Free ice cream, music and chance to tell Tacoma your vision for these historic buildings

If you’ve wondered about what’s going to happen to the gated and vacant Cushman and Adams substations in Proctor along North 19th Street, you can get some answers this weekend at a street fair Tacoma is throwing.

On Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., residents are invited to kick off the last event of the summer Proctor Block festival series with the Historic Cushman Street Fair. There will be free ice cream for kids, food vendors, music, booths and historic tours of the site from Pretty Gritty Tours.

Saturday will be the second opportunity for the public to comment on and share ideas about what the substations should be in the future. You also can share your feedback online.

At the intersection of North 21st Street and North Adams Street, the substations were built in the mid-1920s and brought electricity from the Cushman Dam to Tacoma. The buildings were placed on the Tacoma Register of Historic Places in 2017, and the City Council began engaging the community to explore future redevelopment of the properties in 2018. Those efforts were paused during the pandemic and restarted this year.

Tacoma Public Utilities is using and maintaining the site and plans to vacate and surplus the property in 2027 after an off-site facility is constructed, according to an FAQ about the project.

The City of Tacoma plans to make more concrete decisions about future use in 2025 and 2026, according to the project schedule.

A Future Use study is considering a variety of uses for the buildings, including affordable housing, public use, neighborhood retail space and other private, nonprofit and public-use scenarios. There is no recommendation for demolition.