Plans for the Future: Tollefson Plaza & Prairie Line Trail

If you’ve ever looked at Tollefson Plaza, sighed, and thought to yourself, “but why…?” there’s an open house coming up that you might want to attend.

For the month of December Tollefson Plaza transforms into Polar Plaza, and fills with ice skaters. The rest of the year the eight-year-old plaza has never quite lived up to the dreams we might have had for an open space in downtown Tacoma. Despite a variety of official and unofficial efforts over the years to activate the space, it remains largely inert.

A Renewed Tollefson Plaza?

Now the City and a group of stakeholders are revisiting the challenge. With the completion of Pacific Avenue streetscape improvements and the new face of the Tacoma Art Museum, and the completion of the UWT portion of the Prairie Line Trail and the imminent beginning of work on the City’s section, a new conceptual design for possible upgrades to the plaza is being developed. 

At an open house scheduled for Wednesday, December 10 the public will have the opportunity to learn about and comment on the concepts developed so far.

We haven’t heard the full explanation of concepts being considered, but there is one image included in the announcement of the open house (see above). The first thing that jumps out in this image is the amount of green added to the plaza – a line of trees along the Link side of the wedge-shaped main plaza, a double line of trees along the Pacific Avenue side, and an intriguing green space in the middle, labeled “Green the plaza.” There’s also a section of Link tracks (highlighted in yellow) labeled “New Link stop,” and a small strip at the northeast corner of the plaza along Pacific labeled “Food Truck Parking.”

That’s enough to get us excited for the future…

UPDATE: We now have images of phases 1 and 2 of the concept design that will be discussed at next week's open house. The image for phase 1 (updated above) shows the greened plaza, green buffer trees, possible new Link stop, and food truck parking, along with a completed Prairie Line Trail crossing across 17th and Pacific.

The phase 2 image (below) shows even more intriguing possibilities - an interactive water feature paralleling the uphill side of the Link tracks, along with a new retaining wall to "create gathering/Art area" in that under-utilized grassy wedge where the welcome figure stands between Tollefson and Commerce. That little triangle also shows trees buffering it from what will by then be the realigned 17th Street. At the north end of the main section of the plaza, the Phase 2 concept shows a "New 16' high street and plaza Cafe/Pavillion with public restrooms." 

Keeping in mind that these are only concept plans at this point - meaning subject to alterations - we're looking forward to learning more about them at the open house. If you've got opinions (and we know you do), now would be a great time to share them.

Prairie Line Trail

The open house will also be an opportunity for the public to see final plans for the first phase of work on the City-owned northern section of the Prairie Line Trail.

UWT completed work on its section of the PLT earlier this fall. Pending final environmental and construction permits, the City plans to begin work next summer on its first phase of the trail, connecting the now complete UWT section to the Foss waterfront.

From the looks of the image included in the open house announcement, it appears that at this point the Clear Channel billboard issue hasn’t quite been cleared up, and the City plans to work around the obstacle.

We look forward to learning more from the open house. In the meantime, what do you hope to see included in the plans for Tollefson Plaza and the Prairie Line Trail?

Open house details here.