is not large. There isn’t a lot of land. So when the time is right for Tacoma to build high-rises it will be time to say goodbye to a lot of smaller buildings. Bye Bye Broadway.

If that parking lot becomes a 4 story building Im going to cry. Unfortunately I wouldnt expect anything different.

I had just been pondering that building recently, wondering when something would finally happen. Crossing my fingers for something really, truly great

Here’s a challenge: would the city current building code permit a large and desirable mixed use building with continuous retail on Pacific to be built on the lot?

Citizens and elected officials alike agree they want a large multi use building here.

The question is does the city code allow it?

Here are the stats:

Lot size 27,000 sq ft

Off-Stree Parking requirement:

1.2 (2.4?) parking spaces required for every 1000 foot of commercial space. First 3000 ft exempt for street level use.

1.0 parking spaces required for every residential unit.

See Tacoma Municipal Code
Chapter 13.06A

(Please clarify if you believe the standards are different)

Q1: What is the best building that could legally be built on this lot? How high could it realistically be? (without borrowing parking credits from another lot)

Q2: What would be the best building that should be built here if the parking requirement was not present?

The zoning allows about 40 stories.

It would be interesting to calculate how many floors of parking one would need to build that. I would guess a great many.

i am a little rusty on my parking stall math, but if memory serves, the current parking monthly lease rates of around $150-200/mo in tacoma for top end secured parking (is this right?) won’t even come close to the debt service on the cost of constructing the stall. hence surface lots and small buildings.

i truly believe planning is there to protect public interest from market failures but enough already, lose the parking.

I trolled through some other Washington cities’ codes and found the following central business district parking requirements or lack thereof for office commercial uses:

Bellevue: 2 per 1000 sf
Bellingham: no requirements
Everett: 1.25 per 1000 sf
Seattle: no requirements
Spokane: no requirements
Vancouver: 1 per 1000 sf

Why don’t you guys that understand the bad city parking reqs, start fllooding the council with letters – that is the way to make change – just ranting on this blog site won’t get it done. Citizen, take action; demand change in regressive city planning code.

I’m working on the letter right now. I’m hoping to get it to the Council, Eric Anderson, Ryan Petty and maybe others sometime this week. I’ll post it here when it’s done.

giddy up!!

the funny thing about bellevue is that it is near impossible sometimes to park. of course this is an altered perception, since there is plenty of parking, but your mind is tricked into thinking you need to park near the front door of whereever you are going.

or in the case of bellevue square, your mind tricks you into thinking that parking 1/2 mile away from the mall, but within their massive parking structure, is better than parking just a little down the street.

Here is the letter. It is a bit lengthy, but I poured my heart into it. I sent it to Eric Anderson, Ryan Petty, Mayor Baarsma and all 8 Councilmembers, Dan Voelpel, Peter Callaghan, Tacoma Weekly, the Daily Index, and Business Examiner:

March 14, 2007

Dear ________,

I am writing to express concern about the detrimental effects of parking regulations in downtown Tacoma. There has been much publicity in recent weeks about the lack of new commercial office space in the downtown area, and I feel the existing minimum off-street parking requirement is largely responsible for this dilemma. Mandating off-street parking greatly increases project costs, which in turn makes it more difficult for developers to realize a profit. As a result, developers choose to build elsewhere, and Tacoma is stuck without new office space that could have been used to lure new companies and jobs to the city.

Minimum parking requirements are remnants of misguided urban planning theory from decades past. Hoping combat the flight of jobs and people to the suburbs, urban planners decided that the solution was to make downtowns as much like the suburbs as possible. This usually meant tearing down historic building for parking lots and enormous parking garages to create space for the same number of cars as suburban shopping malls. While well-intentioned, such policies have failed to revitalize downtowns in almost every place they have been implemented, often leading to even greater urban decay than before.

In the present, many people now choose to live and work in downtown areas because they are the antithesis of the suburbs. Downtowns are designed to facilitate walking and public transportation, with a decreased emphasis on automobile transportation. Recognizing this trend, cities all over America have reduced or eliminated their minimum parking standards in hopes of attracting more dense downtown development. But not Tacoma.

Of the six cities in Washington with more than 100,000 residents, Tacoma’s downtown parking regulations are the most stringent, requiring more parking spaces per square foot than any of the other five cities. Meanwhile, Seattle and Spokane have both eliminated their minimum parking standards, and Vancouver, Bellevue and Everett mandate far fewer spaces. Ironically, while having the most development-unfriendly off-street downtown parking standards in Washington, Tacoma also has the only downtown light rail system in the state and a heavily used bus system.

