Planning Commission Public Hearing - October 1 2008

Parking, parking, parking. That’s what seemed to be on everyone’s mind last night as the Planning Commission held a public hearing to discuss the proposed updates to the downtown elements of the city’s comprehensive plan, affectionately know as “Destination Downtown.” It’s a hefty revision, weighing in at 140 pages, and is designed to affect broad changes downtown in terms of increased density, improved walkability, coordinated land use, and much more. You can view the whole thing online at cityoftacoma.org/planning.

If you don’t believe that the arrangement of stationary cars along the streets could be the most pressing matter at a meeting about the future of downtown, try entering “Parking” into our search bar up top. This has long been a bone of contention in Tacoma, and it should come as no surprise that all public comments on the issue were negative. The usual arguments were made about how downtown’s minimum parking requirement turns off new businesses, but several environmental concerns were raised as well. One commenter noted that a focus on parking could not fit with the city’s plan to bring 10-20 thousand new residents downtown. Several argued for the implementation of “parking maximums,” which would let the city control how many cars it can sustain. Others argued for deregulation; just let the market decide how many spots it needs. Only one consensus emerged: nobody’s happy with our parking situation. This issue’s not going away.

Of course, not everyone wanted to talk about parking. Several praised the new plan’s emphasis on lower income housing and mixed-use developments, and others were satisfied with the revisions to building height limitations. Residents from both the Stadium and Hilltop districts expressed concern over being incorporated into downtown (naturally, their complaints were mostly about parking).

The best line of the night came when a Hillside resident compared the dead-ending 21st Street with Alaska’s infamous “bridge to nowhere.” Could Baarsma make a VP run in 2012?