Economic Development Committee - Regular Meeting

In progress. Good

morning. I was called to order the economic development committee meeting of 03/10/2026. Please hold. Vice Chair Bushnell? Present.

Council Member Palmer? Here. Council Member Scott? Here. Chair Diaz absent.

Chair Diaz will be here soon, but we'll go ahead and get you started. But we're gonna be moving on to public comment, but we can brief.

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You have hit in person. How long is the good stuff and the.

Let's for go seven for three minutes.

I'm gonna actually pass.

You're gonna pass. Okay. Very well. So, Kit, it's passing. So thank you, Kit, for for joining us today. Next up, we have our briefing items. Our first briefing item is 2026.7 downtown co loan partnership update, and I'll be calling down David Trudell from downtown co loan partnership. Thank you for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

Nice to start. Thank you.

So as close to you guys as you want. Yeah. Or with your bright up. Can put

on my bike. And you know?

Then you can see too many of my notes. That's the problem. K. Well, thank you for having me. It I I will confess that it is still only a couple days after daylight savings, and my kids for sure are still feeling it. I'm feeling a little bit. So, I'm high on the coffee right now, totally running quick. So if I need to slow down at all, tell me. If you know me, you know I can get going pretty good. So I see everyone is flipping through our lovely 2025 report. This is about everything we did last year. You're welcome to keep flipping through it. I am gonna look at something different, though, at the same time, which is gonna be the slide deck up there. You can pay a notation if you want. So next slide.

Want to ask if this are

being able to still tap me. So

Oh, yeah. Loading. So, yeah. It was a big file, so it's pretty quick drive, so we're working on it. I guess the short version is I'll start with a little bit of background about the DTP. We were actually born in 1988 as, one of the first business improvement areas in Washington State. There's a specific portion of our CWs that allows us to exist. The way we exist is that we work in partnership with the city. The city collects the funds from the ratepayers and property owners, and then as we spend it, it reimburses for that those expenses. We've been doing that since 1988.

Every ten years, we have to go out for renewal of the property owners. Our most recent one was in 2018. I'm I'm proud to say that, you know, the 74% who voted, we had 99% support. There's literally one property owner who said no, and they wrote on their ballot because we weren't expanding the boundaries far enough. And I guess that's important, though.

That 99% support was with expansion of the boundaries by 40%, with an increasing rates kind of across the board, adding a only rate class, and increasing the services we provide, going from a five day a week service to a seven day a week service, adding some stuff beyond safe and clean. Up until 2038, we have been exclusively safe and clean. Well, if you're counting the ten years, our next renewal then comes up in 2028. So it's just around the corner for us, and we are really focused on it. I I don't want to assume anything, but I'm confident that we'll get renewed if we need the work to get renewed, but that's still hanging out there. And so I'm consistently aware of, like, how the property owners are responding to work we're doing. Are they supported by the hey. Brief history. Perfect. I think that's most of what it is there.

Our work plan budget rates, we start the process back in December when I present to the board, and that takes about six months by May when we start a new fiscal year. Is one of the steps in the process. Coming, talking to you guys, having a conversation, economic development committee, then it'll end up going to council for a vote. So you don't see a specific resolution coming today, but that is part of the council agenda. There we go.

One of the things we did this year was we hired an international downtown association to look at Downtown Tacoma to understand what makes it different from other downtowns in the country, what classification we call it to, and what makes it different from the rest of Tacoma. So there's a bunch of data on these slides that I'm not really gonna go through it piece by piece because you don't fall asleep on me. But I will note that very first the very first bullet, death from population has significantly increased since the year 2000. We're up sixty two percent. That is a huge number as far as population increase.

The rest of the city is up, I think, about 12%. Should put that number up here. But that's a huge difference. So we're seeing huge growth downtown, but that means it's more residents, mean more need for amenities and the types of things that residents expect in the community. I'll also note down a couple that 40% of Tacoma's knowledge industry jobs are in Downtown Tacoma. That's a big percentage. Those are the high wage, family wage jobs that you can expect people come to Dakota to get. 40% of those are just in the area of Tacoma. The area of Tacoma is what we're finding here is about a point seven square mile area. It's a little tiny slice.

It's two sets of tracks out there in the downtown core here, and that's where the bulk of those jobs are. Not everything is so rosy, though. You'll notice, the very first one up there, median household income in downtown is only $40,000 a year. That's those residents we were talking about. The median job wage in Downtown Tacoma is over $80,000 a year. So that means a lot of people in Downtown Tacoma do not have the jobs that are in Downtown Tacoma. There are plenty to do. And as we build more market rate housing, we'll see more of that start to shift. But we have a really low income median household income in Downtown Tacoma. It's one of the things that I'll talk about later. Farmers market's so important. Other amenities are important. People think downtown, oh, it's thriving. It's got lots of money. The residents do not.

Like, you'll notice the last bullet in that section as well. Average life expectancy in downtown is four years shorter than in the rest of the city. That's problematic. We don't have open spaces. We don't have parks. We're not connecting those types of things. People are spending less time outside being active than they are in the rest of the city. All of the state is in there. It gives us an opportunity to really invest in downtown to improve those life expectancy metrics. That's frightening. The income and the life expectancy are tied together. Anybody who does this knows that as you decrease income, life expectancy goes down as well. So those two can go hand in hand. But there's lots of potential here. There's lots of prosperity.

I know there's some dollar numbers about value per square foot in Dan or per square mile in Dan and Tacoma. I will note that just in the last three years, over half $1,000,000,000 has been invested in residential development in downtown. That's a huge number, and that's the reason one of the reasons we're seeing such an increase in the presence. We need more investment. We wanna attract more investment, whether it's residential, whether it is office rehabs, whether it's new construction commercial. We want it all. We've got plenty of capacity for it, We just need to keep doing it. So there's a whole bunch more in the report. The report is, like, at the ninetieth percentile. I was gonna put a QR code up here so you can go to find it, but it's, like, right there.

They're sitting on it finishing up the last bits of college that's coming. We are one of several BIAs in Washington State. There's about a dozen throughout the state. Most of them are in Seattle, to be honest, and there's a few of them that are not. And so the first three you know, it's a little hard to see from here. Dan to Tacoma partnership is the first column. Dan to have Spokane partnership is the second column. Dan Hunt and Everett Association is the third column. The other ones are Seattle, including Dan Hunt Seattle Association, which you'll notice has an annual budget. I can't read it from here.

Of 20 almost 27,000,000 a year. Our annual budget runs a little over 2,000,000 a year. The revenue we get per block is $17,000 per block. You'll notice that's about half of any other BIA out there. Or if you wanna go Downtown Seattle, it's five times one fifth or something like that of what they have.

I'll also note that downtown Seattle Association overlaps with the Pioneer Square Alliance. As you'll notice down on the rate structure, Pioneer Square Alliance does a a use assessment, while Downtown Seattle Association does a land assessment and a value assessment. And so that's how those all fit together. So downtown Seattle Association provides safe and clean services for Pioneer Square. Pioneer Square provides the marketing and recruitment and activation kind of stuff down there more so. And so they kind of work hand in hand, but they are overlapping. There's actually a third one that overlaps, which is the Visit Seattle one, which is just our hotels and places like that that also overlaps with the Binder Square Alliance, Seattle Association. But they can coexist. They can do different things. They work together pretty well.

That is all to say we are extraordinarily efficient with ratepayers' money, and that's, I think, one of the reasons we have such broad support with property owners is because they see the work we're doing for the little bit of money it is that goes into the pool. Our board, as you can see on the left side there, is made up of property owners. We have some of the significant properties down in Tacoma, University of Washington Tacoma, to J Squared, to McCall Shaw. I mean, McCall Shaw is the person. Shaw Ellison is the company.

There's a number of these major property owners that are part of it as well as some smaller ones as well as a condominium resident. We try and really have a robust kind of crosscut of who's here. I'm excited that I've got both an owner operator on the retail side as part of it as well. Each of these field brings a different perspective to what's happening downtown, trying to encourage some geographic diversity, gender, race, age, all of it. We wanna have that mix in there. And it's a bit of kind of a robust perspective of what's going on and how it will continue downtown. Our whole team, we have a good sized team that's working downtown. All in, we're we're sitting at about 19 people on the doing this work. And so we're out there every day kinda trying to work to meet downtown. How does the assessment actually work?

