The News Tribune from Tacoma, Washington • 105

Worthwhile wait Tacoma Dome was long time coming By Michael News Tribune campaign through, even though we weren't talking a foggy winter morning, of which there are plenty in this City of Destiny, the Tacoma Dome looks a little like a big, light-blue mushroom nestled against the freeway. It is, appropriately, at the gateway to the town. It is, many will tell you, the best thing that ever happened around here. Were it not for the Tacoma Dome, certainly, there would be no Tacoma Stars and, of course, no MISL AllStar Game. Like so much of this community, it didn't happen overnight.

The Dome's genesis, if you were to ransack chapterand-verse of this sawmill city's trudge forward, came way back in the 1950s. A local entrepreneur and member of a family closely associated with men's clothing, Morley Brotman, probably assembled the first pieces of the dream. It was his idea to mount a campaign for a first-class civic center and arena in a place that had never had much in the way of spiffy indoor facilities. His notions centered on about 25 square blocks on the side of the hill which is downtown (and where now, in part, the Sheraton-Tacoma Hotel rises). Brotman saw such a complex as a magnet for further downtown growth and the amenities so vital to the necessary expansion of the area.

The idea, now explains a Brotman protege and longtime Tacoma booster Stan Naccarato, "went three times to defeat. We just never had enough money to mount the right kind of a campaign to convince people it had to happen. "We lost big the first time, in the late '50s, and lost even bigger the second time, in the '60s. The notion by then was to start it on about 11th, instead of 9th, but it was always sort of up on the hill where the Sheraton and the Bicentennial Pavilion is today. "About all that was there then was a lot of old houses, and cat houses, and dog houses, and everything else.

Things were down at that time." Naccarato, now 59 and for the past 17 years the brains behind the Tacoma Tigers baseball franchise in the Pacific Coast League, remembers that the populace began to wake up a little by the time a third try for financing was mounted during the '70s. In addition to Brotman, former News Tribune staffer Stan Farber was quite dedicated to the project. "He had reams of material on whatever anybody built for a dome, anywhere in the world," says Naccarato. "He was quite a keeper of history. That stuff all helped.

But we still didn't have the right financing to get a about that much money in those days. At least, it doesn't sound like much today." The breakthrough came one day in Arizona, in the winter of 1979-80, where Naccarato was at a baseball meeting in Phoenix. "A guy walked up and said, 'We want you to fly to Flagstaff and see something we think will really catch your Longtime Tacoma developer and promoter Jim Zarelli, then president of the ballclub, was with Naccarato. "We come bouncing in over the mountains at night and we see this thing that looks like a big UFO. It's a big mound, on the campus of Northern Arizona University.

"We land and walk in and my mouth falls open. I see a guy kicking a football and I hear the sound instantly. I see a couple of other guys throwing a baseball back and forth. And I hear the snap of the glove. "The acoustics are amazing.

I told Zarelli, if we could just put wheels under this hummer and tow it Tacoma, it'd be a fantastic thing. The building, we come to find out, cost a little over $8 million to turn the key. "It's wood. And it's wonderful. So we charge back to Tacoma for a fourth run at this deal.

We had a Tacoma Athletic Commission meeting on a Thursday night and launched the project. "I came up with the idea of a Committee of 1,000, each putting up a hundred bucks apiece, to finance the campaign. That would raise 100 grand and that would take care of it." Bill Robinson, then publisher of this paper under the ownership of the Baker family, came forward and guaranteed the advertising costs. "We need this for the kids," Naccarato remembers Robinson saying, "to have a place to play football, to get 'em out of the mud and rain, and we need it for other events, for this town to get up and grow." Doug McArthur, a public relations and sports figure, headed the campaign. Some $86,000 finally was raised and in 1980, despite a Boeing recession and a tough time with the economy, the voters came through with flying colors, nearly a 71 percent majority.

