Zone sought to help job creation in Tacoma

In hopes of drawing new industry and jobs to town, Tacoma is pursuing a state designation for an “Innovation Partnership Zone” that would identify part of the east Foss peninsula as a clean water research hub.

Though no state funding would directly come with the special label, city economic development and public works officials say the city’s co-application with its partner, the University of Washington Tacoma, seeks to secure the designation to help attract new public and private business partnerships and grow existing ones.

Key to the joint application is a plan to eventually expand the city’s new Center for Urban Waters into a broader research campus that would anchor an envisioned “clean water cluster” east of the Foss Waterway on a rectangular swath of city- and port-owned lands.

“What this is about is differentiating Tacoma in a marketing sense,” Ryan Petty, director of Tacoma’s Community and Economic Development Department, told the City Council this week. “Really, the Urban Waters investment in the City of Tacoma gives us the ability to differentiate ourselves and start this new economy around it.”

Administered through the state’s Commerce Department, the IPZ designation requires applicants to meet several criteria. They must identify a distinct geographic zone with room to accommodate firm growth, provide a focus area of research, and ensure that work force training and a globally competitive firm or firms that are directly linked to the focus of research are involved in the partnership.

City officials say Tacoma’s application meets most of the requirements, except for the involvement of a globally competitive firm.

Earlier this month, representatives from organizations in the so-called “Tacoma Partnership” – a collaboration of city, port, university, utilities and others with stakes in ongoing clean water initiatives – met to discuss pursuing the IPZ designation, Petty said. Some considered forgoing this year’s application because of the lack of a global firm, Petty said.

But, “in the end, the group’s considered judgment was no, let’s go for it,” he added.

Even without a global firm, city economic development staff member Martha Anderson noted “it is possible to achieve designation if we can demonstrate a strong likelihood of success.” To help the city do that, it has hired consultants to help develop a Web page and study prospective clean water industrial partners, Petty said.

Established by the Legislature in 2007, the IPZ program has bestowed designations on Seattle’s South Lake Union hi-tech hub, an aerospace research zone in Everett and a biofuels research district in the Tri-Cities, among others.

Awarded every two years, past designations have come with as much as $1 million per designee. Funding is no longer included in the program, though the state hopes to one day restore it, Anderson said.

“The value is the recognition,” she added.

An IPZ designation can be used in marketing to attract firms and to help win federal funding grants, city officials said.

Key to Tacoma’s application is the eventual expansion of Urban Waters, the public-private research facility on East D Street with tenants that include the city, UWT and Puget Sound Partnership.

With nearby property now available for purchase, public works officials have conducted preliminary plans for a broader Urban Waters campus that could include a new four- to five-story building with additional labs, an auditorium and structured parking.

While expressing general support for pursuing the designation, some council members also raised concerns. David Boe worried an Urban Waters expansion might conflict with new Shoreline Master Plan recommendations for the east side of the Foss, and Lauren Walker wondered if reporting requirements for maintaining such an unfunded designation would unduly burden city staff.

But citing a New York Times article stating that private investment interest in the water industry is “mushrooming,” Mayor Marilyn Strickland said Tacoma’s envisioned “clean water cluster” is an idea whose time has come.

“We talk about being at the right place at the right time and putting some political will behind something,” Strickland said. “This is a really smart opportunity for us as a city.”

The state’s application deadline is Sept. 1.