The Dead Zone
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They sit in the center of downtown like giant concrete slabs. Two five-story structures, Park Plaza South and Park Plaza North, book ended by the crumbled Luzon Building at South 13th and Pacific Avenue and the run-down Winthrop Hotel at South Ninth and Commerce Streets. They show no signs of budging -- other than, perhaps, total collapse.
At Park Plaza North, on the Pacific Avenue side, a giant maw opens to cavernous and uninviting street level parking; a grid of wire mesh lines the roof, a preventive measure against pigeons that once nested and defecated; stairwells between parking levels are narrow, fouled by urine, and accessible by heavy steel doors that crash closed behind visitors; around the corner, Tacoma police officers regularly cruise past a corner park popular to drug dealers.
At Park Plaza South, on the Commerce side, a steady stream of passengers embark and debark Pierce Transit and Sound Transit buses; meanwhile, BIA bike patrol officers pedal past the garage’s entrance throughout the day. On the Pacific Avenue side, sheets of paper cover vacant storefront windows, almost in the hopes of suggesting a blank canvas of what could be: the next neighborhood coffee shop? A restaurant? How about a grocery store?
Not today.
1206 Pacific Avenue. Empty. 1210 Pacific Avenue. Also empty. And it’s the same story at 1214 Pacific Avenue. On a recent Friday morning, standing outside Austin Chase Coffee, two office workers looking for a cup of coffee peered inside: lights off, no one inside, a soggy mess of Tacoma Weekly newspapers piled outside.
“It’s dark and it’s dead,†said one co-worker. “Let’s go up the street.â€
Could there be a grimmer commercial strip in Tacoma?
Probably not.
Could it be more unfortunate that these garages sit in the heart of downtown?
No way.
Signs of downtown renovation exist elsewhere: the University of Washington Tacoma campus in the south end of town; Rainier Bank headquarters midtown -- shiny and new, home to Starbucks, Sea Grill, and a handful of corporate offices for small businesses; and a surge in adaptive reuse of old buildings near Broadway and the Theater District show promise. But in this part of town, most people agree the massive garages impede the area’s development.
Ask City of Tacoma facilities manager Mike Slevin about the garages, and he’s candid.
“They’re pretty darn ugly,†he says inside his seventh-floor City Hall office earlier this month. “Just take a look at them.†Slevin shuffles paperwork that covers his desk. He looks for a magazine he picked up at a recent convention on urban design. On the cover, a shiny new parking garage -- the antithesis of the city’s two garages -- gleams on glossy paper. “[Our garages] basically break every reasonable recommended practice in current design for what a parking garage should be.â€
Slevin lists some of those design standards: glass features on entrances and exits to clearly mark how to get in and out of the garages; mixed-use structures that blend office space, retail space, and parking stalls; and street level areas that exclude parking and only include retail.
“The complaints we get from people down there, and from business owners from both Park Plaza North and Park Plaza South, is that it’s a cave-like appearance,†says Slevin. “It’s mostly vacant spaces down there at Park Plaza South. You know, the building leaves a lot to be desired.
“I’ve heard people in the parking group, as well as downtown business owners, say ‘What are we going to do with these buildings?’†adds Slevin. “’They are ugly. We’d be better off if we’d knock them down.’â€
HOW DID THESE garages come to be?
In 1957, the Chamber of Commerce sponsored formation of a parking development committee for downtown Tacoma, and hired Cleveland-based H.F. Ferguson Company to study the issue, according to newspaper articles at the time. A year later -- after interviewing downtown parkers, monitoring use and turnover of downtown parking spaces, and reading traffic studies compiled by the city -- the company released a 99-page report that urged the construction of two downtown parking garages between South Ninth Street and South 13th Street. The consultants recommended the garages be privately financed by downtown businessmen, and “aggressive†rates of 15 cents per hour for the first two hours, and 20 cents per hour thereafter, to encourage turnover in shoppers instead of stagnant, all-day parkers.
What followed was the collective razing of a number of historically significant buildings in the center city, along so-called Whisky Row. Though the price tag for building the garages climbed from $2.2 million to $3.3 million, according to News Tribune archives, on Nov. 14, 1969, city leaders gathered for a groundbreaking ceremony to kick off construction.
