TACOMA, Wash. — Small business owners are insisting that Sound Transit doesn’t need to force them out to build a new Link Light Rail station in Tacoma.
The historic Freighthouse Square could become a casualty of Sound Transit’s plan to expand the Link Light Rail to the City of Destiny.
In its place would be a new Tacoma Dome transit hub.
Tacoma isn’t the only community that will be affected by this expansion. There will be new stations in South Federal Way, Fife, East Tacoma, and near the Tacoma Dome.
But in order to put a station here, Sound Transit says it will have to first demolish the 116-year-old Freighthouse Square.
Virginia Crittendon has run her retail store in Freighthouse Square for 10 mostly happy years.
“A spa bar and a clothing section,” she exclaimed. “And I love it.”
Sound Transit’s board voted late last week to make this its preferred area for a new, expanded Tacoma Link Light Rail Station.
“Why not incorporate this as a part of it?” Crittendon asked. “Do you really have to tear down the whole entire building? Where do I go? What happens to the businesses that are here?”
Josh Alday says that would send him packing. He’s been here just nine months.
“I’m just going to have to find a new location,” said Alday. “But I mean, there’s no way they can match the price I pay here for square footage.”
Sound Transit says expanding the Tacoma Dome Station would create a transit hub.
“It will definitely be a change,” said David Jackson, Sound Transit spokesman, “providing people more options to get where they need to go.”
“If the city grows, we grow with the city,” insists Heritage Center Arts owner Peter Kahura. “So, we cannot say no to development.”
This longtime tenant says he welcomes the light rail station, even though he, too, would have to move.
“Why should we say no to a train?” asked Kahura. “Let it come. Let it come. Let it come tomorrow.”
It won’t be here that soon. Sound Transit still needs to do an environmental assessment, and that could take two years. Then construction would begin, with the new station set to open in 2035.
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