Olympus Medical Building Looking for Money

Once upon a time, before most of you started reading Exit133, we wrote about a new medical building at South 16th and J Street. It was going to break ground in January 2007. Well … let’s start over again.

At today’s City of Tacoma Economic Development subcommittee meeting, MLK Commercial LLC (c/o Prium Companies) presented their plans for the Prium Olympus Medical Building.

What do they want? Well … a $1.5 million UDAG (Urban Development Action Grant) loan.

Here’s how it works. MLK Commercial owns most of the east side of MLK between South 17th and 18th. Franciscan Health Systems owns a surface level parking lot on the SW corner of 16th and J Streets. The loan will be used by MLK Commercial to retire the debt on their properties that will then be exchanged for the property owned by Franciscan. Prium will also pay an additional $2.5 million to FHS. (Still with us?) The parking lot will then be developed into the Prium Olympus Medical Building – 4 stories of underground parking and approximately 3 stories of medical office space. FHS will occupy one-third of the new building.

The challenge for the City is that $1.5 million is a big percentage of its $3.5 million UDAG budget. However, possibly unlike the $1.2 million in UDAG funds currently set aside for another project that isn’t going to happen, the Mayor said that the loan “is about as solid as you can get.”

Uh huh.

Previously on Exit133