University of Washington Tacoma helped save downtown 30 years ago. It can do it again
The University of Washington Tacoma is celebrating its 30th anniversary downtown, and while we’d like to party like it’s 1990, we can’t. (See coronavirus.) Still, we don’t want to see this milestone get overlooked.
Someone needs to lift up university visionaries who, back in the 1980s, took one look at dilapidated buildings along the Pacific Avenue corridor — a part of Tacoma known for black-tar heroin, according to former Mayor Bill Baarsma — and saw what few could: potential for the city’s first four-year public institution.
Last month, UWT Chancellor Mark Pagano stood on the steps of the downtown campus and thanked the city that “put its arms around us and nurtured us into being.”
That appreciation goes both ways.
Three decades of evidence show how the urban campus slowly breathed life back into historic downtown Tacoma, making it a welcome place for businesses and museums, residences and parks.
But it’s not just UWT buildings that have been integral to Tacoma’s transformation; it’s the thousands of lives this public university has changed that have really made a lasting mark in the South Sound.
The Tacoma campus began with the purpose of educating older, working students who couldn’t commute to the main Seattle campus, and for 30 years, it has stayed true to that mission. The first graduating class had five students.
Today, UWT has evolved into so much more. Fifty-six percent of its 6,000 students are the first in their families to go to college; 57 percent of the student body are people of color; and 18 percent of students are connected to the military.
Much like T-Town itself, the regional campus has earned a reputation for both grit and resilience. Thousands of alums holding degrees did so while juggling jobs, families and a myriad of other responsibilities, and 73 percent of these grads stay in the South Sound to live and work.
UWT’s 30-year anniversary also coincides with the completion of a ten-year capital campaign, which surpassed its ten-year, $45 million goal and raised close to $57 million.
The success of the campaign is impressive for many reasons, not the least of which is that it included more than 6,000 donors. Students, alumni, philanthropists and community partners stepped up to support the vision and mission of the downtown campus.
Private donations ranged from one dollar to $8 million, each ensuring long-lasting impacts on building projects and student success. The university will use those funds to build an academic innovation building; it will expand space at the Milgard School of Business and make room for the newly named School of Engineering & Technology.
“All good things are done together,” Pagano said in his celebratory speech, giving credit to multiple community partners including the Puyallup Tribe, MultiCare Health System and the Husky Futures program, to name a few.
The success of the capital campaign won’t fend off the tough economic times for downtown that loom ahead; the recent closures of The Swiss and Pacific Grill, two hospitality mainstays within blocks of the campus, could be harbingers of other bad news to come.
Now more than ever, students will need help with tuition assistance and affordable housing.
The fall academic calendar kicks off Sept. 30 with a campus face-covering requirement and nearly all instruction done remotely; a voluntary COVID-19 testing program begins this Friday. Families certainly never dreamed that sending their children to college would look like this.
But if the past is the best predictor of the future, UWT will again forge a path forward. The downtown campus has weathered setbacks and boom and bust cycles before, and it will again.
In this climate where the coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc on lives and businesses, it’s good to know the regional institution responsible for fostering so much personal and economic growth is here to stay.
This story was originally published September 22, 2020 at 11:45 AM.