The South Pacific restaurant, a former Cantonese-style eatery that for years catered to nearby Olympia Brewing Co. workers, burned to the ground last month.
After the business burned — a business that had been closed for about 10 years — news of its fiery demise filtered across social media and news websites, followed by comments from the public suggesting that in light of what happened at South Pacific, it was time to tear down the brewery buildings just west of that site.
And why not? The beige buildings that flank Custer Way and flow south into Tumwater Valley have sat largely untouched for the past 21 years and devolved into an unsightly mess. The brewery closed in June 2003.
“It’s definitely an eyesore and depressing,” said Tumwater City Council member Kelly Von Holtz about the state of those buildings.
Developers have kicked the tires on the property over the years, but no concrete plan for it has ever emerged. The current out-of-state owner of the property, Chandulal Patel, who acquired the brewery in 2016, has never come before the city’s development review committee to get feedback on a project proposal, said Mike Matlock, the city’s community development director.
“Nope, not yet,” Matlock told The Olympian.
So if a private developer is unwilling or can’t redevelop the property, is it now time for Tumwater to take a larger role in determining its future?
“If it were easy to do, it would have already been done,” Matlock said.
Why not condemn the property?
One course of action the city could take is to seek an eminent domain petition and seize the property in exchange for a fair market price.
However, Tumwater City Administrator Lisa Parks estimated such a move would cost the city “millions,” not to mention the additional cost of hiring appraisers and attorneys to pursue eminent domain. The city also would have to make the case to a judge that there is a public purpose and a public benefit to the city owning the former brewery buildings.
In Lacey, the city is potentially pursuing eminent domain to replace the city’s largest water well. Water is vital to operating a city, but owning some outdated buildings? A judge may not look so favorably on such an effort, Parks said.
“The city’s hands are tied,” she said.
Still, let’s say the city did pursue eminent domain. In that scenario, the city, or the current owner, or even a future owner of the brewery property, would need to know the extent of environmental contamination on the site, Parks said.
That’s because whoever owns the property is responsible for cleaning it up, she said.
Brewery owner Patel has already learned this the hard way after oil leaked from the property in 2019 and into the Deschutes River and Capitol Lake, ultimately resulting in a fine and settlement with the state.
As a result, the city has secured a $500,000 grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to do an environmental assessment of the brewery site, including soil samples and ground water sampling to understand the nature and extent of any contamination.
“Once you understand what it is, you can come up with an action plan for cleaning up the contamination that exists,” Parks said. “We have the grant and we have the beginning of a plan to move forward.”
She said the city isn’t going to stop there. If they can secure additional funding, the city plans to move forward with a planned action Environmental Impact Statement to further guide potential redevelopment of the brewery property.
Public/private partnership
City officials think the only way forward is a public/private partnership to redevelop the property, and Tumwater has taken several steps to help that process.
“Developers require certainty and they have a keen sense of risk aversion,” said council member Michael Althauser, a longtime Tumwater resident.
He understands residents’ frustration with the brewery property, but it’s not the city’s role to tear down those buildings.
“To the degree you have to write a blank check is pretty daunting and it behooves us to study the property as much as we can,” said Althauser, adding that he supports the EPA grant-funded assessment and the future planned action EIS.
The city has taken other steps to help the current owner or future owners of the property, he said.
The brewery buildings fall within what the city now calls the Brewery District, which provides a multifamily tax exemption if a developer chooses to build housing in the area, he said. One such project, unrelated to the brewery, is nearly complete on North Street near Cleveland Avenue, Althauser said.
The city also has extended a trail system from Brewery Park at Tumwater Falls to Tumwater Historical Park and has plans to extend the trail system southeast all the way to Pioneer Park, which is off Henderson Boulevard south of Yelm Highway.
“The more you build up an area, it becomes a factor in whether a developer will pursue a project,” he said.
Community Development Director Matlock said the city also has created flexible zoning in the area, describing the zoning near the Deschutes River shoreline as “permissive.”
Plus, during a past community visioning process for the area, residents showed they have a real connection to brewing and want to see the brewery property activated, but they did not express a strong connection to the buildings, which might work in the city’s favor, Matlock said.
And what does the current owner Patel want?
City Administrator Parks, who has been on the job about a year, said she has already met with him several times. She believes he is trying to sell the property, but he also continues to inquire about his options with the city.
One question he has, Parks said, is what it would take to use the warehouse buildings in the valley near the golf course. But even that property is subject to variety of regulations, and it presents challenges because it is in a flood plain and access is difficult.
And what about the entire brewery property?
“It’s very complex and it’s not going to be cheap,” Parks said.
Tumwater gets major grant for brewery property. Is this the catalyst the site needs?
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