I was in Bellevue two weeks ago over the weekend and was pretty underwhelmed. The Bellevue Square area just really wasn’t doing it for me, although there some people were out that Saturday night.

I’ll take T Town any day still.

I had a revelation last night about Tacoma’s offerings and accessiblity.

Two Koi wasn’t open for dinner at 4:30 (despite online info I’d found and a phone call that must’ve been misconstrued.) We were short on time and looking to forward to sharing a good Tacoma meal with our friends who were visiting from Hong Kong, so were a bit disappointed.

Eureka!! There are so many options within walking distance now. And options that we were happy to share with our former-Seattlelite-restaurant-lovin’-friends. It only took a second before we decided what direction to take and ended up having a great meal anyway. (Have to plug the Happy Hour menu at Pacific Grill one more time.)

Great article on urban form.

Some hate it. Tacoma and Bellevue are at very different points in development, however, some of their challenges are ones we face today or will face in the future.

Yes. Downtown Tacoma and many of oour commercial business districts like 6th Avenue and Proctor were built before there was an off-street parking requirement. Thats a prime reason they are attractive.

Here, where the original buildings remain, the buildings are built right up to the sidewalks and there is a continuous store frontage. Very attractive for pedestrians.

Bellevue is a relatively new town, and thus, is a good example of how a city looks when it is built in its entirely with an off-street parking requirement: little more than a series of buildings separated by parking lots where people travel from one parking garage to another. Tacoma, of course, has huge swaths of sprawlish business districts in other areas of town.

Despite the large population Bellevue, relatively few people are on the street.

Because Tacoma has retained the off-street parking requirement likely implemented in the 1950s, we are on the path to having a quaint “old” downtown with a Bellevue like sprawl addition to it.

The Raineer Pacific building is a good example where the city is currently headed for the new additions: a low density building with blank walls on the main street and a parking garage on the floor greeting pedestrians.

Its a basic choice Tacoma needs to make : become more like car centric Bellevue/LA or a walkable Portland/San Francisco/Seattle.

Despite the numerous trips local dignataries have taken to Portland, we wont be able to grow in such a manner until we change our building code which allows us to do so.

When I go to Seattle and Portland I see parking garages, parking built into building structures

Yep. They share parking spaces in garages throughout the day and night so that 1) they can build buildings and the downtown itself attractively and 2) they don’t have redundent parking lots and garages separating their downtown. buildings. See Onsite Parking: The Scourge of America’s Commercial Districts :

Perhaps more than anything else, rules requiring onsite parking — to be distinguished from “on street” or “offsite” parking — have created the blighted conditions that characterize many older North American commercial districts and boulevards.

I have heard those arguments. I guess I just don’t see any one-size-fits-all solution like some people think they do. I think the issues are more complex and specific to this community than what can be shoehorned into the solutions proposed by urban planners in other communities.

Erik,
One thing I have have obeserved in Seattle is that the neighborhood parking problems are getting worse and worse. In Fremont for instance you have a neighborhood of houses and condos. The houses have off street parking and maybe take up one or two on street spots. They are tearing down the houses left and right and building condos, some with no off street parking. So add atleast 6-8 cars that will take up the on street parking. I now realize how the folks on 6th Ave. (6th and Fremont are very similar) must feel. The thought of building more condos there without parking would drive me insane if I owned a house.
I agree something should be done in the CBD but we need to be careful about what we do in the whole city.

Just to touch on the off-street parking requirement issue… Allow developers to build parking to meet demand, not require parking according to what the City thinks demand might be. This will allow for a variety of building types, including use specific parking structures, to be built as needed.

If you want a unit with a parking stall, don’t buy a dwelling without one. But don’t assume everyone wants what you want. (I guess that libertarian streak is showing through.)

I think the advantage to having a parking problem is that it forces you use other means to get around. Those fifteen minutes spent looking for on-street parking could go to much better use. Furthermore, the lack of parking may encourage households to reduce the number of cars they own. Like Bellevue, Seattle is forward thinking and is taking steps to prepare for a city of over one million people. Everyone knows that driving less usually leads to cleaner air, healthier (less obese) people, and tends to make density viable. Why shouldn’t Tacoma go the same route?

I’m far from a fan of Bellevue, but I’ve gotta point out that Old Bellevue, along Main Street, is actually kind of quaint and nice. (And they have a cool reproduction antique fixture store there.) Very walkable, I found it kind of curious that it wasn’t mentioned in the article…

I agree something should be done in the CBD but we need to be careful about what we do in the whole city.