Well, we have a use assessment and a land assessment. And so those two parts are separate. Under the use assessment, there's a high use and a low use. High use is almost everything. Low use are the things that don't generate a lot of activity. So think warehouses, parking garages, those types of things are in that low use category. Long term, they can build things in the low use category. Some people think they should be high because you've got more demand for potential fee service and stuff like that. They're low use category. High is pretty much everything else. Land use, and that's based

on the square footage of

the building. Land use is just that personal area. That's it. So we got a working story building on it or it's vacant land. It's just the area of parcel. You take those, multiply them times the rate you'll see at the bottom, and that gives you an amount per year. So for this 32,000 square foot building sitting on a 10,000 square foot lot, you're looking at about a little under $6,000 a year. And so if you compare that to property taxes, we're charging about, 16¢ a square foot on that high use category. Property taxes are running typically about $3 a square foot. And so the property I was looking at, they're seeing a property tax bill, they're seeing our assessment bill, they look very, very different in terms of the kind of the order of magnitude. And they also look different in terms of what you can directly see as a result of that. Property taxes go. They get split up. There's parks. There's schools.

There's city. There's everyone under the sun. This is very clear. Oh, there's that person that were greedy. Oh, there. So we can street today. Oh, when I called to get a walk to my car, they're right there with us. So they can see that hands on, which a lot of really appreciate. It's that direct service model that is so valuable. All in all, it adds up to the better you see there. Predominantly funded by the high use rate. So the square footage and building is going up, and then about the other half of it is between the low use rate and the land rate. How do we spend the money? We spend almost two thirds of it on safe and clean. That's been our core mission since 1988.

We started adding more of that welcoming category in 2018, going through that renewal process, talking to property owners. We did a big survey, had about 800 respondents, and, heard that people love the work we're doing. They want more reasons to come downtown, reasons to stay downtown, more things to do. And, of course, they complain about barking because we can't talk about doing that without barking. But the stuff we could do was the welcoming piece. So we focused on the welcoming piece, and we're spending a lot more doing that work. Today's report. So what did we do last year? You're gonna see a lot of this data in the report that looks much prettier in the report. This is David doing a PowerPoint, not the great communications team putting together a report.

So, I'm gonna play blaze through these pretty quickly. This is the safety team. We actually, had a significant number of public disturbance. Think of this as someone standing in the street shouting having a really bad day. Typically, on those types of responses, we'll go. We'll talk to them. We'll try to move them out of the street. We'll try and deescalate the situation. That's where our mandate is. My team knows if you're touching someone, you're doing it wrong. It is really persuasion coming alongside people to do the stuff, not forcing anyone to do something. If it gets to the force level, that's a TP call. That's not us. And so we're really here's the expectations. How can we help you?

What can we do with you today? So that's what you'll see on the. Clean team, it is a little hard to see up there, but the top line is graffiti numbers, and you'll see that we peaked. So way back, we were doing 2,000 takes a year. Up to that number of over 5,000 takes in 2024, that was really unmanageable, pulling our team from doing other parts of our, service program, which meant graffiti is kind of top of the list for us because if you don't take it down, it multiplies quickly. You see one tag, and the tick pops up, and another one pops up, and it just multiplies. So that's kind of at the top of our services. So we're taking what we're doing. Thankfully, in 2025, it started to tick back down. Yearly trash holds have stayed pretty consistent.

It's hard to imagine what damage to come would look like if we have 10,004 pounds of trash on the street every single month. That's a tough thing to prove the absence of. Graffiti is the same, but I think that trash people could envision. Like, a thousand pounds of trash is not nothing. 10,000 pounds of trash is really not nothing. And so the DTP team is out there seven days a week cleaning the streets. Or that's incident response, say someone left a mask, dress in the room, or somebody pick them up, get their dog to our standard street clean. We get every every street damage come at least once a week, sometimes multiple at that time. What does that look like in action? Hopefully, you've seen our fun little sweeper out there. We ended up not naming it. We seriously considered giving

it a name in plastering.

Oh, but we didn't do it. I know, but that's we we were not creative enough. I'm sorry. I missed anything. So we're after sweeping. You can see underneath we pressure wash all the sidewalks in downtown. It takes us about two years to make a full cycle. We're running a little behind because of that big graffiti thing we have that we talked about in 2024. So we're probably looking closer to three years right now to get caught up, but we pressure wash every sidewalk. It is amazing if you're out there and you see them working and you can see where they've been. You're like, I didn't realize it was that dirty. This is white. That's black. How how do we not even notice it? But people do notice it. People feel gut stuck in the sidebar, just general. You can see the tag removal. We do remove the tags. We don't paint over them. Oftentimes, that leaves a little bit of residue behind it.

It's can be damaging to paint, but it gets rid of the tags so it doesn't multiply. We We fly our baskets. We clean up messes like this. So we've got some trash cans that are prone to getting tipped over either because of heavy winds or because of specific people. We know that do that. That's our team that comes out and cleans that up afterwards. And so without that, this would sit there. And I don't know who or what would clean it up. It might be a call to city and environmental services. I don't know if they do that, to be honest.

This or probably fall back to the property owner or the tenant in that building to try and clean that up. So these are things that clean teams out there doing that people can see every day that progress. Then we're gonna do the fun stuff, welcoming. So, hopefully, if you're not following us on Instagram, this QR code will take you straight there so you can follow us. Although it might be cut off just a smidge, but you should follow us to keep track of everything great that's going on downtown From the yoga place in the upper left that opened this last year. If you haven't been to 3rd Space, I'll kinda hold this up for the cameras. Yes. That's where I was

at this morning.

To sushi, to I mean, there's so many things. Farmer's Market, the new comedy club. Lameka down there in the lower right, she opened in 2025 and just doubled her space about a month ago, maybe two months ago. And so she has a craft space just down here on Broadway, kind of almost kitty corner from that basically teaches people how to sew, what's crafting groups, those types of things. We're actually gonna work with them more to do some of it at the farmer's market as kind of an activation during the market.

But these are the way all these kind of areas that come together to create a place where people wanna be, people wanna hang out, people wanna come to. And so whatever it is that's going on downtown, we wanna highlight it and let people know what's going on. I I can talk about any of these. Just the reason the team put it up here. But I think there's always something going on downtown. And if you wanna track that, our Instagram is a great place to do that. One of the questions I always get asked is openings and closings downtown. Yes. The pandemic hit, and we had a number of closings. We didn't catch this right at the beginning of 2020, I will acknowledge.

So there might have been some before we got it, but we've had more openings and closings every year since then. And I have a lengthy list. It's in the, in a report of every business, and we focus on storefronts. So if it's going on upstairs, we're not focused on that. There are other people who really are, but we wanna create the streetscape environment where people wanna be so that people do lease the space upstairs so that people do wanna rent downtown or buy a condo downtown or just come downtown and go out. Right? It's like, we wanna create that space. So we're focused on that streetscape element. And so we had a great number of openings again this year with some really good stuff, and there's good stuff coming. In 2024, we were approached by the farmers market.

We said we're gonna have close the market down here to find you. So our team stepped in. We took over management of the farmers market midway through the season of 2024. It still is in a financial financially precarious position. So if you know of anyone who wants to sponsor or anything like that, we're happy to add them to market. That is Catherine in the upper left. She is our Farmers Market manager. She came out midway through the 2024 season. We kind of held it steady through 2024 and then started to really invest in growth in 2025. We saw a 40% jump in vendor sales in 2025 from 2024. We did other things to make it more welcoming, like adding live music every single week, adding more cables and chairs if you've been out there. I'm sure you've seen, like, you get your lunch, like, where's your to sit? I'm gonna sit on the curb. That's not a welcoming environment. That doesn't say we want you here.

So we're investing in those types of things where we broke up the food, so all the food wasn't in one area. It's spread out so you can walk the market. It's less congested at one end. We're doing a lot of these little bits to make the market more welcoming. I mentioned, the link here earlier, we're gonna be adding some additional activations this year. So keep your eyes open. And if you don't know who wants to bend, vendor applications are open right now. So I encourage everyone who has an idea to test to that at the market. It's a great place to incubate a business. We also have started events.

The block party, hopefully, everyone is aware of that. We had about 9,000 people come to it this last year. The we started it was this is our second year of doing it this past year. How long trick or treating? We had 300 people show up two years in a row in the rain to trick or treat on Broadway. That's where we've got the small businesses. They all come out. If you've been to a rock or treat, it's like that. They're, like, one tenth of the size. Thank goodness. But people come out, great costumes, great fun. People are excited to be out. We know we've got a lot of kids living downtown. I think sometimes people forget that, especially in places like the where it is a family friendly building there. And so this is bringing that opportunity to them instead of asking them go somewhere else to do the trick or treating.

