South Tacoma faces the threat of a warehouse complex that would exacerbate air pollution, extreme heat, and violent crime.
It’s no coincidence that the already overburdened community of South Tacoma is the planned site of a warehouse complex that would pave more than 125 acres of its remaining wetlands. This 2.5-million-square-foot mega warehouse would be both a symptom and a cause of worsening social, economic, and environmental injustice in Tacoma.
South Tacomans already breathe some of the worst air in the city, and this warehouse would bring an estimated 8,000 more vehicle trips through South Tacoma neighborhoods every day — a sizable fraction of the current vehicle rate. This strain on the local infrastructure would also be accompanied by a transfer of control of some of that infrastructure to developer Bridge Industrial — which lacks any experience of operating in a residential area. Besides respiratory diseases and cancer, air pollution from vehicle exhaust with higher rates of violent crime in the surrounding area. More 18-wheelers driving past three South Tacoma public schools will not help any of our city’s problems.
Even now, before construction has taken place, we’re seeing the impacts of this warehouse on our home. As of this year, the City of Tacoma has implemented a city-wide camping ban as well as continuous sweeps of the potential warehouse location. Desperate, with their meager belongings trashed, our houseless community members are pushed out of the forest cover and into neighborhoods to try to survive. With more visibility and no space to legally occupy, they are harassed by cops, their housed neighbors, and other unhoused people. Increased complaints of crime in previously quiet neighborhoods around the warehouse site have followed.