By summer of 1980, however, the garages were largely reviled. Park Plaza North couldn’t lure tenants. “Tacoma’s own scenic and cultural revolution may be suffering somewhat from the continuing inability of the property owners to attract business into the 100-foot-deep lots,†wrote News Tribune reporter Richard Sypher.
Seven years later, the city purchased the garages for $5.5 million: $3.7 million was borrowed by selling bonds, and the rest was paid for with federal Urban Development Action Grants, according to newspaper reports. Similarly, the city spent $735,000 on improvements such as gates and fences to keep transients away, and new paint and sealant to improve appearances.
“Ironically, the parking garages were built under the banner of ‘urban renewal,’ yet they are some of most significant impediments for the success of downtown,†says Tacoma resident Erik Bjornson.
Inspired by the late, famed urban planner Jane Jacobs, Bjornson, an attorney, urban planning enthusiast, and civic activist who follows city issues closely, and Ko Wibowo, a local architect at McGranahan Architects downtown, have spent most of this year examining some of the walkways around the city’s garages that connect Pacific Avenue to Commerce Street and Broadway. Inevitably, their study has centered on the garages and their overall design flaws.
“It’s sad when you look at it because you can see what they wanted,†says Bjornson, referring to earlier city planners who conjured the idea to building the garages. “It was made under the urban renewal effort at great cost. Somebody had a great, grand plan with this at one time. It was going to have retail below, parking above, and it was all going to work out.â€
Today, adds Bjornson, most people agree the plan failed. He notes that Park Plaza South is located in the heart of the city -- between the Wells Fargo Building and Tacoma Financial Center -- yet it still struggles. “The area should be thriving with retail like Broadway. Yet, the current design of the parking garages is keeping it a dead zone.â€
Wibowo agrees.
“It’s the brutalist era of architecture,†he says. “Obviously, it’s not warm. Add to that the location, where one side is Commerce Street, and there is no commerce. That kind of makes it worse. The area is actually a missing tooth right now. You have development on the south side, with Rainier Pacific headquarters, and on the north side, in the Theater District where it’s little bit lively. But this is located in a missing tooth, and there’s an opportunity to make it work and connect the two dots.â€
TODAY, THE CITY owns the air rights and combined 873 parking stalls in both garages, while street-level retail spaces are privately owned. It also contracts with Republic Parking to manage daily operations of both garages.
As much as the garages are slammed for their appearances, Slevin says they are still a key source of revenue for the city. “There’s large parking revenue that comes off of these garages that supports the parking system,†he explains. “I think it’s difficult to just say, ‘Hey, we’re going to knock them down.’â€
Bruce Marshall, the City’s parking services manager who oversees operations of nearly 2,550 parking spaces scattered throughout the city’s nine municipal lots, provided the Index with financial data that show both garages are profitable for Tacoma, yet also expensive to operate. According to the data, Park Plaza South earned gross operating revenue of $685,529 last year. Subtract $283,275 for total cost of operations, and another $60,600 for other expenses, such as depreciation and debt service, and the net revenue equals $341,655. It’s a similar story at Park Plaza North: operating revenue last year totaled $820,230, and cost of operations was $315,062, depreciation and debt service were $168,992. The net revenue? $336,176.
“Garages take a hit year after year,†says Marshall. “You can see there’s quite a chunk of change that gets pulled out of there. That’s something we have tried to edify. That’s why you don’t see a lot being built.â€
Marshall says revenue collected from any municipal parking lot goes into a parking enterprise fund, which pays for maintenance and operation of the system, as well as its potential expansion. A portion of revenues is also pledged to facilities with parking components, such as parking at the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center, and expansion of the A Street parking garage.
The design goals City facilities manager Slevin notes are included in the latest proposal to revamp Park Plaza South. Over the past several months, the city has worked with Pacific Plaza LLC, a development group that consists of two principles -- Putnam Design and Absher Construction -- to rehab the bulky structure. Another stack of paperwork on Slevin’s desk reveals renderings by BLRB Architects that show the makeover idea.
It’s a renovation with a sizable price tag: $32.5 million. The project calls for two new floors of office space, one new level of parking, and expanded and improved street-level retail totaling 30,000 square feet.