And then we're so fortunate to partner partner with the city this last year in downtown for the holidays. It allowed us to do a winter market. We had about a thousand people come to that winter market. We had 20 vendors, most of whom we'd never been a vendor in Downtown Tacoma, who walked away saying, when can we do this again? And it's like, that's what we want. Now the challenge, of course, in this is that if you'll you'll see those tents, it's all just individually tented outside. So we're really super weather dependent, which is a real risk. And if you're familiar with first night at all in downtown, that lived or died based on whether it was gonna be raining or not. And so we know we can't do a market every year and keep our fingers crossed with the weather. It's great to be sustainable.

So what I think we are trying to figure out is, is there a way to cover at least part of the plaza out there? So if you're looking for a big swing in downtown, there's a big swing in downtown, but that would be a great opportunity to make more of the plaza usable in the shorter seasons and potentially even into winter. But we had a thousand people come through vendors that were active. We marketed in addition to that, we did new banners. We marketed a bunch of the businesses downtown, reminding people about what you could buy downtown, things that we shouldn't forget, and just really a good general activation season.

We do a lot to create community in Canada. I mentioned Instagram. We've got 13,000 followers there. We get really high engagement. You know, it's not like one to two likes. It's you know, if we have less than a 100 likes, it's like, I don't know. Why did why did this not engage more? We get really good engagement on that. We do a little bit less on Facebook. Great newsletter open rate. That's a little bit longer form as you might expect. And we do about 10 community meetings a year. So we get about 30 people to come out to each one, and it's usually to find a new space. So last month, we're at Commencement Bank, which they had just renovated and opened a new space down in what I always call the gold building down there at 13th And Broadway. P and Y Mellon has been in there.

Others have been in that space. They have renovated. They wanna show off their regular community tour of their space and talk about, in addition, what else is going on downtown. Next month, we'll be right up the street here at Prohibition Sellers, first Thursday of the month, 9AM. Always welcome to join us. Prohibition Sellers just opened its new business. They're just open within the last month. A new winery is right across the street from the banks up the street there. And so we always wanna highlight new and interesting things, do a good round robin so people can share what they know about what's going on downtown and just celebrate downtown as a whole. So you're any of you are always welcome to join us there. It's always a good conversation. Downtown development. There's a couple of different so there's two maps kinda overlapping. The green is our service area. That's where the DTP is.

The blue is what the city defines as its downtown, which is a lot bigger. So it includes the dome. It includes Stadium District. It includes, Goodchucka Hilltop. That's what the city Our service area is just that little green piece there in the middle. And you can see all of those dots are different dots of residential development that are coming into the kinda what I call the greater downtown footprint. And so you'll see there's a lot of development going on. This last year, we've seen leases start well, actually, certificates of occupancy on Old City Hall. So we're seeing people actually committed that. It's been a long time coming.

We've been tracking this at all. Down below that is the renovation of old building that then became to Vida that's now turning into residences. That's been kind of talked about that needed financing to work and everything else, and now it's flying forward. I'd love seeing the cranes in there every day. It's gotta be coming online probably. And that's gonna guess there's gonna certainly start within the next three months or so. In the lower right, Rialto Apartments, which is literally at the end of the block here for you all. That finally changed hands from kind of human services to Great Expectations. Great Expectations know how to do long term residential and commercial, which has been great. So if you walk to that end of the block, Knight, you'll see all of the new business lines that are going up.

There's new stuff opening. There's another wine cellar, dance studio, salon, the the cookie slash bakery place, the bowl play, and, like, they're actually investing in that space. We have been bringing to our property or potential tenants and not getting any calls back whatsoever. So now we've got someone who's actually, yes. We want retail here, and it's gonna really change the clock that Saint Paul is on here hugely. And then in the upper right, I have to call it out. It's UWT's master plan. And so if you are tracking it, this is their plan for the next twenty years. And oftentimes, there's a question. Is this plan gonna sit on the shelf, or are you gonna have it out on the table working on it?

They already have an RFP out or an RFQ out, eight responses to build new student housing on campus. They've got a merit at four that continues to move forward. It's a real project. It wouldn't have happened without the master plan in place. And so we're seeing the investment in that area, which benefits all of downtown. So you're gonna see more happening in that as well. It's a little harder for us to track it in the same way, because it's kind of inside the university, but we have a really good relationship with the university. So we try to keep track of those things as well. I always like to highlight a few headlines that we've seen in the news. I'm actually gonna start in that lower right, the wave of matcha sweeping the country.

So when we get a local business that's highlighted with quotes and callouts in a national, potentially international publication, that is great for them to go. It's like, hey. Where are the big matcha hotspots? Oh, New York and Seattle and Tacoma. And it's like, yay. Hooray for Ginjet. Right? And so those highlights, love. And I think people continue to notice, hey. There's this thing going on in Tacoma. It's kinda cool. What is it? And so anytime we can get one of this out there and help highlight that this is happening in Tacoma, the better it is for kind of all sectors of Tacoma. Above that, Washington Trust Bank. I don't know if you saw that they bought what used to be the old expensive bank building. It's kind of the six story, a little bit of funky building right there on 11th Of Broadway. We're seeing a lot of investment on Broadway right now. We saw j squared pick up properties. We invested in them. We saw MJR invest in the Tacoma Center project.

Shop Ellison picked up a property along there. There's a bunch of things going on right there on Broadway between 13th And 9th. They're really excited to see, and they're picking this up and wanting to fill that building with active uses of banks. They help fill space. They've got great employee. They're not necessarily person walking in the street.

You know what? I'm gonna stop here. I'm get

a savings account today. Mhmm. They're not that customer focused in that way. And so we'd love to see that they're looking at potential retail options. Come and Eatery, if you don't know, Wooden City, they are moving to Broadway as well. So that 1102 building in Broadway, they're growing there. They're tripling in size. They have roughly 50 seats down here. When the pandemic hit, we actually helped fund their outdoor seating area, if you're not familiar with that, and some other ones in downtown. But they're moving from that space into the 11 Or 2 Broadway space.

It's supposed to open up about a month. So our community meeting tentatively, if you wanna join us, the first week of May is gonna be half Wind City. So we can see it all and show it off and get a tour and talk with the owner there about what's going on. But the fact that he has invested in restaurants from Birmingham to Chattanooga to Spokane, and yet he's coming back to Tacoma and saying, Tacoma's my home. I wanted to more here. There's real potential here. There's gonna be potential. That's everything else. I think it says a lot about what he's seeing in Tacoma. Lastly, I think I mentioned it before.

It's the DaVita building conversion. DaVita, that West Showettfield building is now gonna become residential, and that project continues to report, and we're excited excited about more housing coming down. Like I said, it's gonna cover a lot. Talk pretty quickly. Do you have questions? What more do you want me to talk about?

That's me. You wanna start?

We can start. Thanks, David. That was very Or what? More of a no. Like, I I love it. I love information, so that was very helpful for me. I had a couple questions about, how how does it work collecting the the rate from, like, the vacant properties? Is is that is there a high success rate of doing that, or is there a little bit of an issue with that?

That's a great question. I wish we had a higher success rate, but we have a really high success rate, so I can't really complain. So the reason that it's really valuable with the partnership with the city is the city sends out those invoices. So it's a city invoicing the property. So it's got a priority in position. So it's ahead of any mortgage, it's ahead of anything else. And so if it came to a foreclosure, we have never foreclosed on anything for PIA assessments. We would be at the top of the list to get paid. The flip of that is is when the town center parcels went to foreclosure, we weren't really there to make sure that we were getting paid back on. At the same time, those vacant parcels don't have a lot of this.

If You think about the 1,900,000 assessments that come in, and really we're getting out of them is. So it's that 6¢ per square foot. You know, 10,000 square feet is $600. 6. Oh, 600. I don't care. It's not a lot. And so, you know, the whole scheme of things, we don't stress about it too much. I would say that we have a pretty good rate. There are delinquent property owners, but when they get noticed after a couple years,

And then do you all keep track of I saw, like, the the openings and the closings of the businesses, which is awesome. You guys are tracking that. Do you keep track of of the vacant like, the amount of vacant buildings down there? So Or vacant buildings and business.

So we focus heavily on the storefronts. Mhmm. So I would say that we can tell you with probably 90% accuracy which storefronts are vacant. Generally, we like to say we got about a 160 storefronts in our downtown core. And so we typically run a healthy vacancy rate.

We don't want everything to be full. The challenge is we've got some states that are a bit long term vacant. And, you know, honestly, it's over there. The pioneer human services spaces or some of those spaces, right, that corner where the dough in place used to be a. And those spaces oftentimes will have either a property or property manager who doesn't really understand retail environment, or they're really challenging spaces that can't get leased easily that needs some significant investment.

