June 24, 2013 · Exit133

Scoping: North Downtown Suabarea Plan & EIS

With Tacoma’s South Downtown and MLK Subarea Plan and Environmental Impact Statement planning processes nearing completion, attention now turns to North Downtown. The City is now in the public scoping phase, gathering citizen and stakeholder comments, concerns, and ideas related to the EIS for Tacoma’s north downtown.

The planning process will develop the framework for development between South 15th and the Stadium District, downhill to the Foss Waterway, and uphill to Yakima Avenue.

The process will create a plan for future development, including some of the 60,000 new jobs and 70,000 new residents Vision 2040 requires Tacoma to anticipate by 2030, and up to 30 million square feet of new north downtown development that could come with that growth. Artist renderings show what maximum build-out could look like (see above, or download the notice below for more).

The subarea plan will shape where we see new housing, employment opportunities, and open spaces; and identify infrastructure and transportation options to support it. The EIS will consider the environmental impacts of all that new growth, and ways of mitigating those impacts.

The proposed project involves development of an innovative, area-wide subarea plan for Tacoma’s North Downtown Subarea, which will become an optional element of the City’s Comprehensive Plan. Together with the subarea plan, a non-project EIS is being prepared that will evaluate the probable adverse environmental impacts associated with various alternatives that are part of the subarea plan and identify measures that will be used to mitigate the impacts identified.

Comments will be received through July 19, including at a public meeting this Wednesday, June 26. Download the full notice below. Read more previously from Exit133.

This process is intended to encourage and shape future development for the next 20 years and beyond, and to provide certainty for both developers and citizens in the long-term. So, who’s got opinions?

📎 Attached document

Filed under: Downtown Tacoma, Neighborhoods, City Projects, North Downtown Planning

16 comments

Jesse June 24, 2013

Seventy thousand more people by 2040 in north downtown? Wow. It'd be nice but is it achievable? That's 2600 people added a year. Where are they going to put them all? This deserves a "good luck with that."
Dan June 24, 2013

Maybe those numbers are for the entire downtown area. Even so, they'd be pretty optimistic. I know that citywide they have to plan for 127,000 by 2040, which is ten years later. http://www.cityoftacoma.org/cms/one.aspx?portalId=169&pageId=30055
Dan June 24, 2013

Scratch the ten years later part. The article above mixes Vision 2040 with the year 2030. Maybe a typo?
fred davie June 24, 2013

Stop promoting population increases. There are enough people here already. We're supposed to be focusing on sustainability. Increasing our populaiton every year is not sustainable.
Xeno June 25, 2013

@ Fred Davie - The City will stop focusing on population increases once people stop reproducing. Anyways, density is the route to sustainability.
tacoma1 June 25, 2013

Building up is certainly sustainable. Within Tacoma's city limits, we have virtually unlimited space vertically, but obviously limited space horizontally. And as a current Tacoma taxpayer, I will welcome additional taxpayers.
fred davie June 25, 2013

Every time more people move to Tacoma it makes our city a better city? And this is sustainable for how long? And there are no negative tradeoffs? And people shouldn't even question the default policy of ramping up our population?
- tacoma1 June 25, 2013
  
  I must have missed the mayoral procreation proclamation. Planning for future growth is far better than trying to figure out what to do about it after it has already occurred. Besides, I'm pretty sure that our city council has no influence on how many times couples couple. For regional sustainability, the plans for more density in downtown Tacoma is far preferable to the current trend of selling off farm land in the Fife and Puyallup valleys to single family housing developers.
fred davie June 25, 2013

"Planning for future growth is far better than trying to figure out what to do about it after it has already occurred." So, as long as we "plan" for future growth it will be sustainable? How about having a mayor who will use the bully pulpit to advocate for more FAMILY PLANNING and LOWER birth rates so that our children and grandchildren might inherit a society worth inheriting? I'm OK with a goal of sustained population at about 198,000 people. Sustain is actually the root word of sustainability.
- tacoma1 June 25, 2013
  
  First off, if Tacoma wants to remain an influential voice in Pierce County politics and policy, it has to grow. Puyallup, Fife, Lakewood etc. will all be growing, so to remain relevant, the city needs to continue to grow. Ideally at a rate faster than the surrounding smaller cities. Otherwise, Puyallup will become larger and more influential than Tacoma, and therefore be able to dictate our fate in Pierce County elections (no wait, they already do that). Secondly, I thought that conservatives didn't like government telling them what to do? Why on earth do conservatives like to creep in to everyone else's bedroom?
fred davie June 25, 2013

Let's see. Cities can not be relevant or influential unless they grow. So if every city in the world was twice as large as it is today then it would be more relevant and more influential? That doesn't make sense. Also, maybe you misunderstood my previous comment. I didn't say the government should creep into peoples bedrooms. I said Mayor Strickland should use her bully pulpit to advocate for family planning. Explain the consequences on our society of overpopulation. All leaders should do this either conservative or liberal. Hard to believe a liberal like yourself would have such a cavalier attitude about population increases and resource depletion. One minute you are trying to get people to ride the bus to save gas... the next minute you're advocating larger populations. You do understand the relationship between population and resource depletion...don't you?
- Xeno June 25, 2013
  
  First off Malthus, I don't believe we are anywhere near our carrying capacity for having an unsustainable population. At least regionally. The urban growth of Tacoma is predicated on density where utilities and resources can be better centered rather than in the exurbs and suburbs of the county where growth is less sustainable and the energy spent to support that lifestyle is high. We should effectively be promoting growth in our urban cores as a sustainable measure. Second, I find it moronic to have Mayor Strickland out there putting condoms on bananas as part of her mayoral duties. You somehow think Tacoma's population growth is the spawn of a bunch of one night stands that were unplanned? Unreal.
fred davie June 26, 2013

"I don’t believe we are anywhere near our carrying capacity for having an unsustainable population." xeno So you don't disagree with me in principle, only in degree? So what is the carrying capacity of Tacoma in your opinion? 1M? 5M? 20M? 100M? How did you make your determination? Should cities be advocating for greater density when they haven't yet determined their long term carrying capacity? Also, are there social problems the Mayor should be weighing in on and other social problems she shouldn't be weighing in on? I would much prefer that the mayor give a demonstration using a banana in advancing the cause of population control rather than lecturing the citizenry on the imaginary problem of race relations. Condoms are a lot less expensive than apartment buildings.
- Xeno June 26, 2013
  
  The regional context of food supply, transit, and housing still all make sense in Washington. It would have to be scientifically studied but Tacoma is a population of 200,000+, low in the context of sustainability when you look at historical cities that survived without our amenities, fossil fuels, ect. Rome had a population of 5 million before it was sacked. The state in its entirety is over 6 million. If that puts things in context for you...
fred davie June 26, 2013

Xeno, if we are going to base our regional planning on anecdotal evidence of ancient Rome then we will have to answer this question: did the Romans enjoy living in a city with a population of 5,000,000? Quite frankly, we don't have any way of knowing if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Back in that era there were lots of untapped resources like lots of clean air, clean water, farm land, bountiful fishing stocks, forests, We don't have that luxury of overabundant resources any longer. We are running low on many resources. Therefore, I think it's OK to ask.... when will our population be sufficient?
- Xeno June 26, 2013
  
  My point was cities even back then were no where near carrying capacity. Even with limited fossil fuels, we have more than enough land that can be productive to support 10's of millions of people in this State. You somehow characterize the state as absent of resources to support its population, when I really think that is untrue. Our population will ultimately be sufficent when we come to cusp of famine and/or when quality of life has decreased to a certain level that is deemed unacceptable societally.