I agree. The goals for a central business district is different than a neighborhood and the “best methods” for parking I have read about treat them differently.

In the CBD, there is a huge benefit in having alot of different storefronts in a small area that pedestrians can walk to. That’s a huge predictor of attractiveness (Pike Place Market is the ultimate example). However, not necessarily so in a neighborhood.

Even then, as Michael pointed out, Bellevue will feel soulless and boring

Sadly, one of the few part of Bellevue one wants to walk around at is the mall.

The article on Bellevue reminds me of University Place and other cities which have growth sprawled out and now are trying to recover and densify to have some sense of community in the landscape. They are finding it is a very difficult task.

Anna (a.k.a. Joni Mitchell) –

Perhaps if you reread the posting and comments you’d see that the focus above is NOT to replicate everything Bellevue is doing. Not at all, in fact: “to get there, we need to start telling a compelling tale about a walkable Tacoma.”

In short, CA, yes. It is a demand issue. Bellevue is in the fortunate position of being just a(n admittedly gridlocked) bridge away from downtown Seattle and a much shorter distance from Microsoft and its various minion firms. So it’s not a shock that it is easier to lease office space there. I believe that the city could probably make large scale projects easier to undertake in Tacoma but the big problem is still filling the spaces. I’m hopeful that if some smaller commercial projects are built and fill up reasonably quickly that will encourage a developer to make the leap to a bigger project but it’s a rather risky venture at the moment.

If the common (not to say universal) E133 vision of a walkable downtown Tacoma with good transit services and amenities for the residents is realized then this should help the city attract some larger employers in the future. (I hope!)

“I think the advantage to having a parking problem is that it forces you use other means to get around. Those fifteen minutes spent looking for on-street parking could go to much better use.”

I agree that having a parking “problem” would encourage people to use public transportation if our public transportation was expanded. As it is, it takes an hour to get somewhere you could drive to in 10 minutes or less; even with an extra 15 minutes of searching for a parking spot, that’s 25 minutes vs. 60. Also, busses are terribly inconvenient here in many cases, since the bulk of them stop running after 8 or 9pm. The 1, 2, and 3 run until after midnight, but even that isn’t conducive to having a night life. I rely on walking and bussing, but I think I’m going to need a car soon, because it’s too difficult to walk or bus anywhere in a timely manner.

It’s also weird to me that some streets just don’t have sidewalks. Like the little piece of road alongside the Stadium Bistro/St. Helens Cafe. Seems silly. For another small example, it’s almost impossible to cross Center Street between Pine and Union, if you don’t have time to go to the Pine or Union crosswalks when you’re trying to get to the bus stop at Center and Lawrence (where there is no crosswalk). That’s unfortunate, with all of the (often disabled) Goodwill employees trying to cross there in time to catch their bus. I understand it’s industrial, but that means, if anything, more people who can’t afford to have cars and rely on walkability and good transit service. Then, there is the almost unwalkable overpass around 84th & Hosmer to get from where the 48 drops off to the cinema. Then, you’ll just have to hope your movie doesn’t last past 9:30 or so because if it does you’re stuck until 4:30AM.

Living carless in Tacoma requires a lot of planning.

To continue on Erik S’s transit tangent, I’m torn on the light rail to Tacoma issue. I like light rail, but agree that it won’t make sense if it’s a trade-off between that and substantially beefed up Sounder and ST express bus service. I’d gladly trade light rail for a bus-only lane up and down I-5 that runs 20 hours a day.

To further answer a question that CA asked above, Bellevue is considered an “Edge City” to Seattle, where Tacoma is too far away to be in that same shadow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_city

The dynamic with Seattle has created a very different city than what used to be there, and we shouldn’t draw too many conclusions from it as Tacoma is a totally different animal.

Erik S,

Or, alternatively, bringing more jobs to downtown Tacoma would reduce the need for so many going north in their cars every morning.

That’s not really an “alternative” to the very necessary rail connection north that we need, but reducing the need for people to use it is not a bad thing. And that right there would encourage more walkers.

Great points. While I enjoy Bellevue, there is something very artificial about the way it has developed. I hope we don’t sell out to homogenous development projects in order to get “anchor tenants” such as national chains. I also agree with earlier comments that we must continue to refine our building codes to encourage retail storefronts on the street level of all future developments.