And so we've seen the slow lease up of the 9th Of The Pacific there. The corner, there's a smoke shop. But in there, you know, the the Grays Craze, the little charcuterie places in there. So we're starting to see those stuff, but each one seems to take a little bit of time. And then we've got other places that, well, it'd be great to get somewhere in there. How quickly can we get someone in there? Like, a pizza place. Right? It's got kitchen in it. It's ready to go. It's, you know, got certain constraints around its layout inside, but it's ready to go for a restaurant. And if there's one thing we've seen, it's, like, restaurant ready spaces go pretty quickly. And so I think that one, when it's ready to go, it's gonna go quickly. So

And then you did mention that you had a property owner and somebody else took over, and then you were able to kinda help them find folks that are occupied. Is that, like, a normal thing that d t DTP does?

Yeah. Well and so I I guess it's I'm gonna do a little bit of a way back for you. And when we look at team, the city undertook a retail study Mhmm. And said, hey. If we wanna recruit retail in downtown, how do we do that? Where do we do that? And a firm by the name of downtown works put this report together. They said, here's some things you can do. One of the key things was hiring a retail advocate. And so but they also said, the city shouldn't hire that person.

This person needs to be outside the city, because city government employees carry certain connotations with it when you're working private sector. There's also limitations on what you can and can't do and everything else. And so make it outside and make it more flexible. And so partnership hired retail advocate in in coordination with the city, and the city funded about $40,000 a year at that position for quite some time. And there was a focus area that was designated, which is really this area that we're sitting in, kind of what I would call the Theater District area, to focus on the retail because there was this building.

There was a Winthrop Building. There was a number of vacancies that were small so that local businesses could fit enough, and we started to work on them. And what we found is it's really challenging. The Winthrop, the ownership group there has thousands of units throughout the country. But my understanding is that they're only retail in the entire world there. So retail for them looks a little different, and so it took a while to kinda talk through what that looks like. The pioneer human services building, rental apartments project here, a similar scenario. They're really good at doing affordable housing. But this is affordable housing in urban environments, funky units that also has commercial attached. What does that look like exactly?

And so we've found a way to fill up. We had until Sunny's moved out all of the retail on the Broadway side through a build, which hadn't happened at least fifteen years. Sorry. I have an extra fifteen years. At least that long since the development bill.

And I was, you know, one space away from having it built. So the rental apartments project, it was clear that we needed someone who's gonna think a little bit differently about how to manage those units, both the commercial and residential. And, thankfully, Credit the Union Services realized that if they sold the building, they can take that money and invest it in other ways to serve their population or their their clients even better than they were here in downtown. And so that's what they did. We still have affordable housing as part of the portfolio, Dana, because they sold it to Great Expectations, who does affordable housing.

And so and it was a great off there. And Great Expectations just has more experience doing commercial and, you know, people working all with their black, you know, their history or connections to marketplace market and looking at micro retail there and how does what makes that successful, things like that. So I'm really excited about that partnership. And what what we're always one of the things that the retail that gets typically done here is how scouting other businesses, what could be a good fit for Downtown Tacoma, talk with them about benefits, what they'd see the things that look like, and then hopefully they come. Sometimes they come to downtown. Sometimes they are like, yeah. Tacoma sounds great. They got how do you bagel, and they'll go to South to go away. Mhmm. But, like, putting Tacoma on that map, it's everyone in

Tacoma even if So we

and from here, here, we have, like, one dedicated person that does that right now?

We had one dedicated person. There was focus to that. The contract with the city ended at the 2025. They're still doing a little of that work, but we're starting to shift some of that work where we've got other demands. We wanna keep doing that, but it's a little limited in our current space. So

And then, Tanya, can you help me understand? Because there's the program that the city has too with the new resolution of trying to help, you know, small businesses. And maybe it's a similar purview of of that work of trying to get those vacant buildings occupied with small business. Do do you two kind of work together? So which I'm not sure which resolution you're The resolution.

There was one that Kiara that council member Daniel Oh, the best deal. Is that what it yeah. Yeah. So it's it's a little bit different, but, I mean, I think the headline is that we do work really deeply and especially, Debbie and and Carol's teams, they work really deeply with the DTP. And then I meet with David once a month, and we all meet with our different organizations.

So we are I mean, we're literally talking about this all the time on all different levels on, you know, David and my levels on Debbie and Carol's levels with the resolution. The best team, you know, working on different areas, not just in the downtown, but also in the rest of the city. Right. Because definitely, you know, we've got a really strong DTP. And what we're trying to do is in the various business districts, figure out how we can get, you know, a little bit more, coverage around the city. Did that answer your question? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. And I'll just note that Yeah.

You know, I work with Tanya and a lot of kind of some strategic things with Debbie very closely on all of the stuff that's dated. Would talk at least once a week, if not more often than that, just about what's going on, how big you're looking, what's assessed this project, did you hear about this, those types of things. So

One One more more question, if that's okay. No. Okay. With the graffiti, because there's, you know, there's the argument, I guess, that could be made, know, if if there were more buildings that were full, if if there were more in that that position of getting those filled, there'd be less graffiti, so we wouldn't have to put money toward our people go. We wouldn't have to put money towards that. It's just it's something that's, I guess, near and dear to my heart is trying to build. So Absolutely. The more focus we can get on that, I think, the better. But, again, thank you for all of the information.

Yeah. Absolutely. I'm always happy to if you come up with questions later, and and this is true of any if you've got questions, just get me out of the mode. I love talking about the work because I think it's great work, and I think it'll have a huge impact in. Thank you.

Ma'am?

Thank you. Thank you for coming in today. I'm always really excited about the work you guys are doing, and I see your team out there all the time. I'm always, like, giving a shot, but I don't think they're gonna thanks. They do a really good job. One of the questions I had is in regards to there's been a lot of office to residential conversion attempts. I'll say attempts because it seems like it has some of those projects stalled out because it I know that there's been a couple of that that have kinda started, but I don't have necessarily seen an additional work happening. You know?

Yeah. I wouldn't say that I know of any of the deputy court that have actually started. There's one. So the Tacoma Tower project is the one I can think of. That one's run into some financing issues. The project proponents are still still believe in that project. And so it's one of the projects that they are trying to retain and retain control of the because they can take the project.

So I thought that includes the the potential they're trying Yes. To Yeah.

Yeah. And there's a lot of pieces on a project that we're all going at the same time. Mhmm. If they retain it, I do think they'll be focusing on one component at a time. Yeah. Because it it's great to have everything open at once because if you can kinda cross pollinate, but that's a lot to get going all at the same time as well. So I do know there's still belief in the project. There's actually some changes in the legislature. Food hall, it's alcohol they're going through right now that should actually make it easier to do their food hall project. I think that those are they're in this legislative session. I think they got passed, but I actually don't know that for sure. But I think there's there's potential progress there. That's the only one I know that's been paused, but there's other stuff we can talk about.

Yeah. I've had a chance to tour Yeah. At Cohen Tower, and

then Yeah.

They're really excited about it. The vision's great. I'd love to continue to see progress there or we can help push.

And I I will say that one of things that they brought up ages ago, and it's been a long time since then, is taking a a you know, putting our thinking caps and start looking, you know, how walkable it is. And is there a way to pass? Right? Well, walkable, more pedestrian friendly. It's you know, there are huge improvements that were put in from basically eleventh down to seventh. If we do that ninth to seventh stretch, it feels super walkable and super focused on pedestrian experience. That dies out once you kinda pass a buck. And so it feels very more car oriented down there. And so they were like, how can we push this in a pedestrian oriented fashion because we want outdoor seating, we want all of these elements. They're gonna make this kind of a urban neighborhood that people wanna walk around in.

So Oh, sorry. I was just gonna add a little bit more context. There's a lot of conversation about, converting office to residential. It is I'm not gonna say impossible, but it's pretty close to impossible, just because of the structure of buildings. So the the structure of, like, a office building just super simply and then converting that into, like, a residential.

It sounds like it should be really easy. Yeah. I mean, just I mean, I think probably the biggest issue is, like, HVAC and, you know, plumbing. Just, you know, how do you make a individual dwelling unit, you know, toilet, shower, you know, blah. So I think that there's a big kind of desire for office to residential conversion, but it just I think I remember in PSBJ, they had, like, a survey a couple of years ago about how many office buildings it would actually be possible, and they you know, kinda did, a bucket of of office buildings.

And it was, like, one in 25 or 30 might be possible. And then, you know, when you look at the financing, to actually get it financed, you pretty much have to, like, have a fire sale on the building in order to make a pencil to convert the building. So it's really unfortunate, but I I I think it's sounds like a really good idea, but it's really hard to

Yeah.

