New Tacoma and Jisgogo Sha
Standing tall and proud, McMenamins Elks Temple Hotel and restaurant, in its final stages of renovation, is set to open in April with registrations already on the books.
Just down from McMenamins is Douglass Wheeler’s Terracrux Games on one side, Patricia Lecy’s Embellish Multispace Salon on the other, and the Theater District phase of Sound Transit’s Link Extension project is happening right in the center of it all, in this New Tacoma neighborhood.
“Most people would view [the neighborhood as] sketchy.” Lecy admits in a written statement. “It’s been a struggle to stay open.” She realizes that a neighborhood like Proctor or somewhere closer to UW Tacoma would offer benefits to her business, “but the grass is not always greener”. Anyway, she’d “rather be a pioneer,” she says, and looks forward to a change for the better with the grand opening of McMenamins.
Indeed, these projects are highly anticipated by many area residents and business owners, and this growth is likely to be positive for the future of the city, but the projects are resetting norms in this downtown neighborhood today.
Neglected for so long, a certain economic demographic with its usual chronic life circumstances and conditions like mental illness and drug dependence, resorts to the many nooks and dark corners of Tacoma’s downtown core, where, at least for…
