Pierce County is fast tracking plans to demolish the abandoned Puget Sound Hospital along Pacific Avenue to then build an office complex to consolidate many of its operations that are now in leased spaces around the city.
The former hospital at 3580 Pacific Ave. was closed in 2010 and was listed for surplus sale with no takers. Absent a new owner, it has sat vacant for four years. During that time, Pierce County officials started to study how to control their leasing costs and boost efficiencies by co-locating governmental services.
“We actually leased more property than we owned,” Deputy Executive Kevin Phelps said during a briefing on the move to Tacoma City Council.
The 66,000-square-foot hospital, which has parts that date back to 1926, was expensive to heat and maintain. Renovations would be more expensive than new construction. The current leased spaces were also facing costly renovations as well, so locating county government offices at a new facility on land the county already owned started making financial sense. Moving 1,000 county employees to the Lincoln District site would also provide an economic boost to the neighborhood and provide for future growth.
“It met all of our main location criteria as well as had all of these other benefits that were there,” Phelps said.
Plans are to have design work done this year, with a new building springing up in 2015 and the actual move set for 2016.
The staffing shuffle would move the Assessor-Treasurer, Auditor, Planning and Land Services, County Council, County Executive and Public Works operations into the 13-acre, former hospital site. Office spaces within the County-City Building and other county-owned facilities that would be freed up in the shuffle would be filled by other departments currently housed in leased spaces around the city, namely the County Annex, which was built originally to be a department store.
The new facility would be privately built through a lease-to-own agreement, Phelps said, adding that a $100 million pricetag would translate to $4 million a year for 30 years at which time the county would own the facility outright. Detailed costs will come out during the design phase.
As part of the process, county officials are accepting public comment through Friday. And local historians have concerns.
Historic Tacoma, for example, points out that the environmental review mentions nothing about the site’s historical significance, which was surveyed in 2012 by the state Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation. The group also worries that the building will be demolished before the redevelopment plans have been finalized and that the county is conducting an environmental review of its own project.