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Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.
C.R. Roberts is a Tacoma native. Before joining The News Tribune, he worked as a freelance writer and part-time cowhand on a cattle ranch in Northern Idaho. He writes about small business, personal finance and other business issues.
John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.
Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.
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Three Pierce County cities – Tacoma, University Place and Puyallup – didn't make the cut today when the Community Economic Reinvestment Board gave away of pool of state funds for infrastructure projects.
Yakima, Whitman County, Vancouver and Mount Vernon won grants of $500,000 to $1 million a year for 25 years, according to Rep. Troy Kelley, (D-University Place), and a CERB member.
Who lost? The City of Puyallup, which graded the highest among Pierce County applicants, wanted $1 million a year to improve the transit and pedestrian connections between old downtown and South Hill. University Place sought $1 million to help underwrite its troubled town center development project. And Tacoma wanted $1 million a year to help upgrade the infrastructure and sidewalks in the downtown financial district to aid in the effort to keep Russell Investments' corporate headquarters in downtown Tacoma.
Kelley called it "bad news" for Pierce County projects.
During the deliberations, a majority of board members decided to spurn projects that appear as if they will get done without a state contribution, Kelly said. The nod went to projects that required the state contribution to proceed.
The board had just $2.5 million to divvy up for this – the second and final round – of funding authorized via what's called the Local Infrastructure Financing Tool (LIFT). The legislature approved the financing mechanism as a two-year pilot project. For it to continue, the legislature must evaluate the funding favorably and vote in 2009 to extend the program.
As for Tacoma, it has already garnered a $700,000 one-time contribution from Gov. Chris Gregoire's discretionary economic development incentive fund. But the hoped-for $25 million would have funded a dramatic upgrade to the downtown streetscape and contributed toward development of a parking structure.
Tacoma listed all of those improvements in an a detailed proposal to executives at Russell Investments, the global investment company that has its headquarters and roughly 1,100 associates based in Tacoma. The company continues to look for a new headquarters location either in Tacoma or elsewhere in the region.
"What we and the city put together (for Russell) is a multi-faceted investment program in downtown, and that (state funding) was one facet," said Bruce Kendall, CEO of the Economic Development Board of Tacoma-Pierce County and leader of the keep-Russell effort. "Ideally that (CERB funding) would be in place. The rest can go forward. It's not a brake on what we're going to be doing. I'm looking at it as a delay."
Kendal said Tacoma political and civic boosters could push for a reauthorization of the LIFT program and reapply for funding in the future.
"Is (today's decision) going to stop us? No way...We'll be able to do what we want to downtown, but we'll just have fewer resources in the near-term to help us do that," Kendall said.
