Tacoma May Emerge As The '90S Regional Growth Magnet -- But City May Need To Cast Off Old, Take On New

Seattle led the nation in the growth rate of new jobs from 1988 through 1990. U.S. Department of Labor statistics show more than 60,000 jobs were added in the Seattle-Everett area during those three years. That's an average annual growth rate of more than 6 percent.

Only slightly behind pacesetting Seattle was the Portland area, which includes Vancouver, Wash. It ranked fourth among all metropolitan regions in the U.S. with employment growth of 5 percent a year and 34,000 new jobs.

Between these two economic hot spots is another metropolitan area, with a population of more than half a million. It, however, is ``unranked'' in recent job growth. Its residential land values rose about 2 percent in 1989 vs. 20 percent for Seattle. It has the same amount of downtown first-class office space today as in 1980 vs. a tripling in Seattle.

If you haven't guessed, the name of the place is Tacoma-Pierce County. For many in Seattle, Tacoma is an object of scorn. The copper smelter is gone but the pulp mill and the aluminum smelter are still there. A former mayor of that city once said, ``The smell of Tacoma is the smell of jobs.''

But jobs in old, heavy manufacturing facilities have been shrinking. Blue-collar towns like Tacoma have been hard-hit by competition from low-cost labor in shipbuilding and other basic industries. Tacoma has struggled with this trend at the same time its downtown sought to recover from the loss of Weyerhaeuser's headquarters to suburban King County. At times it seemed the economic base of the county depended on low-paying military jobs at Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base, as other blue-collar and white-collar jobs eroded.

Time, then, for a prediction that may seem startling: There is every chance that Tacoma will be Puget Sound's boom town of the 1990s and, at the turn of the century, it will be Tacoma, not Seattle, that looks dramatically different than it does today.

Begin with the basic proposition that some economic catch-up for Pierce County is inevitable. It's just not natural for two metropolitan areas right next door to each other to have such utterly different rates of growth, and indeed there are few other examples in the U.S. of such a stark contrast.

The imbalance is, however, self-correcting. Seattle-style growth brings soaring land costs, overstrained infrastructure, and overheated politics of growth management reflected in lengthy, complex permit procedures for proposed projects. Tacoma-style slow growth means low land costs, ample in-place infrastructure and an enthusiasm for economic development and new jobs.

Three specific events serve to announce Tacoma's potential as the decade of the 1990s begins.

-- The University of Washington's Tacoma campus has been sited next to Union Station downtown. Several brick warehouses will be renovated into classrooms. Wisely, University administrators have made the campus a linchpin for downtown revitalization and historic preservation, rather than clearing land and putting up new buildings on a site that would have less beneficial impact on the city.

Tacoma now becomes a city of three universities, as UW joins well-regarded Pacific Lutheran University and the University of Puget Sound. Strong higher education resources are crucial to economic development today.

-- The Boeing Co. recently announced its next major expansion would be in Pierce County, with two plants valued at $450 million. Until the announcement, Boeing had no direct employees in the county, though spending by Boeing workers living there supported 22,000 jobs indirectly. Boeing has been the key to Seattle's leadership in job creation. Now Tacoma will benefit from this engine of employment growth.

-- As reported in this space last week, the Port of Tacoma is strong and competitive. A potential expansion of its role beyond marine operations is the conversion of McChord Air Force Base into South Sound International Airport under a joint operating agreement similar to Hickham Field in Honolulu, which is a commercial airport unless preempted by a military emergency.

McChord is well located to serve enough regional air traffic to put an end to the current agonized debate over a third runway at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. McChord also is ideally located in Tacoma's retail growth corridor, which runs from downtown to McChord.

To rake in the chips it is stacking up, Tacoma may need to take a step already taken by two U.S. cities most praised for environmental quality - Pittsburgh and Chattanooga. It may need to bid farewell to the tall smokestacks. What do Tacoma and Everett have that Seattle doesn't? A pulp mill. What does Seattle have that they don't? A booming downtown. This might be more than a coincidence. To take on the new, Tacoma may need to cast off the old.

If that happened, there could be jobs aplenty, even if the smell of jobs was gone.

Glenn Pascall's column appears Sundays in the Business section.