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Tacoma may have finally nailed revival together

Wednesday, August 16, 2000

By BILL VIRGIN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

TACOMA HAS LONG been the little kid who, no matter how much you root for and hope for and pull for and cross your fingers for, always seems to have the fly ball bounce off the tip of his glove or the shot clank off the front of the rim.

Until now. The gawky kid has grown up, filled out and is looking much more accomplished. And if he won't ever be as polished as his northern cousins, he might actually have a little more character and be a little more bearable to be around.

I like Tacoma. It's affordable and largely traffic-congestion-free. I liked living there, and I still like driving through the North End to look at the beautiful old homes, along the string of parks on the Ruston Way waterfront, out to Point Defiance or to the Tacoma Dome for a hockey game.

Tacoma has always had a lot going for it -- the nation's architecturally coolest high school (Stadium, the huge French chateau-style brick structure perched on a cliff above Commencement Bay) the best jazz musician/saloonkeep

er/politician (Red Kelly) and the purveyor of the region's best chocolate truffles (Affairs).

But I am also aware of the hazards of writing about Tacoma's revival, having seen it promised as regularly as a sunny weekend in August, and having seen it delivered about as often as a sunny weekend in February.

Lots of people have tried to do more than promise Tacoma's revival. A Weyerhaeuser subsidiary, Cornerstone-Columbia, built several blocks worth of new office buildings in an effort at city center revival. It didn't take.

Frank Russell Co., a player in world financial markets as well as in municipal affairs, took a gamble on downtown and built a new headquarters tower there, hoping others would follow. That didn't take either.

Or maybe they did take. Maybe the mistake in waiting for Tacoma's recovery, and being disappointed when it didn't arrive, has been expecting it to be accomplished all at once, or as the result of one big development project.

Maybe Tacoma's recovery is finally taking. And the evidence -- from a striking new bridge to the first high-rise office building in years to proposed car, glass and art museums -- is that something is happening, because of an accumulation of things. Just as it's not one nail that builds the house but all the nails together, Tacoma may now have a large enough critical mass of investments and projects that it is finally reaping the benefits, however belatedly, from all of them.

Tacoma had lots of problems to overcome to get to this point. While the sight and smell of the industrialized Tideflats is often blamed, the problems were much deeper than that. Its downtown, unlike Seattle, has little level ground. The downtown was also hollowed out years ago by the opening of Tacoma Mall.

Furthermore, with a few exceptions, Tacoma hasn't had the core of big companies headquartered in town that provide the executive leadership and financial muscle to get things done. On the few occasions a large company took root in the community, it wound up being bought out (i.e., Hillhaven or Puget Sound Bank) and the headquarters moved away. Nor did Tacoma have the kinds of companies (Boeing or Microsoft) or institutions (the University of Washington, the Fred Hutch) that spin off more companies.

So Tacoma has done what it could with what it has, including an amazing ability to pry money out of federal and state coffers for the interstate extension, the new courthouse and state historical museum adjoining Union Station, the new University of Washington campus.

It is now absorbing the inevitable southward migration of families and companies who can't afford Seattle or the Eastside and find they sacrifice little in amenities by relocating to Tacoma.

Any optimism about Tacoma's recovery must be tempered by experience, so it is wise to regard it as still a fragile thing. A collapse in the tech economy or in real estate lease rates in the Seattle area could throttle the move of companies to Tacoma. Something bad could happen to the existing mainstays of the economy -- the port, the military installations and the Tideflats industries including, yes, the paper mill. City government and civic groups could break down in squabbling that delays and eventually deters any development.

Tacoma's nickname, the City of Destiny, began as a boast when it landed the transcontinental railroad, but for years after it lingered as a sort of taunt, a reminder of promise unfulfilled. Every city has a destiny, good or bad. Tacoma's destiny could well be a good one, but one achieved in fits and starts, setbacks and successes, a long arduous climb rather than an easy walk.

P-I columnist Bill Virgin can be reached at 206-448-8319 or billvirgin@seattle-pi.com. His column appears Mondays and Wednesdays.

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