Erik defends suburbia

As you likely know, I'm an urban dweller and a self-proclaimed champion of urban causes. But I do not believe that the suburbs are the root of all evil, either. I grew up in the Tacoma suburbs so they can't be all bad, right?

The Tacoma Sun offered me a chance to write a long article about something that doesn't get a lot of mention on the "blogosphere" or in print media, so I decided to defend the suburbs ... at least a little bit. I do believe that what happens in the suburbs has a lot to do with happens here in downtown Tacoma.

Thanks again to the Sun for the chance to write! Here's the article.

Hanna Heights finishes paint job

The scaffolding came off Hanna Heights months ago, but the north side of the building remained in a partial state of paint until this week. They finally finished the paint job, which is good, because I was getting tired of looking at a half-painted wall out my window.

Thanks, Prium!

In other good news, I received a response from the City about the state of my alley. As soon as the alley is open on the south end, they're going to send a crew through to cut the brush back and clean it up. Hallelujah!

Some surprises from the Tour

I noticed some things today that surprised me. If you're still interested, check them out on tomorrow's tour. You can find a good map of the properties at Exit133 here.

As a downtown resident already, I wasn't exactly on the tour looking for a place. That said, I still found some that were pretty tempting. But considering that I've been following the development of many of these projects, I was happily surprised by many features, amenities, or design choices.

Here's what surprised me:

A private courtyard inside the Roberson. Who knew? Very cool looking!

The high tech gizmos at 505 Broadway. Talk about a "smart house."

Metro City Homes, Madison unit. Like Triangle but wider, which really helped the floor plan.

The view from Hanna Heights (my favorite view of the day, actually). Looking South over Tacoma from the 4th floor ... we've never looked so urban.

The 500-bottle wine storage at the Granville right off the kitchen

The massive corner deck on the penthouse of One St. Helens.

Marcato's courtyard and theater. Beautiful common area, sweet theater.

Room service at the Walker. The Walker was very cool in many ways. Valet service was not expected (and might be a bit much for my tastes). But room service from the restaurant Troy Christian will be opening downstairs is a huge bonus in my book. That would be very tempting certain nights when you don't want to go out but don't want to cook either.

I thought the tour was well worth it. We started with breakfast at PSP at 9:30 and saw all the buildings we wanted to by 12:30. Check it out!

Tour of Urban Living this weekend!

I am very much looking forward to this year's Tour of Urban Living. I've been on every tour save for last year's. This year I'm particularly looking forward to seeing the renovated Walker, as it is a close neighbor. Last night I saw they had planted trees and lit them from the ground, which looks very cool. And this evening they were hauling in furniture and art for their model unit (I presume that's what its for at least.).

This year, you can find an interactive Google map on Exit133 with information on all the tour sites, photos, etc which will make planning your weekend tour of condos and apartments easier. Yeah for the Tour of Urban Living!

Ethnic Fest - Great Day for Wright Park

Mary and I wandered over to Ethnic Fest this afternoon. One of the nice things about living in the St. Helens area is that Wright Park is just two blocks away.

It was full of people today and the food is great. Gateway to India is there with a good bargain on their garlic naan and chicken curry. Go!

We also ventured over to Hannah Heights and took a tour of the nearly-completed penthouse suites. They are really well done, and some of them have incredible views. Triangle Townhomes, across the street, looks incredibly inviting from 4 or 5 stories up. I really believe that if you are a skeptic on the project it's worth going to Hannah Heights just to look out over the rooftop decks at the Triangle. The appeal is self-evident. I know they have a lot of problems, but on a Saturday in July I don't know that anyone would care about those when you can sit on the roof and drink a beer.

We'll probably grab some more food from Ethnic Fest tomorrow and wander around the neighborhood a little bit more.

Why UP should merge into Tacoma

On Wednesday I posted that Councilmember Rick Talbert wanted to expand Tacoma's borders toward 512. I went on to suggest:

Fircrest, Ruston, and UP would also join Tacoma, but I believe that requires a vote of the State Legislature and I'm not sure those residents would be totally down with it.

One UP-ite wasn't. S/he commented on my blog anonymously:

Nothing against Tacoma, but why in the world would anyone in UP believe they would have anything to gain by being annexed by Tacoma? Is it Tacoma's stellar school system? Or perhaps its professional and world famous police force? Or maybe because UP residents are just dying to help pay for Tacoma's amazing municipal computer system...

