Russell Wilson asked the rhetorical question at the beginning of last year’s championship Seahawk season, “Why not us?” Winning the Super Bowl wasn’t so obvious at the time but his vision, once shared, became the rally cry for the organization top to bottom.
That same rhetorical question could be applied to Everett today.
Recent private sector speculation in Everett’s downtown gives signs of potential. Two multi-story projects will bring a national brand downtown hotel plus over 300 new market rate apartments, a new public market, and new restaurants sprinkled with some new street level retail all staging in over the next 12 months.
Everett, though, still struggles from some underlying issues if it is to leverage the current activity into more. Due to declining membership, its Chamber of Commerce was morphed into the Economic Alliance of Snohomish County several years ago, bringing it inside a well-led organization but one with broader concerns than just Everett. Its business community remains oddly fragmented and not of one voice as it struggles with a business literacy issue that allows it to grow more and more dependent on Boeing — a dependence that feels good in good times but leaves it vulnerable in down times.
The failure this year of its public schools bond and near miss on the Boeing Machinists union vote signals to outside interests a community possibly in decline or, at a minimum, as one with fragmented constituencies. Toss in this year’s city budget deficits, temporarily cured mostly by new taxes and fees, and Everett presents like a city in need of a business plan but no real place in which to incubate it. Opportunities bounce over it far too often as a result, usually landing in other cities. In the meantime, Boeing keeps pumping paychecks into it, and it feels good.
Business plans for cities shape a revenue picture and identify what the community is for and where it wants to go. They become the core ideas behind a movement to something bigger that everyone can rattle off in coffee shops to board rooms and council meetings. For Everett, that might include a strategy to diversify the economy and give people who work in Everett more reasons to want to live there, spend locally and boost tax revenues. It might also talk about Paine Field as a resource to recruit businesses that need access to convenient commercial passenger service. It would talk about its downtown, the mall area, and a medical sector alongside Everett Community College and WSU in its north end. It might talk about the Port and its proposed wharf project. It would be strong enough to survive even in weaker economies.
But with no real plan or direction tied to a common vision, business, government planning departments, and citizens remain necessarily reactionary, compliant and, at times, deserving of Everett’s go-along-to-get-along reputation.
Everett has the stuff, though, to pull off great things. It’s done it before and recent signs in its downtown are encouraging. But its existing way of solving problems may no longer serve it so well in a city as big and complex as it is today, especially when it’s going up against other communities who have clear visions and business plans. The transformation of Bothell today is a local example of a community that started years ago with a vision and stuck to it.
Maybe Everett is just missing that dynamic Russell Wilson-like leader to pull it all together and ask the “Why not us?” question. Because until its leaders begin to dream of something more and unite around a vision, the recent activity may be but a blip on an otherwise quiet radar screen. In the absence of such leadership, it’s still a nice ball club … but far from its potential.
Tom Hoban is CEO of The Coast Group of Companies. Contact him at 425-339-3638 or tomhoban@coastmgt.com or visit www.coastmgt.com. Twitter: @Tom_P_Hoban.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.