Regional Growth Centers

Tacoma’s Two Regional Growth Centers

The City’s two designated Regional Growth Centers are Downtown Tacoma, including Hilltop and the Stadium District, and the Tacoma Mall Neighborhood. The City has documented detailed Subarea Plans for these Regional Growth Centers and for the smaller neighborhood areas contained within each Regional Growth Center.

Downtown Regional Growth Center and Subarea Plans

Downtown Tacoma is a designated Regional Growth Center with zoning districts that are the most intensive in the city, allowing development heights from 90 feet in the Downtown Residential District to 400 feet in the Downtown Commercial Core. These development and zoning parameters are designed to align with the Growing Transit Communities Compact, with zoning capacity sufficient to accommodate planned growth of 76,200 new residents and 67,900 new jobs by 2040.

The City and the Downtown business and community groups worked collaboratively for more than two years to prepare a Subarea Plan and Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Hilltop (MLK) District, North Downtown, and South Downtown, to encourage development and revitalization of these areas over the next 20 years.

Tacoma Mall Regional Growth Center and Subarea Plans

The City Council adopted the Tacoma Mall Neighborhood Subarea Plan, along with a package of amendments to the Tacoma Municipal Code to implement the Subarea Plan in 2018.

• Amended Ordinance No. 28511 (May 15, 2018)
• Tacoma Mall Neighborhood Subarea Plan (May 15, 2018)
• Subarea Plan Appendix T-1: Streetscape Corridor Concepts (March 27, 2018)
• Subarea Plan Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) Addendum (March 29, 2018)
• Subarea Plan FEIS (November 3, 2017)

The Tacoma Mall Subarea is important to people who live, work and shop in the area, as well as for people who live in other parts of Tacoma, and the Puget Sound region as a whole. This effort seeks to develop and promote a vision for positive growth and change within the Subarea. The project is being funded by a $250,000 National Estuaries Program Watershed Protection Grant. This effort will build upon the three subarea plans for Downtown Tacoma and will fulfill Tacoma’s obligation to plan for our designated Regional Centers.

The Tacoma Mall Center is designated by the Puget Sound Regional Council as a Regional Growth Center and a focal point for future jobs/housing concentration. To accommodate growth sustainably, the Tacoma Mall Center must function well on many levels. Infrastructure, services, transportation choices and neighborhood amenities must be adequate to support growth and make the area a desirable place to live, work and shop. At the outset, the City is aware of certain key issues:

• The Center is located within two sensitive stormwater basins. The Flett Creek, an EPA Target Watershed which influences Chambers Creek, a salmon-bearing stream and the Thea Foss Waterway, a superfund site that has been remediated at a cost of $105 million dollars.
• The area includes some congested intersections, gaps in/barriers to bicycle and pedestrian connectivity, the lack of some neighborhood amenities, and a relatively low income and transient residential population.

The Subarea Plan and EIS will be a community forum to collaboratively develop a vision, goals and strategies to guide growth and development, identify environmental impacts up-front on an area-wide basis and target mitigation measures and other implementation steps. The objectives for this Subarea Plan are to:

• Develop a vision for the area;
• Promote sustainable growth within the Tacoma Mall Regional Growth Center;
• Set the stage for a transition from an auto-centric regional shopping area into a compact, complete community;
• Promote development consistent with Vision 2040, the Puget Sound Action Agenda, and Tacoma’s Comprehensive Plan; and
• Leverage public and private partnerships and investments to stimulate large-scale population and employment growth within the Center.