Why indeed would someone in UP want to be part of Tacoma?

I have a couple ideas, which I mentioned in the comments of that post. The easiest reason to point out is that in a state where cities need sales tax to thrive, highly residential communities like UP are forced to try to increase sales tax revenue by creating a new urban center (a la, the UP Town Center). If UP were a part of Tacoma, they wouldn't need to do that (note that Federal Way and Fircrest have run into similar funding issues as UP).

I threw some others out that were kind of lame individually, but the truth is that they are all part of a bigger whole. And while I'm probably not going to sway my UP commenter, I'll lay it down on the line anyway. UP's success is dependent on Tacoma's.

Can I back that up?

Let me try. There was an interesting article this week about St. Louis in the New York Times. Like Tacoma, St. Louis is looking for a renaissance. Like Tacoma it has a rough and tumble image it would like to shed.

But unlike Tacoma, St. Louis has collapsed inward. At its peak population in 1950, St. Louis had 860,000 residents. By 2000, the city had dropped 500,000 of them.

What is interesting is that in 1876 the City of St. Louis (stupidly, it turns out) separated itself from St. Louis County, which now entirely surrounds the city in Missouri (Illinois is the other border for the city across the river). This created a dramatic city / suburbs division that has held until this day.

When the automobile and the freeway created new suburbs in the 50s and 60s, St. Louis lost all of its wealthy residents when they moved to the County. And it couldn't expand to get them back.

Flash forward a few decades now. At the time of the 2000 census, St. Louis residents made 2/3 of what those in the suburbs made. St. Louis is 51% black and 43% white while St. Louis County is 19% black and 77% white. A sharp line now separates the city from its suburbs, separating rich from poor, and white from black.

And it's not like everyone is just moving out of the area. From 1990 - 2000 Greater St. Louis (all the suburbs and the city) grew 4.5%. But St. Louis City lost 12.2%. A rich, white, populous donut of a city is growing around a poor, black, abandoned inner city.

That leads us to the question, are the residents in St. Louis County hurt by what is going on in the City of St. Louis? Things going on like:

In the past few months, the public schools were stripped of accreditation and taken over by the state; the city was designated the most dangerous in the country in a national crime survey ...

That's from the Times article.

So if you live in St. Louis County right now, the most dangerous city in the US is across an artificial border from you. Its residents are poorer, its students badly educated, and the cities are segregated by race. This is bad for you.

There are a million reasons why it is bad for the residents of St. Louis, but it is also bad for you. If you were part of St. Louis, it would only take a very very small portion of your money to solve what is a very bad problem. And it's not like it's someone else's problem. It's your problem, because it's just right across the freeway and social problems don't respect city lines.

Now, obviously, Tacoma and its suburbs are not at this point yet. But it's worth pointing out that Tacoma's problems are the problems of the entire metro area. A family can move to UP because they want to send their children to Curtis instead of Foss, but everyone would be doing better if they were both Curtis and Foss were in the same school system.

And if you think that merging UP, Fife, Fircrest, Lakewood, and Ruston into Tacoma would be impossible, witness Indianapolis.

Surrounded by suburb towns and a victim of white flight and urban blight, in the 1970 Indianapolis and its suburbs created Unigov, which united the governments of Indianpolis, the towns, and the county. The city has since grown by leaps and bounds. It has a lot more room to grow. It is not segregated. And its household median income is 43% larger than that of St. Louis. Everyone wins.

Annexation holds big potential for our region. If you're interested in the problem, I highly recommend the book Cities Without Suburbs by the former Mayor of Albuquerque, David Rusk, which lays out the case surprisingly well. Stephen Goldsmith, the former Indianapolis mayor, also has a book about his experience. Together the books make a compelling case, one from a Democrat and one from a Republican, one with Census statistics and one with anecdotes.

The Abatement - Again

For an interesting read, check out the op-ed piece by Mike Lonergan and Rick Talbert in the Trib. It's a solid defense of the property tax abatement.

As I've said before, I have enjoyed the property tax abatement since 2003, but I am also swayed by Peter Callaghan's argument that too much of it is going toward luxury condos.