A minor study was recently completed for the property located immediately south of to-be-renovated Luzon Building at 13th and Pacific. The property is 27,000 square feet and sits less than 100 yards from a Link light rail stop. For the property to be fully developed as allowed in the Downtown Commercial Core zoning district—a 40 story, 800,000 square foot office and residential building, it was determined that about 960 parking spaces would be required, assuming that 1.2 spaces per 1,000 rentable square feet of space were required, per zoning regulations. If each parking space takes up 400 square feet and costs $25,000 (typical per-space cost for a multi-level garage constructed in a seismic zone), then a 14-story parking garage costing approximately $24 million would be necessary just to meet the minimum requirements. If given the choice between building an office building in Tacoma, with its onerous parking requirements, or building in Seattle, with no parking requirements and for millions of dollars less, I think developers would pick Seattle every time.

The lack of office space was well chronicled in a January 28th Dan Voelpel column in the News Tribune. Voelpel quotes commercial real estate broker Eric Cedarstrand as stating that Tacoma “has lost out on an estimated 900 jobs and enough eager employers to fill a building nearly as large as the 25-story Wells Fargo Plaza.” Another part of the article mentioned a Fortune 500 company being turned away due to its inability to find a mere 17,000 square feet of office space downtown. A downtown cannot survive with new condominium and museum construction alone. We have to balance growth in those sectors with commercial growth. Eventually, they will come to complement each other, as workers will choose to live downtown as well as work there.

I wonder about the future of this great city if it cannot provide decent jobs for its citizens. Back in the day, Tacoma high school graduates could easily find well-paying work at Asarco or at one of the lumber mills. Today, Asarco and the mills are gone, and longshoreman jobs at the Port are hard to come by. What kind of city will Tacoma be if all its high school graduates wishing to remain here can aspire to is a minimum wage job at Tacoma Mall? UPS, PLU and UWT will continue to churn out talented graduates, but what good jobs are available for them here? If Tacoma continues on its current path, these potential contributors to economic growth will more than likely have to relocate elsewhere to find decent work. As a member of the younger generation that will assume leadership roles during the next few decades, these trends are especially alarming to me. Is Tacoma going to be self-sufficient in the future or will it become just another suburb of Seattle?

If downtown Tacoma wishes to the continue its “Renaissance,” then it must find a way to accompany more commercial development. The demand is there, and as some of Tacoma’s most respected real estate brokers have confirmed, companies want to be in Tacoma. I feel that unless barricades to development such as the onerous parking standards are removed, the City of Destiny will stagnate and its vision to become a true urban center will remain just out of reach. Let us make Tacoma great. Let us put a big “welcome” sign out for downtown developers and future employers, and make it possible for future generations of Tacomans to thrive here. Let us adopt tried and true 21st century attitudes and get rid of these cumbersome minimum off-street parking regulations.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Andre Stone
408 S. Iron St. #5
Centralia, WA 98531
(360) 618-2096
urbandesign26@gmail.com

Drizell,

I am very impressed with your letter. Hopefully the Tacoma leadership will open their eyes.

Thanks for taking the time to put that together.

Drizell/Andre:
Your letter was well written and to the point. Thank you for taking the time to write it; getting involved in city issues is time consuming and can be exhausting. But you put your money/pen where your mouth is.

As a Tacoma citizen, and one who has invested a good chunk of change in a downtown mixed-use building, I truly appreciate it. If there’s anything I can do, let me know. Thanks, again.

I get more questions about the Luzon Building than any other building in town – comparable with the Elks.

The assessor reports online today that the Elks has closed. The new owner of the Elks is TACOMA ALPHA LAND INVESTORS LLC from Portland. No sales price posted yet.

Oops. I spoke a moment too soon. Apparently the word is (can you guess?) LUXURY CONDOS. Ah, well. Better than tearing it down or letting it rot. We may never see the inside but at least we’ll keep the exterior.

I’m happy.

Kind of.

I think.

There it is folks.

The Elks building sold for $2,125,000 on 3/1/2007. Finally the end of a long chapter with many twists and turns which generated many different opinions.

Hope to see the new owners fix it up soon. With one of the major centrally located historical buildings in Tacoma adjacent the Spanish Stairecase, the potential is unlimited.