The Battle Over Tacoma's High School Site
A local critic argues against repurposing the controversial 'Tourist Hotel' property for a new city high school.
The story, cleaned up
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The position I take as one of the opponents of the Tourist Hotel property as a high school site is that it is a bad location. It is located over the railroad tracks and near the steamboats, exposed to all the noises that are most detrimental to school work. Again, it is located near a gulch, surrounded by trees and brush, making it very undesirable. The cost of rebuilding this property is not known to anyone; the majority of architects and practical builders in this city have pronounced the school board's estimate as far below the actual cost. It will cost the city from $100,000 to $200,000 to finish that building and make it over into a school building. The school board should sell this property, get what it can for it, and apply it to building a high school on Tacoma Avenue.
“It is essential that this city, in order to compare favorably with other cities of like size, should have a modern high school.”
Debates over school siting and the adaptive reuse of historic (or stalled) developments remain perennial issues in Tacoma planning. The critique of building schools in noisy industrial zones resonates with modern concerns over urban infrastructure and environmental health for students.
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