Well make a pencil.

Just so one of the things that we try to stay on top of current trends in the industry as far as downtown place management goes. That's what we use place management. And office to residential conversion has been a hot topic for a number of years now. People have. I think it's Calgary who has millions of square feet of office space available, like, literally millions, not from the oil industry up in Canada. And they're actually, basically, subsidizing developers, you know, 75¢ of a dollar to convert into residential. That's how much of a subsidy it takes to get that. Now Calgary's Tacoma, come to Cali like, it's just one example of how big that lift is sometimes to do that conversion.

So you're

saying to find the other one with those green rooftops? Yeah. Like, impossible.

They could get Because of the weight would do the construction of the entire building. Yeah. I could ride a lot. I love I feel like we there's underutilized rooftop space everywhere. Rooftop bar here, you know, rooftop this, that, there. But I know that that requires, like, structure to actually hold everything up. Another question I had is kind of and this is kinda,

I think, to both of you.

I know that with population density that they're they're they're kind of a sweet spot where a grocery store might make sense in downtown. Like, really, how close are we that, especially considering the population we're back on? Yeah. Like, I feel like we're, like, really on the constant, like, what's what's the actual person that puts

away? Nighttime population. Yeah.

It's a there's grocery stores are super hard nut to crack. And I I mean, I think, you know, Dave and I, we've talked about it and we talked about it in our our our g ten meetings with all of the different organizations. Grocery stores will literally have, like, down to the millimeter really of strict formulas. And it is everything from what is the actual building structure have to look like and contain, what kind of power does that have to have, how many exact parking spaces do they have to have. Then also, the big thing is the catchment area.

So they don't care about the daytime population. So if it's, you know, in downtown and you have a huge daytime population, what they want is the nighttime population. And there has to be a certain income level, there has to be a certain quantity within the drivable area, and then they also have the overlay of then how many other grocery stores are there of that type in the area so they don't cannibalize each other. Know, I've I've talked with everybody from, you know, Whole Foods to Sprouts to, you know, discount, whatever to and it's really, really complicated. And so it's just really a a I think at this point, a, a density thing, but then b, having the right space for them because they're I mean, down to the millimeter specific about what they, what they need.

But we're always in conversations, you know, whenever we can find an opportunity with some, grocery store that might be interested.

Good. And just to add on that a little bit, I think, you know, the so the large chains, the safe work, etcetera, have very specific requirements, and that's one of the ways that they keep kind of those luxury items and the high part of things right here. That's kind of the whole idea of, like, your milk is your loss that

you might lose, you know,

a percent of the milk, but you're gonna make 10% of box crackers that has shelf life forever. Right? But how do you get your income in the community high enough as a total income number to support that? And it's I mean, Proctor is one of the reasons Proctor has two grocery stores. It's not because there's residential density.

It's because there's income density. And so people have enough money to spend on those items, you know, can can buy the box drivers. I know it's a little bit of a odd example, but they can spend on the things that are higher market items without thinking about it too much. Or you can talk a whole bunch of little stuff. I think what we've seen in our research is that the better fit for diabetic coma is finding some really good sometimes they're called microgrocers, but it's really your cornerstone or bodega.

Even a dense urban environments don't have bodegas all over the place. Now how do you get one that operates well? And so we've talked with a couple operators. We talked with for a little bit about doing a micro format and working with someone independently to do that so they provide the produce. So the runner always here is because it's independent grocery.

Right? So if someone wanted to open the grocery store, it wasn't the Safeway Corporation coming into doing this independent grocery product because it doesn't fit those other models. Yeah. And so as we look at it, I would encourage us to continue to think about how can we encourage people to have that data kind of format where you're talking a couple thousand square feet maybe, of space, maybe half that of space that can sell a few things, get a high turnover. I will also note that every Thursday starting April 2, you have your downtown growth here in the farmer's market.

So, we do have that, and we actually have a high percentage, I should say, high percentage, but a large number of users because we're able to match those funds so they can stretch the dollars further. And so while we don't have purchase of that, it's our stock today is that farmer's market. So

that's really good. Thank you for the additional information. But I think to to your point

with the nighttime population, that's where I think that you

got master plan for student housing. It's so important because now you're gonna have, like, students that are just, like, living there. So I'm really excited for that, but I will stop with my questions.

You. Council member Scott, do you have any questions on the line? Scott,

no. Sorry. I I don't have any questions. It took me a second to get on mute, but thank you for the presentation,

David. Okay.

I just wanna make sure because I see your little Zoom hand. I have one clarification question. Just because you didn't say it, I wanna say it for the record. But when you're comparing there was a slide where you're comparing the BIA square footage model property taxes.

Mhmm.

Folks in the BIA are paying both. Right?

Absolutely. Totally separate property taxes. Remember, the county and the county measurements. The assessments are probably an invoice from the city, but they pay for it. So we I

do that. I just wanted to make sure that we said that clearly that there's a not somehow exempt from property taxes because they're in a VA or they're

No.

Absolutely. Definitely opting to pick up.

They're opting to pick up.

Can I ask a question? Just anecdotally, I don't know if you have the answer, but with the farmers market that lasts for, you know, from April to October. Remember September. Yeah. Yeah. Have you noticed or, like, has JD noticed that there is more, I guess, activation of unique retail spaces, or is there more desire to open a retail space kind of in proximity to that area because of the farmer's market because you have that kind of consistent. So I guess the right. Anecdotally, do farmer's markets or things activations help to lease space?

They do. And I think all activations do to a certain extent. So I think they work both ways. And so Coke cookies, right, think our hoops bakers are very important. I I love the story because it demonstrate kind of how ecosystem basis is. They were trying to figure out a market to operate on. They saw us on Instagram, loved everything. We kind of Instagrams that we're gonna try to get into a bar market. Came to the market. So this is a great place to be.

We love being here. We connect them with the vacant space since they're they're opening probably in about four months in the corner here, like, literally across the street, but they're still coming back and bending at the market this season. And so it works in far as far as, like, bringing people here who might wanna open spaces as well as bringing that foot traffic out on the streets. In the before times, pre COVID, there was a leasing agent who said that they try to only bring clients down on Thursdays. Mhmm. Because everything was alive and hopping, and you saw the people. It's like, this is a place where everybody wanted to be. And so we know that that happens in that strength, whether it's retail, it's office, you name it. It's like, if I'm leasing space at, you know, 950 Broadway, and I'm here on Thursday, like, oh, man. I mean, my whole team could go out for a bar a lunch at the farmer's market on Thursday and pick up flowers and all that stuff.

Yet increases the value of that property and makes the lease more desirable. And I think that's what we're looking for. So I I will just my team was just talking about the the there's a Saint Patrick's Day run that's coming up this year. It always takes off kinda. Pacific ish. And some of the business are like, oh, you're closing out the street. That's like, it's in the morning. Kind of a slow time. That gets visibility out there. One of the business that's realized, you know what?

We could open our doors, invite everyone in for a place out of the weather, out of the cold, to stretch, and to start getting warmed up, and just let people know we're here and to see the inside. We're like, that is the way to do it. Get people who are there inside, whether they stay, whether they come back later, anything like that. You gotta you have to intentionally do it. So I think that's part of the intentionality.

The more activations

on the More activation always. And, you know, I I I will note that we're we're working with a couple of council members and some staff to figure out how we take advantage of some other tools to encourage additional activations on the street. So I think as you look to what can you do, not just in downtown, but throughout the city, I think if we can do this more activations, people love to think of this part of the app, whether it's, you know, the Haunted Farmers Market that we saw last week, things that bring people out of their homes and allow them to mingle. Those things are great for our city and just continue to say,

you know, my home's a bit

of a cool place. I think I wanna spend more time thinking about an employee or a business owner or a resident or just a visitor who's passing through. So

I just have two more questions. Yeah. Sorry. One is I feel bad asking it because I feel like I've heard about it every year that you've come, but I didn't hear about Plastic this time. Were they what happened? Where are they at?

They exist. Okay. They are actually closing some locations.

Okay.

I think that they were a really hot item from pandemic. Mhmm. And they still believe in the model, but they're having to kind of reset some of their expectations for growth. They still own the property, which I think is key. And so, you know, I've mentioned it before. This is the only property that they've actually bought. Mhmm. And this is something where they're gonna lease it. The buyer's like, no. They're like, well, we'll just buy it, then they're built. The buyer's like, no. I guess so. And so they sold them the property. Now they've done some work in there. It's not anywhere near ready to go. So it's not something that's suitable. I don't know what the growth plan currently is. It's not for sale. They still are retaining ownership. I think they still seek to come up the map. I think it's just not quite clear with

Okay. They're figuring themselves out.