Though Slevin would only comment on the figure off the record, The News Tribune, citing developers, reported Dec. 15 the garage remodel would cost the city approximately $7 million. Currently, the city has $2 million reserved for deferred maintenance on the garage. And the 2007-2008 budget, approved by City Council Dec. 19, calls for another $1 million in real estate excise taxes toward garage renovations. It’s a tough dilemma for the city: come up with an additional $4 million for Park Plaza South, or do nothing and continue to incur deferred maintenance on both garages.
The proposed makeover isn’t the first time plans were presented to revamp the garages.
In 2004, the city hired a Seattle-based consultant to come up with solutions for improving Park Plaza North and South. The recommendation? Spend $370,000 to wrap the garages in vibrant colors. “It’s just a mass of concrete, and it’s so dated and distracting,†noted the consultant. “Unless you could just start all over again, with dynamite or something, we thought, ‘What else could you do?’â€
July 2005, the city considered two proposals submitted by different developers: Simon Johnson and Pacific Plaza Development. Simon Johnson’s plan included demolishing both garages to create mixed use buildings with combined 1,186 parking stalls, 326,000 square feet of office space, 150,000 square feet of residential space, 74,600 square feet of ground-level retail space, and 13,000 square feet public plazas.
“The cost to the city made it at this time not feasible,†says Slevin.
Pacific Plaza’s plan called for a garage renovation (not demolition and new construction) with new shells on Pacific Avenue frontages of each garage, combined 266 additional parking stalls, 163,000 square feet of office space, and 91,000 square feet of retail space.
Over the past several months, that plan has morphed into the current design that the city’s community and economic development committee plans to review Jan. 9.
“We can continue down the path we are going, and eventually have a large deferred maintenance structural costs on this building, and keep nursing it until the time comes to remodel it ourselves,†Slevin explains. “Or we can joint venture with a developer and accomplish the same thing, but also have excellent activated retail and office.â€
JERRY JAFFE IS familiar with on-again-off-again plans to renovate the city’s massive garages. Seven years ago, someone came in off the street describing rumors that the garage would be retrofitted, retail would be added, and his business would be forced out. What was he going to do? Two months ago, a local business reporter called him describing the latest garage renovation and asking the same question.
“I still haven’t heard anything official from anybody,†Jaffe says.
Jaffe’s family owns Brodsky’s, a uniform and equipment store in a Pacific Avenue retail spot in Park Plaza South. His family started the business in 1919 at a store on the Ft. Lewis base. When World War II started, civilian contractors were moved off the base, and Brodsky’s located in South Tacoma. The company moved again, in 1948, to the corner of South 13th Street and Pacific Avenue, next door to the Fun Circus.
“That was a hot block,†Jaffe recalls. “All the GI’s came there from Fort Lewis to the bus station, where they would catch buses out of town. There were adult businesses, bars, and theaters. Contrary to what a lot other people thought, it was very safe. It was just a fun time.â€
Brodsky’s family moved to its current location at 1202 Pacific Avenue in 1977.
How has his business survived in Park Plaza South so long?
A steady clientele of police officers, postal workers, soldiers, and firefighters -- longtime Tacomans or customers who learn of Brodsky’s via word of mouth -- visit the store to purchase uniforms and equipment. “It’s a destination business,†Jaffe adds.
Is it a dead zone?
“I would have to agree with that,†he says. “It’s just kind of the way that it is.†He lists a couple factors: a print shop owner who chooses to use retail storefronts for storage, and vacant parcels at the north end of the block. “If these parcels were filled up with retail, sure, any business that has retail around it is going to do better because people will be walking by.
Jaffe knows if the City decides to partner with a developer to renovate Park Plaza South, he would have to move. Slevin is quick to warn that City Council hasn’t reviewed the latest design plan, determined financing, or even voted on the idea.
The City hasn’t contacted Jaffe because a decision hasn’t been made.
Though people complain the garages are eyesores, Jaffe has a different perspective. “There are some emotional ties to this building,†he explains. “Moving is not anything that gets anyone excited.â€
© Copyright 2007 Tacoma Daily Index