Eighteen years ago, when the state Higher Education Coordinating Board decided where to put the University of Washington Tacoma, it also determined what kind of college it was going to be.

And that was fine with the people who worked hard to win the campus.

Because by placing it in an established-if-seedy area on the southern edge of downtown, the state decided it would be an urban university. Somewhat traditional campus sites in Fife, next to Tacoma Community College, in DuPont and at the Asarco smelter site were considered and rejected.

So this was never to be a pastoral campus where faculty and students are detached from the life and the people and the businesses of its host. Instead, a downtown campus reusing historic buildings and taking advantage of established bus and rail connections would become a dense and active place with porous boundaries.

Town and gown would mix every hour of every day. That was the hope, and that’s what we got.

Yet we still have people who want to compare it to campuses built on undeveloped property far from the city (or at least far from the city when they were founded). College leaders and college supporters repeat the cry that the current 46-acre footprint is woefully small. They say the UWT needs money (or donations) to purchase more land to the west and south of its existing territory.

Maybe. But instead of comparing UWT to UPS and PLU, compare it to PSU and SU. That is, the model is not woodsy campuses like the University of Puget Sound and Pacific Lutheran University, but metropolitan universities like Portland State University and Seattle University.

In an article in The News Tribune on Sunday, UWT Chancellor Patricia Spakes said she searched for a campus anywhere in the United States that has 10,000 students (UWT’s projected enrollment by 2017) on 46 acres.

“We couldn’t find one,” she said.

I guess that is technically true. But Seattle U. has 7,500 students on 48 acres and could accommodate more if it wished to grow larger. Portland State has 25,000 students on 49 acres. They both work pretty well, and UWT works pretty well too.

Of the five “branch” campuses created by the Legislature in 1989, Tacoma is the only one that was done right. Bothell and Vancouver are on rural land well away from urban areas, while Spokane and Tri-Cities were co-located with existing college facilities on the edges of town.

If UWT has to build higher to absorb the students and staff it is assigned and still have some open space, then build higher. That’s OK. It’s a city. And if it still needs a bit more land on the edges of its campus, then the community and its legislators will certainly step up to help make it happen as they always have.

But please don’t compare UWT to UPS and PLU. OK?

A few weeks ago I speculated that the “top two” primary will also be a pretty good poll. That is, it should give us a sampling of overall voter sentiment on races such as governor and 8th District Congress. Dino Rossi’s campaign thinks it will favor Democrats.

Pollster Stuart Elway disagrees with both and thinks Republicans will do better in August than in November (though not great either time).

Even though 1.4 million voters are expected to take part in the primary, double that number will vote in November, Elway noted in his monthly newsletter, The Elway Poll. That smaller electorate will have higher concentrations of older voters who are evenly split between Democratic leaners and Republican leaners.

But once younger voters are tossed into the mix in November, the state electorate becomes more Democratic, Elway wrote.

“This suggests that the primary results will be a lighter shade of Democrat blue than the general election results will be,” he wrote.

Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657

peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com

blogs.thenewstribune.com/politics