They're figuring themselves out. K.

Other question I had was around, I guess, more of a thought than a question. While I do think we need more activation, we need more bodegas, I guess, maybe I have two questions. One was what kind of infrastructure do we currently have to create more bodegas, and what would the city need to do to help with that infrastructure?

I think the challenge is operators. Okay. Like, I think most people so if you go to New York City, that bodega may be in the family region. Hey. I come here all the time, and you're gonna retire in Hawaii. You know? It's it's kind of an organic thing. We don't have that culture of bodegas Mhmm. Here. And and, you know, using it loosely is like a place that sells your basic needs hopefully has some healthy food to make a sandwich. Right? Mhmm. So if you cut out the sandwich making, then a salt market, you know, you've got a salt market just frustrated here. It kinda has that. Mhmm.

But it's not there's a way to elevate it. And we've seen some out there that are elevated in some other communities. My favorite one is actually kind of in the suburban area of Nashville where they clearly they've got, like, whole, like, food area in the neck of the whole bodega area, and it works really well. It's a space where people just wanna hang out because it's the community hub. Totally one of, like, a million. Right? And so how do we find an operator that can elevate it to that? I think that, when it comes to what can the city do, there's always that question around how do you get your grease trap stuff in. Mhmm. How easy or not easy is it?

And right now, everyone thinks it's really, really hard. Mhmm. That doesn't mean it is really, really hard, but that's what everyone believes. So why would I even try? And so we need to find a way to show highlight stories of people doing it successfully to help change that narrative if nothing else. And if if it is really hard, think about why it's really hard to ship that. But if it's not, where's the narrative? Where's the story we're telling about? Oh, man. Yeah. They came in. They got their permits, and they were open in a week. Right? Maybe a little exaggeration, but how how do we tell those stories to change the narrative? Because that's not the narrative.

The other piece of it is gonna be it may require some type of subsidy. I I'm generally not a subsidy person because I think it kind of alters the market in a way that makes it hard to have something to do with subsidy. But if it's a space that you could find a lease for a little market or something else like that, because it has a community benefit, it's hard for one property to decide to do that themselves. Okay. But I just kinda put that out there. It's get anxious about saying that, but that's one of those things where the margins are so thin. It's one of the few ways it's gonna make it work.

Gotcha. Okay. The other sort of question, thought I comment I had was around space activation. I liked that the races come in when it's a little bit slower. These great ways to activate a space that is otherwise quiet. Yep. The other way that I saw activated really well, and I don't know if DTB had anything to do with it, but a couple months coming six months ago, there was a Firestone commercial that filmed in Downtown Tacoma. It's on Sunday morning. Nothing was happening. That's really me, but, like, nothing went bad. So, like, it was an easy time for them to close the streets, do lots of filming, to put in a rain machine. So I think to what degree we can think about what we can do in some of those spaces with them being empty would be great. I don't know if that was at all in your lane.

Not not something that I Very cool. My hope is that when those do come, I hear about them so we can let least answer questions from you. Okay. Any thoughts to think about, like, hey. Why is the street closed? Oh, it's because there's a reason where they don't make a portion.

Yeah.

Not, oh, what's this specific thing? Because I know sometimes they're pretty anxious about. But, yeah, we are on the front end of that. We're kind of reacting to that. Definitely. I I would say when it comes to activations, we're getting more and more successful at activating TheaterSquare when we took over. There was basically just the barbers market that's not under. Your barbers market, the Sunday market. You've got the meta the metaphysical market coming. We're talking to about doing something there. We're activating it with more things. We're gonna continue to push that. I do see in the next couple of years thinking about how can we start to activate private writers' part. And it looks very different. Right?

It's a very different facility. How can we activate? Like, there's gotta be opportunities there. And so we're thinking about how do we get on top of those to just create more resources to be downtown and more things to do. So

K. Thank you. So on the space activation, we are also working CV's working on, some partnerships too. We had a little pilot that we were working on a couple weeks ago. So more to come on that. But, definitely, we're very aware of that. We have some incubator activation spaces. So Okay. On that note, I

think we will let you go.

Thank you

so much for being here.

Thank you so much. I So hope guys wanna talk more. I love talking to the. So Yeah. Thank you.

Much appreciated. Next, we're gonna call up our 2024 through 2025 arson resident project recap crew. We're bringing up Rebecca Salverson and Tariko Minura. Did I get it? Did I get it?

There we go. Perfect.

From the media economic development. Stickers. Know, I love sticker. So thank you, My name is Brenda Salvers. I'm the division manager for arts and mentality and community development. I'm here today with Chiruko Nomura. I'll let you introduce yourself. I am a visual artist based here in

the Tacoma area and in residence for twenty twenty five solid waste division.

Twenty four and twenty five. Perfect.

So we're excited to provide an overview of two artist in residence projects that we recently completed, still kinda tailing out. Natalie DePille, who's the public works artist in residence, wasn't able to join, but I'll share some of her work as well. So next. Yes. Perfect. You're on. I do have a clicker. Thank you. Please, Zach. So these residencies leverage Tacoma's 1% for art policy to advance city priorities, meet specific departmental goals, ours, but also public works and environmental services, and also improve internal partnership.

Artists were selected through a competitive RFQ process, which we do with our arts commissioners and also with community members and and representatives from the departments. And they were embedded part time within the departments from March 2024 through December 2025. They were project based residency, so this was not meant to be a sustained program. It was kind of a special opportunity we were able to find both departments, but they produced a mix of tangible projects, planning support, and then on call collaboration on the department, on department priorities. So one of the things that I included on the on this slide, right hand side, are a couple of projects that happened just because the artists were there and were available to bring their skills to the same project.

So, Natalie DePille's Tacoma drives 20 signs, which some of you may have taken photos with perhaps. She was really able to to elevate those and quickly get those out with the department. And then Tricka's beautiful cuss tidy up can. Great. We also integrate her her skills into work that's already happening and kinda bring a little bit more unique flavor to the city.

Next slide.

So the this work is aligned. It's wrapped up, but it's very well aligned with Tacoma 2035, with climate environment, transportation mobility, and then place making experiences. So it is, again, integrated with the work of other departments in supporting their work. It's also aligned with Artful Tacoma, which is community and economic development arts and cultural vitality's strategic plan. So around the strategies to promote equity, diversity, and inclusiveness through the arts, to use public art to create an active, accessible, and welcoming public places, and to strengthen Tacoma's creative ecosystem.

We are undergoing an update for this plan right now, but, this this work is gonna be squarely in line with with, the update. We are positive. I wanna point out it it wasn't an intended outcome or a goal to have activations throughout the city, but these projects activated for council districts. It looks like there's a lot of work that happened downtown, and there was, but actually, the work outside of downtown, in particular, the work that Sharika did was was deeper. So, she'll talk about her work with Science and Math Institute, her work at the, transfer and recovery station, and then also several activations at South Tacoma to North Star Center.

So, Tanya asked me to put a map together, I was like, oh, what an open is gonna look like, but looking at it, like, really did activate a lot of different parts of Tacoma. The goals for the environmental services, artists and residents, were to increase awareness of issues identified by environmental services, improve experience for customers interacting with environmental services, and then to inspire behavioral change that leads to healthy neighborhoods and a thriving Puget Sound. So get rooted in the work they

do first.

The

focus for Charuko's project, which she'll take over the next slide, was really on outreach and engagement related to solid waste. Charuko was sitting at transfer and recovery station, part time for over a year. So she was with them with computer, part of the email system, scheduled meetings, was going on-site visits. A really great model to really have her be part of the team, not just We are really proud that Sherco's work resulted in the in the city receiving the 2025 recycler of the year award, in for education from the Washington State Recycling Association. So it shows that the industry recognizes this unique approach, and it was really great kind of feather in the cap of the work, the good work that we knew was the right thing was happening.

So, and then just a couple of examples of, of engagement, the work that TRIKA did to engage the community. I'm going to pass it over for her to talk about some of the work that she completed as part of the residency. We'll talk about, and then I'll talk about Natalie's work and then we'll wrap up.

Okay. Thank you so much for having me today. It was really lovely. I did as artist in residence, I did three different large multilayered projects, and my focus was really to engage the public also raise individual awareness for their own actions and and sort of emphasize the importance of the individual within our larger problem of the of solid waste. And also to kind of communicate like a larger message of the importance of the individual, but also within action collectively or efforts, collective collective efforts.