In two years, 1981-82, up went the building. The campus dome in Flagstaff "was the Ford version," Naccarato says. "This one is the Cadillac. You're looking at about $44 million as it stands." Another part of the colorful story is that some of the planks in the Dome roof are from timber felled during the volcanic eruption at Mount St. Helens.

Present Mayor Doug Sutherland and the then-outgoing mayor, Mike Parker, were both strongly behind the Please see Tacoma Dome, Page 11 The News Some Dome roof planks are from trees felled by volcanic eruption. A long time in coming Long-lonely Puget Sounders appreciate shindigs like this By Michael News Tribune senic just went with old lace. to the occasional college team that would way up here, in the far northwest tling matches. Yeah, even Bobby Jones get A long here, time and ago, even Lewis brought and Clark along a tried girl to secure Washington, a little or glory Pacific for the Lutheran, University or Puget of corner of the land, the advent of so-called showed up once or twice to play golf. named Sacajawea to help find the spot, but Sound.

The latter two began as colleges, but major league sport was a long time in com- For the most part, though, the natives aside from the odd two-step around the became universities in the last generation or ing. and we don't use that word loosely, since campfire and a few boatloads of beaver so. The UPS basketball team even won a Oh, the first superstar, John L. Sullivan, many of us are, in every sense of the word, pelts, not much happened at all until some small-college national title not too terribly spent a couple of nights by the shore of natives had things pretty much to them- fool discovered gold in the Yukon back in long ago. Puget Sound on an exhibition tour back in selves for the longest time.

'98. In one of those fluke things that happen, 1883, but kept right on going not to return Maybe it was because a lot of the place This set off a helluva thing called a an old hockey league up in this precinct until he worked a carnival during a 1909 names being of Indian origin seemed Gold Rush, for lack of a better term that started challenging the NHL and a team Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. as if they were misspelled and it made it ultimately brought some people to the neigh- called the Seattle Metropolitans which And, yes, the New York Giants and the hard for folks to find us. I mean, Tacoma borhood. The vaudevillians always hun- played seven-a-side in the "rover" era Chicago White Sox tramped through on their and Puyallup and Steilacoom and Moclips gry for a crowd weren't far behind and even won the Stanley Cup.

around-the-world tour in 1913 but the and Humptulips and so forth aren't exactly they occasionally brought with them a few We've had some other aberrations take got rained out, so they had a late sup- garden-variety highway nomenclature. famous-named athletes. root, too. A thing called unlimited hydrogame and caught the next boat to Japan. We busied ourselves for years examining Like I said, that's how John L.

Sullivan, plane racing enjoys unusual favor in these per Babe Ruth came through a couple of a whole gob of outdoor splendor and we went and Jake Kilrain, and Gentleman Jim Cor- parts, even though nobody's really sure just times, hit a couple of golf balls off the roof fishing and boating and skiing and got mar- bett and Bob Fitzsimmons and a few others, why. of a downtown Seattle hotel and played a ried and raised kids and built airplanes for like Dempsey, found a reason to stop by. But, aside from boxing, minor league game there, humans will A lot of trees fell down in the woods and and then wind their into these parts, and while. Both Tacoma and Seattle and another here, in Tacoma, Mr. Boeing.

Barnstorming ballclubs would every now baseball was the main staple for the longest way were Pacifand a few of the oldest living dragged them down to the water and those people across the Sound in Port Town- ic Coast League members at the turn of the claim they remember it. we Red Grange played football somewhere made boards and pulp and other stuff and, send will tell you Josh Gibson once hit a ball century. But even that wasn't always steady. around here once and Jack Dempsey got off here in Tacoma, there still is an enormous there nine miles. They dropped into smaller leagues until a boxcar and had a couple of drinks and old smelter stack over by the bay that hark- So it was that high school and town sports to referee wres- ens back to a day when people thought ar- occupied most of our spare time, with a nod Please see Sound, Page 11 then, years later, came back FEBRUARY 14, 1988 05 05.