Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson and City Council members donned Husky baseball hats Wednesday morning.
The display of purple and gold was a response to the news that the University of Washington will establish a branch campus for Snohomish County college students and the state will provide $4 million to launch the effort.
“The next step is getting a first-class university for a first-class city,” City Councilman Paul Roberts said after pulling hats from a plastic bag and passing them around the dais. “I thought that we should send the message that we want it here in Everett.”
For guidance, Everett officials are looking south to Tacoma.
After it learned that it was getting a University of Washington branch campus, Tacoma raised $1 million in two days for the university’s endowment.
Stephanson and a top adviser are seeking the advice of Tacoma developer and University of Washington Regent Herb Simon and retired banker Bill Philip.
Simon helped drive private fundraising efforts for Tacoma’s branch and Philip played a key role in persuading the Legislature to locate a campus in Tacoma.
Their campaign “demonstrated to the Legislature that there was private sector support for bringing a campus to Tacoma,” said Stephanson, who wants the branch campus in his city. “That is the kind of community support that really any public institution of higher education needs to be successful.”
City officials have talked with members of the business community and Stephanson said he anticipates a coordinated effort to raise money will form soon.
“These next few months are very critical as we begin to answer the next question on everybody’s mind, which is: ‘Where is this going to be?’” Stephanson said.
The first recommendations where a college could be built aren’t expected to go back to the governor or Legislature until November, but Everett has already quietly offered at least three possible locations for a campus – two near its downtown core.
Landing a downtown campus could bolster an already robust redevelopment effort, which includes the 8,000-seat Everett Events Center, a wave of planned new condo developments and a possible streetcar line.
When the Tacoma branch first opened its doors in 1990, classes were held in the city’s eight-story Perkins Building, which has since been converted to apartments.
Locating the campus downtown was widely embraced by the city’s business community, Simon said.
Campus siting and construction took place at a time when that city’s downtown was undergoing major changes, not much different from what is happening in Everett today.
“We wanted to grow a community of educated human capital, and we said it ought to be downtown, in the height of visibility and growth,” Simon said.
In 1997, the university moved classes to a permanent 46-acre site, farther south.
The area, which was underused from the city’s perspective, is now a more vibrant place with a University Bookstore branch and two popular museums.
It’s 2,200 students also provide a boost to local businesses and add to the city’s culture.
“The city has definitely been a booster for the campus and it has definitely benefited from the campus downtown,” said Tacoma spokesman Rob McNair-Huff. “(UW-Tacoma) helped pull up that portion of downtown and made that portion of Tacoma a destination,”
Pat McClain, Everett’s governmental affairs director, said the city is looking to repeat Tacoma’s success of aligning business and university interests.
“Certainly there’s a model there,” he said.
Whether Everett will match Tacoma’s community support is unknown, especially with a lingering debate between people who want a branch campus and those who wanted a stand-alone four-year college.
“I have mixed emotions,” said Carol Nelson, president and chief executive of Cascade Bank and a member of the advisory commission studying Snohomish County’s need for a four-year university.
The commission recommended that an independent university with a polytechnic focus would be best.
Nelson said she still agrees with that finding, which would have given an “opportunity to create a unique university for the needs of the business community.”
Tom Hoban of Coast Realty Services of Everett also has concerns, saying anything short of a residential campus falls short of what the city deserves.
“I’ve been approached by some elected officials to say the private sector will have a role in this,” he said. “The pump is being primed for the private sector to step up in some (financial) capacity. We just don’t know what that means.”
Larry Hanson, former Herald publisher and a long-time advocate of a four-year university in Snohomish County, said he is encouraged by the university’s goal of offering students classes somewhere in Snohomish, Island or Skagit counties by fall 2008.
“The University of Washington is going to step up and respond to that need for higher education in our three counties,” said Hanson, a former member of the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Board. “It’s well equipped to do it and to do it right.”
Business editor Mike Benbow contributed to this story.
Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.
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