Perhaps the two councilmembers are correct: there are better ways to deal with affordable housing than attaching restrictions to the property tax abatement. (Check out my brief distillation of the Pierce County Housing Report issued last month.) The close their suggestions:

... city, state and federal governments offer several tools for financing affordable housing development that are far more effective than this tax exemption.

The key message is this: The property tax exemption is working very well to accomplish its intended goals of increased residential density and economic vitality in mixed-use centers. The benefits of this success extend to every resident of Tacoma. We caution against adding requirements to the exemption, which could erase the advantage that is spurring extensive redevelopment.

I think they make a good case.

Hannah Heights Looking Good

I can watch Hannah Heights out my window and it's really been coming along. I must confess that I am actually surprised that I like the building. I have been wary of newly constructed condos but Hannah Heights actually looks really good (I must confess that I am surprised I like the Mercato too).

But the sidewalks are coming together and it's really starting to look good. I saw the rooms awhile ago and was very impressed with the rooms as well.

All in all, welcome to the neighborhood, Hannah Heights!

Urban Waters

Good for the City! They've purchased the former site of the Crosswater Condos in a great public/private partnership with Urban Waters, a research facility for marine research. The non-profit works with UWT and the Port for research of the marine environment in an urban/industrial setting.

The city will use the building for their own soil and water testing and dock a few boats there as well.

Well done, guys. Here's the Trib article.

And how to help them?

The report also details seven high priority strategies, with a matrix on which population of low income households it would help and to what degree.

To help the extremely low income families, three strategies are considered to be the most effective:

1. Providing incentives to assist developers to create affordable housing including density bonuses, fee waivers, reduced zoning requirements, and expedited permitting. This is taken from numbers that show substantial cost savings in a multi-family development--roughly $10,500/unit would be saved if permits, utilities, and parking were waived or reduced. For single family homes, waiving permits, broker commissions, and closing costs would take $24,000 off of a 2030 sq. ft. home. And if you could acquire the land for free, and all interest on the loan, a house worth $285,000 could go for $129,000.
2. Create a new local dedicated revenue source for populations below 80% of the median income. This would mean possibly a housing levy (a la Seattle's levy), a % of real estate tax (like 1%), or housing trusts or land trusts
3. Tax relief for developers who build and maintain affordable housing. (an expanded version of what we already have basically).

Those are some cool options they've put together I'd say.

Who to help?

The task force tried to figure out where to best target their efforts.

Clearly a place to start are the Extremely Low Income households (defined as making less than 30% of our median income).

But the high priority focus will be on any household making less than 80% of the median income. But, interestingly, it does so with a caveat. The report notes that:

The Task Force ... came to understand the significant need for more moderate income work force housing [for housholds making between 80 and 100% of the median income]. One of the conclusions reached by many Task Force members was that when the supply of housing for moderate income families is limited, it places greater demand on the housing supply that would otherwise be available for low income families.

Well observed.

The Pierce County Housing Problem

The Housing Affordability Taskforce, which started last year, has released a final report. At a 127 pages, it's pretty thorough.

The report is comprehensive, which is reflected by the experience of those on the task force. Representatives included the United Way, Realtors, banks, Master Builders Association, Tacoma Housing Authority, Pierce County Housing Authority, and 4 different departments of Pierce County.

The summary is 8 pages, and you can start there if you're interested to see the general scope of their recommendations.

I'm going to devote a few blog posts over the next few days to the report because I think this is of the utmost importance for Tacoma (and Pierce County too).

So let's start with "The Problem," which they Task Force lays out pretty clearly. Here are the important points I've noted so far:

• 31% of Pierce County households are house-poor (they pay more than 30% of their income on shelter costs).
• By 2005, 50% of the houses for sale in Pierce County were too expensive for 60% of the households (again, assuming they don't want to be house-poor when they move in).
• On that same thought, the report says "Put another way, for 170,000 households, buying an average-priced home was not affordable; for 89,000 households, even buying a home in the bottom 10% of the price range was unattainable; and for 51,000 households, renting the average 1 bedroom apartment was out of reach."
• Regarding housing for the poorest in our county, the report says that individuals were turned away from shelters 38,000 times in 2006. And families with children were turned away 9,600 times. In both cases it was usually because the shelters were full.
• Along those same line, 43% of people who use emergency food programs in Pierce County have at least one working adult.

