Oct 18, 2007
Foss Waterway site right choice for Children's Museum
Stuart Grover
For the past several years, the Children's Museum of Tacoma has retained my former firm to help with its capital fundraising. I hope that this does not disqualify me from offering pertinent information to the ongoing discussion about the museum's hopes to locate on the Thea Foss Waterway.
The museum arrived at this site as its preferred alternative after an exhaustive investigation of half a hundred potential locations. Its board members felt that it combined open space access with proximity to other cultural amenities, and that its existence would enhance the otherwise rather dispiriting brownfield that will require substantial environmental remediation and is currently subject to incursions from drug dealers and transients.
The land in question borders on a former Superfund site that does not permit any direct access to the water and lies on a former acid bath previously occupied by an industrial user. It should not, in its current state, be confused with anything parklike or hospitable to a verdant landscape on which people might recreate.
The museum hopes to create a 25,000-square-foot facility on 20,000 square feet (half an acre) from a total site of about 7 acres, or about 7 percent of the available open space. The space would be as far away from the shoreline as possible.
If one is calculating only the land dedicated to conservation futures on the east side of the Foss, the museum still assumes that more than 80 percent of the land would be available for other uses.
Such uses have always included passive recreation, recreational boating and play space for children. There has never been any desire for the museum to develop the entire parcel or prevent appropriate uses by other groups.
In its plans, the museum received inspiration from other creative uses of brownfields. It sees the potential for mixed use anchored by a cultural amenity to attract the funds needed to make the site safe and family friendly. In Seattle, the Olympic Sculpture Park is the best example of this. As the last possible direct access to Elliott Bay waterfront, the site (also about 7 acres) was an ecological nightmare, a former tank farm polluted over decades by petroleum runoff.
Trust for Public Land, working with the Seattle Art Museum, brokered a deal that brought the site back into public use. An education and visitor center, with a similar footprint to the proposed Children's Museum, sits at the top of the site, well away from the water. About two dozen sculptural pieces lead visitors to the shoreline.
Landscaping makes the area attractive and inviting, and allows people to appreciate the views and the serenity of the shore. The art attracts thousands of people each week, providing a secure and family-friendly setting. It has already gained international acclaim as both a park and an artistic attraction.
Without the building and the art, the site would have remained a brownfield. The Seattle Art Museum acted as a magnet to draw the needed funds, in the same way that only the Children's Museum has the organization and support to transform the space on the Foss.
The Olympic Sculpture Park was an enormous win-win for the community. The Children's Museum of Tacoma holds the same potential.
Stuart Grover of Tacoma has served as a fundraising consultant for the Tacoma Art Museum and many other local nonprofits.
The News Tribune
1950 South State Street, Tacoma, Washington 98405
253-597-8742
© Copyright 2007 Tacoma News, Inc. A subsidiary of The McClatchy Company
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