If Tacoma loses Russell (Part III)
January 20th, 2008 by Republican By DefaultThe ‘Little Seattle’ pipe-dream
In the November 2007 issue of Seattle Business Monthly Todd Matthews begins by describing the stagnated high-rise (and mid-rise) office space construction market in Tacoma. He finishes by saying of Tacoma:
“In fact, this regional hub, military center and major port is a study in contradictions.”
I agree with his assessment, because in it he points to not only the reason for the failures of attracting commerce to Tacoma, but also the solution.
The Problem
The goal of building a financial district downtown, espoused by some leaders in the city, has usually focused on building around the city’s financial ‘anchor chain’, Russell Investment Group. All attempts at attaining that goal have failed, and now Tacoma faces the potential loss of the hub around which that goal revolved.
Financial districts (and their accompanying Class A office districts) are built around commerce in other sectors.
Once a financial district is established, then the goal of building it into a world-class financial center becomes attainable. But trying to build a financial district based on a single company in the financial sector (and maybe a few branch offices of financial companies headquartered elsewhere), instead of a strong local commerce in other sectors, is putting the cart before the horse.
Tacoma’s goal of having a financial district has been a pipe dream, not because it’s unattainable, but because the efforts to create it have been misdirected. There’s a difference between a dreamer and a visionary. The dreamer only thinks about where he’ll end up, but the visionary sees the road to get there.
I believe that as long as Tacoma keeps looking to make it’s downtown into a copy of Seattle’s downtown that it will only be, at best, a dull copy.
The Solution
As mentioned in the quote above, Tacoma has several strong economic sectors. We should work to build commerce in all of those sectors in all parts of the city, county and even in surrounding counties, not just in downtown.
The Russell company was, in many ways, built by Weyerhauser. Besides the anecdote that Russell moved here at the request of the Weyerhausers, they were also the strength of it’s initial customer base. From there it grew to become an internationally recognized and trusted investment firm.
So, where are Tacoma’s Weyerhausers today?
Tacoma is still the largest accessible city in Western Washington. Seattle is shooting itself in the foot by making it difficult to get downtown (and to its Port), and once down there it’s difficult to find an inexpensive place to park (if you can find a place at all).
Tacoma is centrally located in it’s region with freeways and thoroughfares coming in from cities to the South, from the Olympic peninsula, from the entire sprawling county and even from Seattle. The Port of Tacoma has capitalized on these facts extensively and with proposed freeway construction projects, it will continue to do so.
But downtown Tacoma, which is right next to the Port, lies relatively dormant. That can and should be changed.
Tacoma has several major military bases in it’s backyard. Yet the treatment of the military in our area is atrocious.
Protesters who illegally block military shipments in and out of shipping ports are not only allowed to walk away without any consequences, they are heralded by some as heroes. And by contrast the local newspaper seldom prints stories of the real heroes who have risked their lives to keep our city and our nation free. At the objection of the military some are pushing to build a freeway that would block a base in on all sides. A fact that can become and issue when the military looks at base closures. And these aren’t even the tip of the iceberg that could sink Tacoma as the home of military bases.
We, as a community, need to make a concerted effort to make the bases and their military and civilian workers welcome and prosperous in their endeavors to make a good life for all of us and for their families.
However, there is an upside to the failure of the efforts to try to model our downtown after part of Seattle. By trying to recreate Seattle’s financial district they may have inadvertently recreated an area just a little South of Seattle’s downtown.
Pioneer Square was a depressed area just South of downtown that had some light industrial and transportation companies, some sports entertainment industry facilities, and a whole bunch of big, empty buildings (mostly caused by transportation and tax costs).
Pioneer Square became a hub for high-tech start-ups not because it was Seattle, but because it was close to Seattle. It had infrastructure that made starting a business easy. There was cheap (and edgy) office space everywhere, and it became so popular that any warehouse, outhouse, hen-house or doghouse got converted into office space. And with that came more businesses like restaurants and coffee shops.
Seattle wasn’t as popular with the dot com start-up crowd as Bellevue and Redmond were. Pioneer Square was ready to take them in and give them a cheap place to get their company started, but the other areas could only offer expensive ‘build to suit’ accommodations. These weren’t the only reasons it became a high-tech hub, but these were certainly huge factors.
So in summary…
Tacoma needs to come together and work as a community not only within it’s borders, but with the surrounding areas as well. The efforts to build the downtown into something it can never be need to stop. Efforts to build small businesses, which create most of the jobs in our country, need to be stepped up.
Then, when these things are successful, the Russells of the world will begin to consider Tacoma again, just like the Russells and so many others have.
The pipe-dream has been on life-support for decades. I hope the pipe-dream dies a quick and painless death and gets put out of our misery.
In this series:
If Tacoma loses Russell (Part I)
If Tacoma loses Russell (Part II)
If Tacoma loses Russell (Part III)
If Tacoma loses Russell (Part IV)
If Tacoma loses Russell (Part V)
If Tacoma loses Russell (Part VI)
If Tacoma loses Russell (Part VII)