And I used lots of different materials and lots of different ways to, try to get the public interested, from, lectures to, classes with the, Science and Math Institute to, community events did some and workshops. So lots of different ways to try to get people involved. Three projects also wanted, used a lot of wall the idea of volume and trying to communicate the scale at which the problem is. So I used, materials collected from both public calls as well as, asking the the staff at the the transfer and recovery station to collect things, or going to to collect the materials. And so for this first piece, I created a giant spider web as a sort of metaphor for our situation as a as a society about with with solid waste that we're all kind of enmeshed in this, together, that it's also a threat, but it's also this really, place that where we can, you know, feel each other's impact, easily.

And so, I wanted to be the sort of visual impact that could communicate a message easily. It was created out of the that insidious produce mesh that's around, like, lemons and potatoes and things. And I, asked people to bring them to the recovery, center as well as collected them from local businesses, in a certain amount of time so that that scale could be then translated to peace. And so it was about 30 feet, and we ended up I also created a spider that also, was created by one week, so my own personal waste. So it was trying to get people to relate, on a bodily scale, as well as, like, like, a compact enough relatable skill.

Because when I started looking at how much, waste that were it's just kind of overwhelming and hard to understand. So I wanted it to be sort of discrete time periods as well as, to to show just the volume. So this one was about interconnectedness, and, we ended up putting it up at the transfer center, last year from, I think, September to November, and also did some additional, sort of interactive community, projects to to support this, including open studio hours that people could come and see me working on the piece and talk to them and different sort of outreach activities that were related to leaving in our communities. Next. This project was a called extended family table, another sort of way to communicate a particular story or message about our our responsibility together.

So it meant it's called extended family table with, made out of my own inherited family table that, I asked to, the the staff at the transfer center to collect different wooden, legs to attach to it so to kind of communicate the idea of, you know, everybody needs to be supporting the larger surface, but that this surface could be a bountiful surface, but also needs to be, supported by as many people as possible. So but it's open to all. It's extended to all. And that this particular space, that's created by the table is also a safe space to to converse and come together. So that piece will be displayed at the STARS STARS Centers, starting this month, but we installed on Friday and, up through September.

And then the last piece, project that I did was inspired by the Japanese Children's Day Festival, of it it which basically is telling a a traditional story of the of carp fish as a symbol of resilience and courage. So they swim upstream, past, you know, the waterfalls, they become this divine they turn into a divine, dragon because of their resilience. So, I created hundreds of these carp streamers with it out of, reclaimed reusable tote bags, grocery bags that were headed to the landfill, and, partnered with the school of the math institute School of Science and Math Institute students during one of their midterms, asked them to, create their own, and did, a whole course on sustainability. We asked them and and had them create the koi carp streamers as well as dragons that, they worked as a group and had to research their, a a topic in sustainability. And then they their dragons were themed to communicate, like, sea turtle loss and and, safe waterways and things like that.

So each group, had to do that research and learn about it, and they were all displayed and with as an interactive installation as well as kind of playground of dragons, at the Sustainability Expo in 2025 in the, Polysene Platte. And that's and then yes. Thank you. It

was kind of a this is a deep dive. This is a deeper dive than we usually go into projects, but excited to kind

of show you the scope

of the work that they worked on. And, you know, when we talk about just doing these these one off projects, a lot of artists go so deep into it with the community that they're working with. It's good to remind you all of that the deepest work they do. So for public work, public works was a little bit of a different focus. Natalie DePille, was really focused on working with transportation, the transportation division within public works on the, so it's transportation master plan.

While she was there, transitioned to transportation mobility plan. She, was brought in to help with that. She's an illustrator, so her skills are a little bit different than Trico's skills. Also to improve customer experience and to, again, be inspire behavioral change. And her work consisted of supporting the transportation mobility plan.

So she created there wasn't a plan to have an illustrator work on this. She made it, I mean, much more, easily digestible for the public, much friendlier, and just brought her her lens to it, and brought that unique skill set. She was also available to support additional materials. Being able to partner her with this project also created just I kept wanting to put crash course in my notes, which is the wrong thing to say for transportation. But it's, like, brought her into the the work in such a deep way, to be working side by side with them.

So she got a really, close understanding, but it was also giving something back to them and, helping support visual aspects of the plan, the communication aspects of the plan. She also, participated in road audit. So, having that creative person who's maybe not an engineer asking questions, I think it's a really healthy thing for us to do as we're looking at roads and how they impact community and just has, like, those soft benefits of, like, are we thinking about this in terms of how it feels to the community instead of just, how the water turns, which is super important, probably the most important function, but we also need to think think about those other things. I also will say that it's unlikely that we would have been able to do the Pride crosswalking with the timeline of the budget we had if she hadn't already been on board. And that was, because it's the first time we've done a cross look like this.

Feels like it should be a really simple project, but working out the exact colors, the lines, and just making sure that our engineering staff has confidence in the design and can work back and forth in that way. Having that expertise in house was really valuable, particularly for that Pride Crosswalk. So I'm glad that things lined up that way. Natalie did several demonstration projects also in addition to the TMP. So the Fittance to Ground Pride installations, which I will pass out some stickers later for, the Pride Crosswalk, the speed yard sign, and then several designs that we can, we can deploy, through different projects in the city, which leads me to the last kind of chunk of her work, which was an art mini plan for public works.

She leaves us with several designs we can use. She also is leaving us with a custom storm drain design that we're working through at engineers right now. So these kind of, like, things that we can, make that can be a little bit more unique. And once we have the mold and the design, it should be more to to, implement. You know?

So, like, how are we investing a little bit upfront so that we can make things a little more fun, a little more interesting, have a little bit of messaging around where that dream's actually going, kind of building that into our work from the front end. This work was the mini plan was created with collaboration from feedback from public work staff, from transportation, but also public works, the engineering, the groups that delivery group. So because she was here again on-site, she was able to get that feedback a little bit more. We'll use this as a tool to plan 1% for our investments, and that's really, like, the thing that I'm most excited about to have this plan that was created in in coordination with the work staff. So the ongoing impact, also includes the demonstration projects, also artworks for the collections.

Several of Trugo's works that she created are now part of the collection, we can we can use it in the city. We have this beautiful piece on the right that is being that was from the tidy up can that is being framed right now. And so we're looking for a place,

maybe a big wall in a public room or something. No.

This sorry. This was this is the drawing. So the cans are basically big stickers. So it's scanned. She created this hand drawing. It's gorgeous. It's huge. Great. You're gonna come with that. This is huge. It's like, I remember this.

I would think I'm fine.

Like, maybe It's big.

It's a cool art. It's big. So my whole It's beautiful wall. Yeah.

It's hand, you know, hand ink. And then, and then, actually, the the can has this with the layer of, artworks that represent household waste from a week long study at Chico's house. So it has that layer of meaning of, like, you know, what we're doing to the creatures that we love. So, and then really the better integration better integration with partners. So it also it strengthens the way that we work internally between departments and the city and how we're gonna continue to do a couple of our projects.

Like I said, this is not meant to be an ongoing program, but but I do consider it a tool in our toolbox that we can use as the the resources allow. And a lot of these projects are dual purposes, so educational sort of tools, beautification efforts, face activation, neighborhood level placemaking, creating connections with different communities that, our operational departments, haven't leaned into as much, so creating some of those community pathways. We are happy to answer any questions, and thanks for taking the time to do

a little deeper dive with

us into one of these projects. Thank

you.

Dear, I guess I'll go to consumer Scott online first in case you have any questions.

No immediate questions. I just wanted to say thanks. I really appreciate this the artist in residence stuff and being able to, you know, hear more about it is always great, but then also, like, seeing the product of of various things in the community. I just I don't think it's a secret how much I appreciate what art does for building community and bringing people together and starting conversations and just kind of helping us create a sense of place throughout Tacoma. So I just wanna say thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you. Questions? Yeah. Love your work. It's really it's really fun. That's fantastic. Could you say a little bit about the actual program, like, what it is? Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. We can we can all I was really focused on the impact. I love it. Yeah. So it's, so it's a program the artist in residence programs were, these projects were focused on bringing artists into departments to help solve specific issues that they identified.

So the artists were embedded in the department part time for fifteen months, then we kind of extended them because they're they had more work to do. And then they had also either access to project budgets or, materials case, kind of a dedicated, project budget, for materials and things like that. She used a lot of reclaim materials, so she was very cheap on her. But, so and this is part of our 1% for art program. So, we work together with our partners.

