Whether or not you use the airport, if you are a resident or business owner in the Everett area, commercial passenger service at Snohomish County’s Paine Field will benefit your life almost assuredly if you prioritize jobs, opportunity, the environment and the long-term health of our region.
Other parts of the Puget Sound area have seen great gains in this strong current economy. In the view of too many members of the business community, Everett still remains overly dependent on Boeing employment, has offered no plan to change that and that has them concerned enough to invest elsewhere.
The ever-present worry is the downside risk of a Boeing slow down or layoffs. Everett’s economy is largely built on the multiple effect where each Boeing paycheck dollar gets spread around town five to seven times.
So when Boeing sneezes, goes the theory, Everett catches a cold.
Meanwhile, adjacent communities such as Bothell that offer more diverse employment either by virtue of a strategy or location have seen stronger gains.
Even Arlington offers a more diverse jobs story than Everett.
That all can change with the announcement that Everett will be the second airport serving the Puget Sound region.
Proximity to airports is often a high priority for businesses looking for new locations. Everett will soon have that advantage.
Facilitating commerce and attracting companies that simply need to be near air travel is obvious and has been for some time.
What might not be so obvious is the power of having a local link to the Bay Area, assuming Alaska Airlines provides one as part of its promised services.
Today, there are 48 flights between Seattle and San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose and there’s demand for more. The connections between the two regions link to tech, of course.
With Seattle possessing two of the big winners in the cloud race in Amazon and Microsoft, creating a business or moving a second stage company to the Puget Sound area makes even more sense today than it did 10 years ago.
New businesses will be spawned in the Puget Sound more so now as well and many will need access to an airport, particularly with links to their partners, venture capital sources, customers and talent in the Bay Area.
Another airport that links the Puget Sound region and Bay Area could not be better timed.
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.
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