Bill Virgin: Boeing, zoning, Click, McMenamins and more set to keep 2016 interesting

Is it too early for “what’s coming in 2016?” stories? Maybe not. We’ve already seen that seasonal favorite, “what it would cost to buy everything listed in ‘The 12 Days of Christmas.’ ” We’re due for at least a few rounds of another perennial, the holiday-blues story. Year-ahead previews are usually reserved for that news-dead zone between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, but a slew of stories this week is already signaling, or warning, us what the the significant local and regional business stories of 2016 will be.

▪  The revelation that the state-issued tax breaks to Boeing for keeping the 777X project in Everett amounted to $19.6 million in 2014 won’t revive the issue of economic-development incentives. It already was percolating, with Boeing’s two major unions and some legislators calling for specific requirements tying any breaks to wage and job levels.

This latest factoid will pour a little jet fuel on the debate, and at an interesting time — a legislative session followed by an election year in which just about everyone is on the ballot.

But the issue’s complexities could well dampen the possibility of it bursting into a political conflagration.

For starters, there’s the money involved. It sounds like a lot, and had Boeing paid it the money might have been used to hire more teachers, pay for more repairs on the idled tunneling machine or send the governor to even more “climate change” conferences in exotic world capitals. But $19.6 million is what’s referred to in Olympia as “budget dust,” an insignificant amount in a biennial spending plan of $38 billion (and that’s just the operating budget).

Further, that number doesn’t reflect the ripple effect of increased taxes paid by businesses supported by keeping the 777X in the state, or what might have been lost if the project had been located elsewhere (hello, South Carolina!).

That leads to the political debate over whether Boeing really would have gone elsewhere had its bluff been called and no incentives were offered. Politicians like to take credit for landing megaprojects, and they don’t want to be tagged as the ones who chased away a major employer. So far the unions have yet to demonstrate they have the political clout — or viable options — to punish those who don’t side with its views on incentives. Meanwhile, the state has yet to come up with a coherent philosophy on who gets what breaks, or why.

Expect a lot of talk, but not a lot of action.

▪ Here’s a slumbering story you can expect to awaken — the Seattle sports arena debate. The Seattle mayor’s office has sent to City Council a proposal to vacate a street to clear the way for Chris Hansen’s proposed arena.

It may be a Seattle story but it’s got implications and connections to Tacoma, and not just for regional sports fans. If/when an arena gets built in King County, that will add to the competition for and pressure on the Tacoma Dome for events. And with the Port of Tacoma now tied to the Port of Seattle through their seaport operations, it’s now involved in the effort to kill the Hansen project.

If you’re a fan of political wrangling and fighting, enjoy.

▪ You probably don’t need to travel up Interstate 5 to find a contentious fight. You can stay at home and watch what happens with Click, the city-owned cable-TV and broadband operation. While both the Tacoma Public Utilities board and City Council have meetings scheduled this month on deciding whether to keep or lease the system, this has all the signs of an issue that will spill well into 2016 before being resolved, and even then someone is not going to be happy with the decision.

It’s unlikely that many of the arguments are going to be settled in the few weeks remaining in 2015: How much is Click actually losing? If it’s losing money, who pays to make that up? If the city keeps Click, what does it do about the seemingly irreversible decline in cable-TV subscribers? Did Tacoma ever get much out of being a Wired City beyond cheaper cable-TV service?

Interestingly, Seattle city government, normally enthusiastic about any opportunity to spend more money, decided that municipal broadband was too expensive even for it (although some are still pushing the city to get into the business).

We’re near the bottom of this column, and we haven’t even gotten to Northwest Innovation Works’ proposed liquid methanol plant on the Tideflats. Or KPLU.

So let’s end on a relatively upbeat note. The news that McMenamins will be renovating Old City Hall, just across Commerce Street from the Elks lodge building the company is already redoing, is a multiple win for Tacoma — a grand old building will be fixed up before it falls apart, one end of downtown gets a strong anchor tenant, the city gets not one but two links to the McMenamin image and story.

It’s also a reminder of what a bet the state missed when McMenamins was chased away from a project to renovate another beautiful but deteriorating structure — the seminary building at St. Edwards State Park in Kenmore. It will be a few years before either Tacoma location opens, but at least we can be sustained through the rancor coming in 2016 by the prospect.

Bill Virgin is editor and publisher of Washington Manufacturing Alert and Pacific Northwest Rail News. He can be reached at bill.virgin@yahoo.com.

This story was originally published December 5, 2015 at 9:13 AM with the headline "Bill Virgin: Boeing, zoning, Click, McMenamins and more set to keep 2016 interesting."