Downtown Tacoma Subarea Plan & EIS
Tacoma, WA
VIA partnered with the City of Tacoma to create a Subarea Plan paired with an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for each of the city’s three Subareas that constitute its Downtown Regional Growth Center — North Downtown, South Downtown, and Hilltop.
The subarea plans and EIS documents were crafted with an eye toward catalyzing economic development through interventions that will make Downtown Tacoma more attractive to private investment. Key strategies include: maximized growth targets, identification of catalyst project opportunities, targeted public infrastructure investments, area-wide brownfield assessment, transit-oriented development, and an EIS that eliminates the need for future project-level environmental review.
The Downtown Tacoma Subarea Plans received the APA/PAW 2014 Award for Comprehensive Planning in Large Cities and Counties, and the South Downtown Subarea Plan received the 2014 Governor’s Smart Communities Award for “Smart Vision.”