Point Ruston: Win Some, Lose Some

The City of Tacoma decision on Point Ruston's conditional use shoreline development permit was finalized yesterday. Tacoma will allow the floating ferry to be used as retail space along the southern shoreline, but has denied the request to allow the buildings labeled as 4B (see map below).

Point Ruston submitted two shoreline permit requests: 1) for outright permitted uses and 2) this conditional use permit. Loren Cohen of Point Ruston reports the shoreline permit for accepted uses was approved by Tacoma on January 9th (full report and decision here). He comments, "Point Ruston's shoreline permits were split between the Permitted Uses and the Conditional Uses, per the City's SMP. While we are disappointed that the 4B mixed-use structures were not permitted as a conditional use, we were are pleased that the ferry use was approved. We have no plan to appeal the City's decision on the 4B structures, and will likely be back to the drawing board for some minor alterations to this section of the development."

The decision pages from the conditional use permit report are below. The full report (including agency comments and further analysis of the issue) is available on Ruston Reports.