The reports notes that rising housing costs have made it harder for low-income families here. Here's an interesting quote:

The growing balance in affordability between King County and Pierce County
residents in recent years has caused more competition for homes in Pierce as
residents are priced out of the King market, accelerating the pace of
house-price increases.

I take back what I said about luring young Seattle-ites to Tacoma...

More later tonight and tomorrow.

More on the Condo Market

There's a spread in this morning's paper about the downtown condos. According to the paper and the study they cite, only empty nesters are moving into downtown Tacoma to fill the buildings, not any young professionals.

The vast majority are "luxury condos" because it doesn't take much more investment to turn a regular condo into a "luxury" condo, which would price it above a young professional's income.

On the other hand...

I've heard that Hannah Heights sold out of their penthouse level condos well before they had sold some of their other "regular" units. The demand was for the luxury and so they converted more of their units to upscale units (this is all anecdotal evidence).

Perhaps there just isn't a market for young professionals. Possibly because there aren't a lot of young professionals in Tacoma, specifically single ones.

Remember Richard Florida and the Rise of the Creative Class? Young people are very very mobile. And I would bet a lot that those young people who have transplanted to Tacoma to work at Russell or one of our other large employers and not yet sold on wanting to stay. Because that's the only reason you would buy is if you knew you were going to stay here.

So when the Tribune writes that "pricey condominiums exclude young singles" I don't doubt it, but it begs the question: how many young singles are there actually in Tacoma? How many think they'll be here in 5 years? My hunch would be we're talking about a very small group of people.

We'd likely be better off luring young single professionals who work in Seattle and promising them an urban lifestyle, complete with Link and Sounder service to their job and good restaurants when they return.

More on Exit133.com (who points out there are a fair number of condos in the $100K and low $200K range). The inventory on condos may also keep prices low enough to get some of those young professionals in.

All in all, I agree with Exit133: I'm an optimist.

Condo market

I must say I am confused about the article in the Trib.

Apparently, there is 15 months of inventory of condos in the St. Helens District (my home).

What does that mean exactly? That it would take someone on average 15 months to sell their condo? That in 15 months, if we didn't build any more condos they would all be full? And what does that mean for downtown? I still say that a slower condo market is better for downtown as a whole because it makes other development more likely.

Either way, I think I'm just missing the point of the article. Can anyone tell me what kind of effect this would have on current owners?

The Challenge of Revitalization

Exit133 re-published an article from the Seattle Times about the costs of revitalization in the hilltop neighborhood.

If you're interested in the long term health of the city, it's worth a solid read.

For my own money, dealing with gentrification and not pricing out the lower (and even middle) class is going to be one of our most difficult tasks as we move forward.

Welcome, Neighbors ... Will you come in peace?

The Forward Tacoma newsletter and Exit133 both have some information about the rumors of a grocery store in downtown. Interestingly, it's likely slated to go right across the street from me. Say goodbye to USA of Yesterday and hello to the Sharp Project.

The Sharp Project will supposedly weigh in at a shockingly massive 526,000 sq. ft. That's 150 residential units; 100,000 sq. ft. of commercial; and ...

They're currently negotiating with potential tenants for the commercial space usage in the Sharp Project, including a hotel and three different grocery store chains.

Dude. That's a big project for this hill. A hotel? A grocery store? 100,000 sq. ft. of commercial? Am I going to live across the street from a Gap?

One thing is for sure. No mure view of Mount Rainier after next year. If the Sharp building doesn't block my view, the Walker North will, and if neither of them do, the 18 stories of Jay Heights will surely do the trick. That's what I get for living on the 2nd floor.

Mixed Income Neighborhoods

Dan Voelpel has a piece today about mixing low income from the Winthrop in to the Hilltop Neighborhood. He's generally against it. As were most commentors on Exit133 about the same subject. And I am generally against it too.

This quote was in the Voelpel article and I think it's important:

“This neighborhood has more than our fair share of low-income residents and way, way too many sex offenders,” said Bockwinkel, co-owner of Ex-Press Printing. “I’m not sure what the population is like of the Winthrop residents, but those residents should be spread around the county, with none coming to the Hilltop."

My quibble with this is slight, but important. Low income residents should not be spread around the county. The housing available should be in our neighbhoods with the best access to transportation and services that a family without a car could use. This means putting low-income into some of our most livable areas: Downtown; Stadium; Proctor; pieces of 6th and other neighborhoods with good business districts.

