On April 1, 2025, the Tacoma City Council held a study session at 12:00 PM in the Council Chambers at 747 Market Street. The meeting covered briefing items including updates on the Cushman Substation, the LeMay Proposed Agreement for a robotics center, the McKinley annexation, the 2025 Consolidated Plan, a Sound Transit letter, and the interim city manager recruitment process.
I'd like to call to order the city council study session of April 1st, 2025. Clerk, will you please call the roll? Councilmember Bushnell. Present. Deputy Mayor Daniels. Here. Councilmember Diaz. Here. Councilmember Hines. Absent. Councilmember Rumba here. Council Member Sidalgay? Here. Council Member Scott. Here. Councilmember Walker. Here. Mayor Woodards. Here. The study session material sent to you at 1112. Great. All right. We have one modification to today's agenda. We will be moving the Lemay proposed agreement presentation to the number two item on today's agenda. So our first agenda item today is the Cushman substation update. And I'd like to call on Tacoma Public Utilities Community Relations Manager, Dr. John Gaines to begin the presentation. Dr. Gaines, good to have you here today. Thank you, Madam Mayor. My name is John. Here with my colleagues, we'll be presenting the Cushman and Adams Substation Future Use Study. Again, my name is John here with Lauren Hookamer from PDS principal planner. And then the wonderful Mandy Roberts from OTEC who has led this process for us. Want to give a quick presentation overview. So we'll touch on the future use study. I'll briefly provide some background and then we'll have a summary of engagement results and then the future use scenarios and ongoing analysis. And then we'll talk through next steps and any questions that you all might have for us. So before we get started, just wanted to provide some background as you can see on the image. So built in the mid-1920s, the Cushman Adams substations were key to bring electricity from the Cushman Dam to Tacoma. In 2017, the Tacoma City Council placed both substations on the Tacoma Register of Historic Places, recognizing their historical value, including the buildings, exteriors, and surrounding sites. We were able to get this project started back up a couple years ago, and during the summer of during the summer and fall of 2024, we conducted a broad inclusive citywide engagement. Maintenance of materials and the Adams Building was surplus in 2019. So we haven't used that building since 2019. Of course, this is mostly for us to talk about the engagement in the scenarios. So if there's any additional questions that don't come up today in regards to the background history of the buildings, I am willing to follow up and have more conversations offline. I'll pass it to my colleagues. Thank you, John. Sure. Thank you, Councilmembers.