More pay parking is my guess! Ooo! Or more condos, yea, that’s what we need.

Hey, saw your pic online receiving your 40 under 40 award Derek. Congrats!Just don’t forget us little people, OK? ;)

It’s the long-awaited Midtown Lofts, a project featuring 50 condos by O’Connor and Associates. The building will be about 6 or 7 stories on the Fawcett side. You can see renderings at the office on the 700 block of Commerce—just a couple doors down from Artifex.

Personally, I really like the floorplans—they are very simple. They are essentially narrow rectangles, like what you would typically find in an older New York building that has been converted to lofts. I’ve been really excited about this project for a long time. Once completed, it will hopefully encourage the criminal element that thrives in that neighborhood to take their business elsewhere.

I believe the units will be priced in the high $200s to low $400s—not necessarily affordable, but more so than many other new projects in town. Great views down the hill where the action is as well.

Maybe O’Connor & Associates could get the bar they lease to in their Pacific Ave. building under control – then people will want to buy their new downtown condos.

No shit!

I wouldn’t be shocked to see that a number of condo projects in the make end up as “repartments” on the rental market as the local housing market starts to reflect what’s happening in the rest of the country. That’s no bad thing in my opinion, however, as it ought to be easier for Tacoma to lure outsiders to the town on a trial basis rather than asking them to sign a 30-year contract with terms including forfeiture of the first child. Not only do renters tend to eat roughly the same amount of food as buyers, they generally have more money available to get that food from a restaurant or bar.

Laura,

What’s with the office-like ceiling panels in your building (at least in the studio)?

Thought I might expand on a thing or two from above. The price range will be as low as we can keep it and still stay in business. We are trying to keep as many units as possible below $300k. As for the parking to the south; in the near future a 2 story parking garage for Tacoma Radiology will be started there. It will support the 80 or so folks that will be moving into the Ford building 2nd floor. The first and third floors are available according to my sources.

Drizell Addendum:

The studio and the unit that I live in (not for sale) are the only parts of the building (nearly 15,000 square feet) that have the t-bar ceiling – the owners before us put it in when they remodeled the top floor.

You should have seen the inside of the commercial spaces (Vin Grotto & Spa) when we bought the building – there was a really low dirty, blown in popcorn ceiling with what looked like (shiny) metal flake flecks in it. I also liked the 70s sliding glass doors, orange carpet, and cedar paneling covering all the beautiful, hundered year old brick.

We gutted the second floor to build the condos – the second floor had been sealed off since the 1950s when the electrical and plumbing were red-tagged.

The architecture of the second floor had not been touched since the building was built in 1908 – it was originally a working man’s hotel – so there were all of these little rooms and three or four bathrooms. We also had to bring in the asbestos boys in the little white suits, which was kind of interesting. Saltbush (I think Dennis retired and Saltbush was incorporated into another company?) did our environmental stuff.

What’s the latest for the area further down on Fawcett between 15th and 17th now that Marcato II is finalized? Anyone heard?

The Marcato rep at last year’s Tour of Urban Living said they wanted to do some retail down there. Personally, I think this is a mistake. I think the retail should really be concentrated on Tacoma Avenue. This is in line with the Destination Downtown plan.