In a big policy shift, the Tacoma, WA City Council questioned subsidies for a Hollander-Marriott luxury project that may not benefit the community, bucking developer lobbyists and the City Manager. For weeks, City Council-members led by Connie Ladenburg held off indemnifying Hollander and sticking taxpayers with toxic liability at the privately owned site. The hotel is sited for the Thea Foss Waterway next to the bankrupted and nearly empty luxury Esplanade condos, also government subsidized and built on the backs of low-wage workers.
The shift occurred while Urban Grace Church organized for a recent candidate forum on Responsible Development and amidst a now three-year JwJ free speech campaign to press the City Council to embrace justice values linked to the City’s luxury subsidy policy. Now six candidates are referring to “sustainable development” in two Tacoma Weekly articles although not all seemed to include economic justice in the term. Some candidates prefer Bush trickle-down welfare that doesn’t address poverty-wage jobs, a root cause of environmental unsustainability. In their minds, low-wage downtown hotel workers should just commute to homes in affordable places like Sumner.
By taking time to publicly evaluate the Hollander-Marriott project, Council-members catapulted the Responsible Development debate into the public realm with the News Tribune and Tacoma Weekly editors assuming the voice of luxury developers and the hotel union (UNITE HERE) taking up the voice of Tacoma’s low-wage workers.
At this moment, whether the Hollander-Marriott project will move forward is unclear after the developer threatened that without immediate City subsidy, the hotel would be in jeopardy. The upcoming Council agenda reveals that the developer’s urgent deadline may not have been credible as Hollander is back begging for the subsidy six-weeks later. Also unclear is whether this challenge signifies that the City Council plans to enforce “sustainable” economy standards that are undefined but flippantly claimed in the City’s subsidy application forms.
One thing is for sure, the property developer industry has taken note that residents and workers are demanding justice and challenging corporate welfare. On one side is a developer representative lobbying for the unionized Murano Hotel: “the fact that Hollander continues to create an anti-union climate creates problems for all of us.” On the other side is another developer representative JJ McCament barking that the downtown Marriott “turned out well” on behalf of low-wage paying Hollander. According to Mayor Baarsma, city residents and the workers at the downtown Marriott can only wish it turned out so well after Hollander-Marriott “went back on their word” to a living wage and labor harmony verbal agreement.
Word from the Thea Foss Waterway Authority is that Hollander intends to construct this next hotel paying living-wages and family healthcare and using union training programs for local construction workers . If enforceable, this would also be progress from when the City last gave an even bigger tax-dollar subsidy to Hollander to build the downtown Marriott hotel while Canadian workers were recruited to earn poverty-wages to build it. The downtown Marriott hotel continues to operate without providing affordable family healthcare and living wages to Tacoma workers. We hope that the developer will extend the living wage standard to the hotel workers at its new waterfront venture as well as its downtown venue.
Cross-posted from Washington State JwJ.
