Paradise Lost: Surveying the ruins of a $75M development debacle

Your first impression is that everything seems comfortable. You are driving along a two-lane rural road in east Pierce County, past Bonney Lake High School and a few small homes with gravel driveways and set back from the road. Towering trees and fat blackberry bushes line both sides of the road.

But then a change of scenery occurs that is so oddly subtle, yet noticeable, it seems almost spooky: Did the pavement just get a little smoother? Those lamp posts look new. Why are there suddenly sidewalks out here in the middle of nowhere?

Welcome to what was supposed to be Cascadia, the vision of developer Patrick Kuo, president and CEO of Cascadia Development Corp. The company purchased 4,200 acres of land from Weyerhauser in 1991 and set out to build the largest master-planned community in Pierce County: 6,500 homes, a hotel, three golf courses, seven schools, a fire station, trails, parks, retail village, amphitheater, and discovery center. It’s probably easier to list the amenities Cascadia wasn’t going to offer.

Cascadia Development Corp. broke ground on the project in 2005 and expected its first residents and business owners to arrive by 2007. The project’s Web site offered stock photos of what life would be like at Cascadia: an older couple enjoying a bottle of red wine; a mother passing out candy from her front door on Halloween; a woman working on her laptop computer in a park; and a crowd listening to live music on a sunny day.

None of this ever happened.

According to the Bonney Lake & Sumner Courier-Herald, Kuo filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Oct. 15 — one day before HomeStreet Bank was set to auction off a majority of the site. The bank had foreclosed on approximately $75 million in loans. Kuo hoped bankruptcy protection would allow him to get the project’s finances in order. Last week, however, a federal bankruptcy court judge in Seattle ruled that HomeStreet could go ahead with an auction. One week ago today, parcels were auctioned off in the lobby of the County-City building in Tacoma.

What does the biggest residential-commercial development project in Pierce County look like when everyone walks away before it’s finished?

Earlier this week, I visited Cascadia to survey the wreckage. The first thing one notices upon arriving is a sculpture of a deer buck in mid-stride atop the grassy roundabout that steers you toward Cascadia. The sculpture has been vandalized; the antlers broken off and someone has chipped away its emerald green surface. A plaque at the sculpture’s base lists the title (“The Buck Stops Here”) and artist. A similar plaque has been added just to the left: “This Buck Is Under Video Surveillance. Do Not Touch.”

Across the way, a billboard with Cascadia’s familiar logo (a blue/green/orange dot shaped like the latest and most sophisticated pharmaceutical, accompanied by the slogan “Cascadia: Art of Living” in a clean-and-easy-to-read font) displays the architectural drawing of what would have been Cascadia’s Discovery Center, a 3,800-square foot building where residents would have enjoyed a cup of coffee, relaxed on an outdoor deck, or sat by the fire place. A wall of windows would have offered a sweeping view of Mount Rainier and a man-made lagoon ringed by tall grass. Today, the Discovery Center looks more like an old ruin. A set of concrete steps lead up a hillside to nowhere. The foundation has been laid and there is one concrete wall, but not much else. According to the billboard, the Discovery Center was set to open in summer 2010.

Past the roundabout, up and over a hill, you reach another roundabout, which directs you to the sub-divisions of Columbia Vista, Liberty Ridge, Winthrop, and Whitman. These divisions have most of the infrastructure of a quiet suburban street: sidewalks, curb ramps, street lights (have they ever been turned on? If so, why?), and medians. But instead of beautiful homes and lush front lawns, visitors will find seas of dirt lots with thin white stakes sticking up. The stakes are marked either “Sewer” or “Drain” or “Storm.” Weeds of different varieties and colors have grown nearly as tall as the stakes. Some stakes have been broken off and thrown in the street to join a collection of other garbage: shattered PVC pipes, empty cans of Busch beer, an old tire, and an orange plastic traffic cylinder that was run over and flattened.

The only sign of life in Cascadia — other than the crows that call out to one another across the empty lots, or the single hawk I saw circling overhead during my visit, or the old, heavy-set man with gray hair who I assumed lived in a development down the road from Cascadia; he was out walking his puffy white lap dog (No leash. No bag for poop. Why bother?) — is the activity at the $18 million elementary school building that was constructed by the Sumner School District before Cascadia imploded. For the past two years, it has served as a temporary home for other elementary school buildings undergoing renovation. This school year, students from Bonney Lake Elementary call this gorgeous new building in the middle of nowhere home while their permanent school building is remodeled.

If you visit Cascadia, you can hear the kids on the outdoor basketball court squeal and laugh and play. If you close your eyes, you might think you’re hearing the sounds of kids playing in the neighborhood that was supposed to be Cascadia.

Todd Matthews is editor of the Tacoma Daily Index and recipient of an award for Outstanding Achievement in Media from the Washington State Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation for his work covering historic preservation in Tacoma and Pierce County. His work has also appeared in All About Jazz, City Arts Tacoma, Earshot Jazz, Homeland Security Today, Jazz Steps, Journal of the San Juans, LynnwoodMountlake Terrace Enterprise, Prison Legal News, Rain Taxi, Real Change, Seattle Business Monthly, Seattle magazine, Tablet, Washington CEO, Washington Law & Politics, and Washington Free Press. He is a graduate of the University of Washington and holds a bachelor’s degree in communications. His journalism is collected online at wahmee.com.