I'm sure a lot of business-owners and current residents may not be in favor of this, but it makes no sense to put low-income residents in areas where you need a car to live. It may be true--it likely is true--that MLK already has its fair share of subsidized housing. But it has qualities that make it very attractive for a family without a car and that should be taken into account too.

I do totally understand that if the subsidized housing was going to go on the former site of the former Browne's Star Grill it is a questionable "turn around" and I'm not sure it would justify the purchase by the city. This is a very tricky and sensitive issue, and I hope Prium will do the right thing and the City will not let them off the hook in their eagerness to get the Winthrop re-developed.

Some Condo Notes

Mary and I had a good downtown tour today. First stop Tully's. Second stop: Old City Hall to see their floorplans and model unit. It's a pretty cool place, I must say, and I would suggest that 625 Commerce is going to surpass One North Stadium Way as the premiere address in Tacoma. It's just an awesome place, no question.

From there, we took in a few odd galleries/shops like Rampart and Mandarin, and then the Kickstand for a good lunch.

And then a visit to Hannah Heights, which we both thought was pretty well done. It's one of the more urban feeling condos that I've been in downtown with good street views. All in all a fun day exploring downtown

Tacoma Renaissance

According to Dan Voelpel's column today, Old City Hall (AKA Renaissance) will be open tomorrow from 10 - 4 with a model unit available for tours. I'm very interested to get a glimpse of how the project will likely look. Although with units starting at $600,000 I'll need a bit of a pay increase to afford the mortgage if I like it.

Ah well.

More reasons to look forward to 2007

On New Year's Eve I mentioned that I was coming up with my Top Ten Things to Look Forward to in 2007. Today, Exit133 asks what are the reasons to be optimistic about Tacoma in '07.

So with his specific question in mind, as well as some more big-picture stuff, here is my Top Ten Things for '07. I've also inclued lots of links back to posts I made in 2006 for reference.

1. We didn't die last year. Last January I posted a pretty good list of the ways humanity might go extinct in 2006. Giant asteroid. Nuclear holocaust. The end of the world--as predicted by the Bible Code. Needless to say, it was a bad month for me. So that we made it through 2006, considering the stuff we had to weather, I'd say that's not too shabby.
2. The Horatio. Can't lie to you. I'm very very excited about this.
3. Movies. We're expecting a double helping of Harry Potter (Book VII + Film V) plus Spiderman III.
4. Travel. I was a bit of a jetsetter/travel blogger last year (Torino/Switzerland, San Jose, LA, Minnesota, Chicago, New York, and St. Louis) Click on the links to get to the month I traveled. You can find the posts about each place from there. I'd very much like to keep that up this year if I can.
5. Tacoma Condo Sales Cooling. Weird thing to be excited about, I know, but too many of Tacoma's great buildings were starting to be jeopardized by the lure of the almighty dollar. With a cooling condo market, other forms of land use can be considered creating better mixed-use of downtown Tacoma.
6. National Elections. Sure I'm all about Obama right now. I think the guy is awesome and I will be stealing his book from my parents when they are done. But the truth is that the field from both parties means some great excitement for 2007. Besides Obama, I am still interested to see what happens with McCain, Giuliani, and maybe even Rice on the right and Edwards on the left. Clinton doesn't really do it for me, I gotta say. But we could see some amazing things this year. Imagine a 2008 contest between Obama/Edwards and McCain/Rice, for example. There's a lot to get excited about there.
7. The Sound Transit Vote. They have a lot going for them right now. A "reverse" train starts in September from Seattle to Tacoma for commuters. They'll get Husky Stadium to the airport on the original tax package. And we have a proposal moving forward to get Pierce Transit connected to the airport (while I feel the plan to get Fife to the airport is really dumb, I believe the money to get it the rest of the way would appear and that the rail line would never actually stop at Fife). Only downside: another sales tax increase.
8. Summer. Because it's just so hard to beat. Especially at the Lake.
9. Nightlife. More nightlife downtown, on 6th, and in Stadium means more fun for me. Business is booming.
10. The Winthrop and the Elks Temple. 2007 will hopefully continue the good experiences and high hopes for this hotel and Temple.