Train cars are wonderful. But high-end restaurants? Not so much.
Marisa Petrich, Abby Williamson
Issue date: 3/9/10 Section: Opinion
You might not know it from glancing at the restaurants in the downtown area, but most UW Tacoma students are not blessed with a bounty of extra cash. So why would organizers hoping to put train cars on the tracks running through campus fill the dining car with a "high end" restaurant?
Indochine, The Melting Pot, and Two Koi might be delicious, but they're hardly affordable. The downtown area needs more student-friendly businesses-especially if they're leasing from the university. This would not only attract a built-in clientele of roughly 3,000 people that are here on a daily basis, but encourage students to linger on campus, socialize, and spend their hard-earned dollars. The administration is already trying so hard to make us less of a commuter campus and encouraging students to stay for events, but if there's nowhere to grab something to eat before these evening events, people are just going to head home.
What we can't figure out is why the train's organizers are ignoring the needs of so many potential customers. Why try to attract a whole different population of restaurant-goers when UWT students are already here, filling up parking spaces and going straight home after class to eat where they can afford it?
Furthermore, there are plenty of splurge-worthy eateries in the area already. Adding another one would simply be redundant. Sure, some of us enjoy taking our significant other out to a fancy dinner for Valentine's Day or an anniversary, but having a restuarant exist solely for special occasions - especially on campus, makes absolutely no sense. It's like having an expensive dining room table that you only use for Thanksgiving, and can't touch for the rest of the year.
Last November, Grassi's owner Ken Grassi was quoted by the News Tribune as saying, "You can get taco bars and those types of things, and that's what the students want and that's their budget. But if you want quality retail, then you have to support us. It's that simple." With all due respect to Ken Grassi, we believe that quality can and should be affordable-and if it's not, we'd rather have what's cheap and fast. More importantly, the university's first responsibility should be to its students, not local retailers.
Indochine, The Melting Pot, and Two Koi might be delicious, but they're hardly affordable. The downtown area needs more student-friendly businesses-especially if they're leasing from the university. This would not only attract a built-in clientele of roughly 3,000 people that are here on a daily basis, but encourage students to linger on campus, socialize, and spend their hard-earned dollars. The administration is already trying so hard to make us less of a commuter campus and encouraging students to stay for events, but if there's nowhere to grab something to eat before these evening events, people are just going to head home.
What we can't figure out is why the train's organizers are ignoring the needs of so many potential customers. Why try to attract a whole different population of restaurant-goers when UWT students are already here, filling up parking spaces and going straight home after class to eat where they can afford it?
Furthermore, there are plenty of splurge-worthy eateries in the area already. Adding another one would simply be redundant. Sure, some of us enjoy taking our significant other out to a fancy dinner for Valentine's Day or an anniversary, but having a restuarant exist solely for special occasions - especially on campus, makes absolutely no sense. It's like having an expensive dining room table that you only use for Thanksgiving, and can't touch for the rest of the year.
Last November, Grassi's owner Ken Grassi was quoted by the News Tribune as saying, "You can get taco bars and those types of things, and that's what the students want and that's their budget. But if you want quality retail, then you have to support us. It's that simple." With all due respect to Ken Grassi, we believe that quality can and should be affordable-and if it's not, we'd rather have what's cheap and fast. More importantly, the university's first responsibility should be to its students, not local retailers.
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