By 2020, Tacoma will be a major employment center developing around successful world-class companies producing goods and services for the betterment of the community, its citizens, and the companies and investors doing business here. Downtown Tacoma will become a nexus for the entire South Sound region. We’ll be the South Sound’s downtown — a thriving regional marketplace leveraging its unique geographic location at the crossroads of a region of more than a million people. Downtown Tacoma will become the obvious choice for regional companies, headquarters and entrepreneurs.



At least that’s the vision.



About two dozen of those million people showed up this week to witness the unveiling of the aforementioned dream, which local officials hope to manifest in reality during the next decade or so. The vision was drawn and presented with the help of Texas-based consultants Angelou Economics — an organization whose representatives told one audience member, who asked where affordable housing fits in, that Tacoma’s new vision is designed to appeal to businesses, corporations, developers and investors.



Translation — it fits in fine, as long as it doesn’t scare away investors.

But that’s a story for another time.



For now, soak up some of the vision, and let your gut decide whether the new Tacoma 2020 is for you.



Let’s start with a couple of gems that Weekly Volcano readers can get excited about. 



Goal No. 1: Location of choice for targets. Translation: mold our community to attract the kinds of companies and investors we think will be successful here. Topping the list of sub-goals is continued support for the recently approved plan to develop an international financial services district. Financial services — accounting firms, investment brokers, banks, etc. — was named among key sectors already contributing to Tacoma’s financial foundation. Second only to financial services, is the cool part, a charge to develop a creative economy strategy.



That means minimizing or eliminating B&O tax rates for so-called creative industries — design firms, arts organizations, etc. That also means establishing a Creative Arts Complex to include a training center, UW Tacoma’s proposed arts and community program, a Creative Arts Entrepreneurship Accelerator (a name likely to scare away artists), and limited, low-rent space for artists and nonprofits. That will begin with review of regulations for live-work space, followed by pursuit of a   legislative strategy to reduce or provide credit for seismic retrofit costs to encourage historic restoration of buildings that creative types can inhabit — a la Seattle’s Georgetown neighborhood. Angelou Economics representatives suggested that Tacoma’s emerging Brewery District — home to notables such as M-Space, a public-access glass blowing facility — should become Tacoma’s “Creative District.” You have to overlook terms like “Creative Arts Entrepreneurship Accelerator” and “Creative District” to see the potential here.



Goal No. 2: Entrepreneurial Culture. Establishing an entrepreneurial culture would begin with expansion of the city’s Economic Gardening Program, which would be used to build a robust network of entrepreneurs and independent local businesses. Economic Gardening is sort of the opposite of Goal No. 1 — at least the international financial services part — insofar as it seeks to cultivate a healthy economic landscape by fostering organic growth from within, rather than attracting and transplanting companies from elsewhere.



Goal No. 3: Stimulate Investor Interest. This lays out a predictable timeline for pursuit of the first two goals. In the short term, the plan calls for aggressive movement toward development of a financial services district, as well as the Dome District. Meanwhile, Angelou suggests jumping on public policy goals to foster future development of the Brewery District as an arts and culture hub.



Them’s the top priorities, Tacoma. Local officials will host a study session July 22 to discuss these and other goals outlined in the plan.