Railroad Seeks to Vacate Nine Waterfront Street Ends
Tacoma’s City Council faces a standoff as the Northern Pacific Railway moves to consolidate control over city streets and waterfront access.
It developed yesterday in the investigation of the franchise committee regarding the proposed right-of-way of the Northern Pacific for its Point Defiance line that the railway contemplates doing in the North End just what it has done in the present business section: close up practically all of the street ends to the waterfront. At first, the railroad talked only of a franchise; now it wants vacations. It wants a piece of Water Street and other street ends vacated. By the time it gets through, it will want the street ends largely eliminated until it has a firm grip on the waterfront, ensuring the public can only access the water by making terms with the railway. Both the councilmen and the railway engineers decided that a viaduct will have to be put in at McCarver Street, or some other street in Old Town, to permit the people to get to the waterfront there after the network of railway tracks is finished. Before that franchise is passed, it is evident there will be a number of things that the city will want to have settled.
“By the time it gets through, it will want the street ends largely eliminated until it will have a grip on the waterfront so the people can not get it except by making terms with the railway.”
This 1909 struggle over the 'privatization' of public waterfront access remains a central tension in modern Tacoma, where the industrial history of the Port often clashes with efforts to expand public park and pedestrian access to the Sound.
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