This is funded 1% for it is funded through, capital improvements. With environmental services in particular, a lot of their, work isn't, a lot of the capital improvements aren't super visible to the public, so this was a way for us to work with them on what their actual need was. So instead of putting, like, a sculpture at maybe a wastewater station where the public is not gonna be, you know, they said, we'd really want we really want help with engaging the public around these issues. And so we're able to do that, and also it results in some beautiful pieces that can tell the story in our collection. So it's kind of a there are other this is a this type of program exists, but it's a little bit of a it's a we have an amazing partner in federal services that is interested in, like, looking at what

the actual week is and how

we can match that with

the resources of that. So

sorry if you've said any of that before. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead. Answer the question a little bit.

Great. Doctor Lynn?

Thank you. I really love this program. And, you know, we always talk about trying to, tell a story, and I really mentioned it a couple times. I think this is one of those ways that we can really get out there and tell a story, and you've done such a phenomenal job of telling it in such a unique way. I think it helps stick in people's minds a bit more and really makes them think about their own use of the So kudos to you. Great job. Well deserved reward, like, clearly. And I'd love to see more of this. And, you know, obviously, we try to do it all over the place as much as possible with limited resources. Difficult.

But I think that would work then for it's gonna be so vital and to kinda create that vibrancy and that storytelling aspect of it. Because but behind every practical thing that's going on in the city, there is a good story. There's people that working on it, and then there's a lot of untold stories about, like, you know, what is going down our drains, like, what can impact our environment, and and then, you know, it just it just really helps tie everything together. And it also creates, I think, a sense of vibrancy within the community itself, especially when you see a lot of different colors, you see a lot of, like, things that are visually appealing. I think it creates a sense of community, which I think is very important as well.

So we're kind of doing a lot of things at once by having this program. So just to say I don't really have any questions. I just I'm really happy about it, and I really wanna get to see and continue to see and work resources as possible that they can continue to work for us.

Great. Well, I share a lot of your feelings that you just shared Thank you. I will give a little sneak peek that the so we're not gonna be doing this is also a really staff time intensive project. When we started, we have two staff members for public art. We have one now.

So we have to be conscious of being able to meet all of our projects that we need to deliver to. But the other thing, the sort of next iteration of this that we're looking at in partnership with environmental services is, I think I can say it because it's been sort of approved. We're gonna be doing a partnership artist in residence program with, Hilltop Artists to look at how we can actually, use, like, recycled glass. Like, if we can actually close the link these glasses from isn't that So this kind of work opened up the the, some of those partnership pathways too with environmental services to look at that, and this opportunity came up. We're we're super excited about it.

We can bring, like again, we don't wanna be sending our glass, like, to a different state to be recycled and then come back, and we have we have a lot of amazing, glass artists. Like, glass is one of the things that makes them all special so

we can find a way to supply them from around local. All set.

Yeah. I know. Right? It's like all this stuff. So we'll we'll we'll be excited to share updates or events. That's great. I don't know if it's an appropriate question, but I guess my question is what's next for you to go in family?

Well, currently, I'm working part time with the nonprofit creator for use bakery. That's how the main public library and I just been doing workshops with kids and and just, you know, continuing to use re repurposed materials for creative purposes. And and, hopefully, I'm still making my own work. I have to work at the art museum store there. That's in Tacoma.

I'm just trying to find more opportunities. But I have to say that this was a really special experience, and, like, I can I'm so proud to, like, live in Tacoma as a creative, and I just hope that, we continue to, like, invest in us as a as a help part of how we can continue continue to grow the city and

get better. Very cool.

Natalie is she's still doing great. Think Natalie's busy. We're she's still wrapping up a couple pieces. We're actually gonna have her on just, like, the ability to have her make updates for us for the next year or so. So we extended her just so we have that ability.

But she's hard to pin down because she's very pithy with with their illustration work. But, yeah, I think this was like she'll be doing more work in this realm just the way she integrated with, I was nervous about having an illustrator, primarily an illustrator for this role, but she just did an amazing job and integrated so well. So, she's really, some of the questions like, I think we've we've really are now working as a team with our transportation engineers, and that would work. I mean, we it has she helped create a much closer working relationship, and so she's just an artist, like, goes right into working with engineers really well. So Not easy.

Not easy. But then once you make that, it's like, if we can all be on the same team and be looking out for each other and figure out how to, make, do these dual purposes. It's, it's really exciting. So Well, the other question I have might be for ES, but, I'm wondering, maybe since you're working in, like, reclaimed art, now you know who to call with ES if you want access to, like I need more table plates. It's credit for me.

Do we have a way to set up a programmer's list so that there's if there's other artists who are working in a similar medium or have a project that they can talk to ES about about that, or is that is that just, like, a squarely ES question? Well, that would be a But we'd open it up as pathway, I guess. Yeah. I mean, I think that's, I think the conversation was started through Mhmm. Through crew's work. So having that sort of case study of, like, what does it look like to have our crews pull aside specific things because an artist can use those at something? Mhmm. This the the table was kind of the thought kind of was that it was kind of responding to the deconstruction initiative. Exactly. So I think we can continue to ask that.

And then also, Candonia yeah. And we have some other projects also in the next set of projects, for environmental services, water support projects that could be looking at things too. So I think this is something this is

something we can explore with them as part

of our work. It's how we're getting artists access to Yeah. Materials and, like, you know, what actually works because they have Yes. You know, they that's the thing about being embedded is, like, you know, if you're just, like, you know, adding another thing to their plate, that can be really hard, but it's to get work mutually, and then they can start to say, oh, we were able to divert this much. Yeah.

So, yeah, we'll continue to ask about that project coming up. Depending on what the sculpture there looks like could have I'm looking back at Miranda who's my, former manager for public art who's working closely with that. Why don't they get excited about what they can monetize? So it would be great if, like, it got to some scale that they could do it for a free curriculum artist and then, like Yes. How do we get some Parisian who wants to really do something with our recycled plastic bags? Oh, totally. Yeah. Glass, we're really excited about. Yes. The glass, that's a really good pathway. So Yep. Great. Yeah. Those are the there. I feel like they're they're working on.

Oh, so we're. We're we're. Again, I can't always go into deep dive with all of our work, but, yeah, thanks for

taking this.

You're up to very cool things. Thank you. Appreciate your your time today. Anybody wants to Natalie's same hands?

Ellen, I do not own that part.

Oh, I wanna I have one other question. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. Just oh, I was just gonna say this actually Natalie did this with it was Public Works and Environmental Services and for Pride. I don't know how she managed to, like, loop it all together, but the the magic of artists who could, like, who could and it's it's been out for a couple of years now. It's Yeah. So It's a hit. It's hit. Keep it out at work. People ask me at DNR all the time, and so I always do you wanna come out at work? Do you have a do you have

are you out?

No. I still have a couple. Okay. You're good. Okay. Yeah. I keep it on supply at the same. Good. Good. My other question was, I know that Tacoma has a ton of art. We've got murals. We've got the box wraps. We've got, like, tidy cans. Is there a central spot or several central spots where folks can look up, like, oh, so this art, who did that? Right? So somebody could see your can and and link back to your work. Is that a is that a thing on our website? Or We have a, yeah, we have a public art map. Okay. Work in our collection.

It doesn't include the traffic box wraps. So the more the temporary pieces, we don't need to put on there because we don't have the capacity to manage them, ongoing. But, yeah, we have a Perfect. I thought I had seen a public the one's gonna Excellent. And it'll be it'll be going through an update at some point. This in work. Yep. That's it. Yeah. Perfect. And I found it really fast. Actually when I'm looking for it, I just do a Google search, and it's the credit score. Get it. That is one of the coolest things to see. Definitely, I'll be able to link it back. And then, actually, like, there's one that I keep saying that I love. Oh, we follow you. You know, you're up to beyond Tacoma stuff. Yeah. So that has it'll have the artist's info and a little bit info about the the work kit.

And, yeah, again, this this is due for an update, but and we also the Harris County and other partners too because the public doesn't know the difference between the collection and other folks, and we honor that. Thank you. That's so cool. Thank you. So much. Good luck. Yes. Thank you for reminding me to talk about that. Yeah. Alright. Next, we'll go over to Anna Lee, committee liaison with a cup comments for our upcoming meetings.

Yeah. In two weeks, we will business improvement area. Johnson reversed track will discuss a proposal for the business engagement program, and you'll get an anchor network update from CHOC on March 31. PDS staff will be here to talk about increased interceptor improvement projects.

On April 14, Workforce Central

will go over their 2026 development priorities impacted labor market analysis, and council member Scott will discuss her proposal.

Perfect. Thank you. We've got exciting spring coming up. Are there any other topics of interest interest? With that, I will entertain a final motion.

To do.

All those in favor, signify say aye? Aye. All opposed? Excellent.