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As I listen to the rhetoric, marketing pitches and advertising programs that try to attract businesses to Tacoma, I realize that there’s more to making that happen than just saying that we want to (and paying marketing firms for their advice).

On the surface Tacoma seems welcoming with boards of this and committees of that all trying to convince business people that this is the place to be. But in the end their efforts are undone by others who, knowingly or not, are working against them, and in some cases the committees and boards are actually working against themselves.

A recent example of this that I mentioned in another post was a spokesperson for one of those board/committees who talked rather emotionally about the type of businesses that ‘we’ want here. I don’t know who that ‘we’ is, but she definitely wasn’t speaking for me.

This post isn’t about me or my business, but there’s a ready example of this in my own efforts in this city. I lived in Tacoma for a number of years before I started trying to do business here. The reasons were simple at first. The money was in Seattle. Then the dot com bust hit the market, companies folded and their employees went to other companies, filling the void that created so much work for contractors like me. So, as businesses do (or die), I needed to adapt.

At the time Tacoma was still trying to attract ‘high tech’ businesses, as opposed to the current label of ’software development companies’. I guess someone is waking up to the facts, but I’ll say more on that in upcoming posts. So with the cries for those high tech firms to move here, and because I was already living here, I decided to focus my marketing on Tacoma. That was a mistake, for a number of reasons.

First was the fact that Tacoma is not a large consumer of high tech anything. The technology firms that are doing well here are considered ‘primary’ suppliers, meaning that they bring in money from outside the area. Currently, the city can barely support two small computer stores even after a larger one closed their doors last year. As for contractors, there’s still a supply of workers who are willing to take jobs in Tacoma for lower pay instead of working in Seattle or the Bellevue/Redmond area and commuting.

The next reason that marketing my skills to Tacoma was a mistake is that the people who were saying that Tacoma wanted high tech computer firms weren’t the only ones who had a say in the matter. I watched as dozens of computer industry firms tried to open markets or offices in Tacoma and quickly gave up or failed. Partly because the market wasn’t there and partly because there were many people who just didn’t seem to want outsiders moving into their city. Most people who have been around Tacoma for a while know how insular old Tacomans can be.

Every city has it’s power struggles, and Tacoma has had more than its share. Every once in a while these struggles surface in the public eye. Things like decades ago when the feds had to come in and drive out some organized crime from back East that got a foothold in the city (with the help of politicians and police, of course). Another more recent example was the Brame case, where a policeman/police chief’s problems were overlooked as he was being promoted. Does anyone really believe that the cronyism problem only existed in the police department or that it has gone away? Have we really taken a look at all of the people who were hired or promoted under that same city manager?  But I digress.
My point is that the problems that keep people and businesses out of Tacoma are still here, spending most of their time beneath the surface but occasionally popping into the public eye. The groups/boards/committees continue to try, at least on the surface, to attract businesses to all of the city and county, but usually focusing their efforts on downtown. The conflicting voices, even the more silent ones, continue to put up barricades on the inroads that outside firms seem to make. An almost comical example is the “we’re not Seattle’s bedroom community” vs. the “let’s build more condos and high density housing” conundrum. Another is the push for “creative worker jobs” in a mostly blue-collar town. I could go on, but you get my point.

The worst part of all of this is the backlash, most of which is suffered by the businesses that try to build their businesses here, but also by the taxpayer who picks up the tab for all of the programs that are supposed to attract businesses. We’ve spent nine figures (that’s some multiple of a hundred million dollars) on the convention center, link light rail, museums, bridges and other projects that (among other selling points) were supposed to attract those businesses so that they’d bring those jobs to the city. And yet the only area that seems to be effective at it is the Port, which operates largely separate from all of these failing programs.

I don’t know when this city will be able to come together in it’s efforts to attract business, and maybe that’s part of the problem. Instead of trying to attract businesses maybe we should focus our efforts on growing businesses. I guess that statement makes me one of those conflicting voices. But I’ll save more about that, too, for another post.

In case you’re wondering about my business, I continue to adapt and change, yet still finding most of my customers in other communities, just as I always have. I’ve also adapted by branching out beyond high tech into other areas. I’m sure I’ll be just fine even without Tacoma’s help. There’s someone much bigger looking out for me.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 2:16 am and is filed under Tacoma Contradictions, Tacoma Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.