The multifamily tax exemption
City of Lakewood staff and many elected and appointed officials want to extend a tax incentive that encourages developers to replace small businesses and other land uses with apartments and condos. There are a lot of implications – for example, it created a financial incentive for the Pierce County government’s rural library district to tear down the Lakewood Library. But mostly it encourage someone to line Gravelly Lake Drive with housing.
The neighborhood had received no notice of the incentive. But a member of the community found the subject in an agenda and spoke out, culminating in a hearing where a number of neighbors did show up and express concerns and ask questions.
Coming up in 2025
The Lakewood City Council has directed the Planning Commission to re-study the matter sometime in 2025. There will be a public hearing where both written comments and public comments will be welcome.
Save Our Unique Lakewood will share when the hearing will take place, so that anyone can comment. We as a community may not always agree on this sort of thing. Some people may think it would be amazing to line Gravelly Lake Drive with five-story box apartments to address the shortage of affordable housing. They have a right to express that. Others may be concerned about what this will do for the neighborhood, congestion, and other matters. Either way, we will all know in advance about this hearing and then a subsequent hearing in front of the City Council.
The big picture
This is actually part of a much, much larger issue. The Lakewood City Council has set big goals for multifamily housing in downtown, all the area you see within lines on the map: 2,257 units downtown, or roughly 5,500 new residents. The 800-1,000 people who would move in from the Barnes & Noble site is just a start, with 4,500 more to come if everything was built out.
So no wonder why developers and their surrogates want to create an incentive to encourage multifamily housing. What they call downtown below is being asked to incorporate one-quarter of the new residents planned for the city by 2044.
There is an enormous amount of vacant land already in Lakewood. Why send so much proposed development to this downtown area? That’s part of what Save Our Unique Lakewood is trying to figure out.
The big big picture
The obvious question is – if this is what the city has been working on for downtown, what’s going on for other neighborhoods in Lakewood? Save Our Unique Lakewood very much wants to be a voice for citizens ANYWHERE in the city. Let us know of what’s going on in your neighborhood and help us track what the city and other power brokers are doing to change Lakewood.
In any case, here’s the full map of the downtown area – the purple area is where they’re considering extending the tax exemption:
