Condo Fatigue

Way back… like seven years ago, I used to say that we didn’t have enough condos in Tacoma.  My thinking at the time was that condos would provide an affordable entry point into home ownership for my friends that could afford a home in Tacoma, but didn’t want yards, fences, and 30 year roofs.  It’s what our friends in Seattle did.  Now new condo developments are springing up all over town.  Projects stretch the entire length of downtown.  The North End now has several older homes being converted from apartments into condos.  There are a few really ugly 1970s/1980s era apartments going condo.  Broadway and Stadium Way have transformed into condo neighborhoods in just a couple years.  I’m growing tired of it.  City Hall may go condo.  Sure.  The old city hall will probably go condo.  Whatever. 

You want a challenge?  Try to find a decent late lunch on a Sunday afternoon in Tacoma. 

My problem with all this development is that the city keeps pushing condos and assumes that the retail/commercial aspects of a community will follow.  With enough density the businesses will come.  The prime lots and buildings are going condo.  Retail will go where?  In the lots that nobody else wants?  We’ve been hearing for several years now that retail will come once enough people are downtown.  It’s time for the city to step up and provide some leadership.  There must be a way to incentive small/large businesses to come back downtown.  Where are our anchor businesses?  Where’s the nucleus of a new retail core?  It’s difficult for me to get excited about more condo developments or artist loft apartments that no artist could afford. 

You want excitement?  Let’s talk about a farmer’s market that’s open on the weekends.  Show me mixed use buildings.  Who wants to live in a first floor condo?  Every new condo development should be retail on the first floor.  Show me neighborhoods that are enjoyable to walk around.  When I think of urban living, I imagine a place where I can walk out my front door and get food, a drink, and maybe buy some random trinket.  Imagine the new condo developments on Queen Anne hill or parts of Vancouver, BC.  What are my options if I lived in the Marcourt Building or the Vintage Y?  These projects are like islands in an otherwise commercial core.  Where will restaurants go to make these places more desirable?  The parking lot between the buildings?  I don’t think so.  A converted city hall?  Maybe the other side of ninth street is where we need to begin.  Sure, we have Indochine, Rock Pasta, the Swiss, the Harmon, and a few more expensive places further south.  But this isn’t where the ‘exciting’ new condo developments are located.  This isn’t some video game like SimCity where we can fast forward a few decades and see what happens.  Where’s the vision?  This is the now and the pioneers that are heading downtown need to know where they might be headed.  Actually, let’s forget about the pioneers heading downtown with their 10-year tax breaks on $500k mortgages.  Let’s talk about the rest of us.

Give me three more places like Primo Grill and a solid block of new retail development in downtown and I’ll be happy again.  I’m tired of condo talk. 

Previously on Exit133: Why must we gentrify downtown before it’s blossomed?

Previously on Exit133: Tacoma Condo Roundup