Plans Crystallize for $80M Waterfront Project

TACOMA, WA-Designs are changing and timelines are slipping for a major mixed-use waterfront development in the Downtown area by Nearon Enterprises.

The Danville, CA-based developer last spring won the right to develop the project by telling the Foss Waterway Development Authority Board of Directors that it would build for $70 million a 124-room hotel on one of the two parcels, a 200-unit condominium tower on the other, both with ground floor retail space. The proposal, for which the developer originally hoped to break ground on in late 2003 and complete by May 2005, won out over a $114-million proposal by Portland, OR-based Williams & Dame, which called for 372-condominium units in four buildings, a 54-room hotel and three residential buildings evenly split on the two properties and also containing ground floor retail space.

Now, however, Nearon project manager Mark Ossola tells GlobeSt.com that the only way to make the hotel project pencil out is to cut the size of the hotel to about 80 rooms and place 16 to 20 luxury condos on top of it such that, when sold for between $400 and $450 per sf, the condo units will offset the development cost of the hotel and lower the average daily rate necessary to make the hotel feasible. For the price, the condo units would have private entrances, high-end finishes and appliances as well as access to all hotel services.