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Home / Washington Business - January/February 2004 / Olympia & Thurston County: The Hub of State Business and Government Since the Oregon Territorial Days |
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Olympia & Thurston County: The Hub of State Business and Government Since the Oregon Territorial Days |
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Written On: January/February 2004 |
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Written By: By Brad Underland & Charles Henry Thomas |
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Today, Interstate 5 splits Olympia, Tumwater and Lacey - the heart of Thurston County which caps the southern tip of Puget Sound. Ranked eighth among Washington counties in population with 207,000, it has grown quickly, climbing from just 77,000 in 1970.
Thurston County was named after Samuel R. Thurston, the Oregon Territory’s first Congressional delegate. It was created in 1852 as one of the first handful of Washington counties in the old Oregon Territory.
Because it was at the southern terminus of Puget Sound, it became an important rest stop between the two Vancouvers - Washington and British Columbia - and a trading post and population center. Catholic Missionary Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart, arrived at Ft. Vancouver in 1856 with four other Sisters of Providence nuns, established a network of schools and hospitals from the Columbia to the Canadian border. An important link in that chain was located at Olympia’s Priest Point Park. Today Providence St. Peter Hospital is sprawling regional medical center.
Olympia is Washington’s First and Only State Capitol
Washington is one of the few states that have had only one state capital. Washington’s first territorial governor Isaac Stevens designated in 1853. Citizens statewide associate Thurston County with the Capitol dome - the mammoth structure completed in 1927 and currently under renovation. The design of the Capitol is reminiscent of the Acropolis in Athens and to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Construction and maintenance of the State Capitol complex comes from timber sales in the Capitol Forest located west of Olympia
State government remains the county’s largest employer though its share of total employment (wage and salary workers, as well as business owners) has decreased from 40 to 33 percent over a 30-year period.
Critical to Olympia’s prosperity historically has been the Port of Olympia. Today Olympia’s waterfront is home to longshoremen, restaurant cooks, vegetable farmers, financial planners, boat mechanics, and coffee roasters. The port is a 110-acre business success with its majestic view of the Olympic Mountains, Mt. Rainier and Budd Inlet.
When Thurston County organized its port district in the 1920s, the economy was booming. During that time, the port’s neighbors were roughly 30 lumber mills, a veneer plant and five shingle mills, all providing the lumber shipments headed northward out of the Puget Sound.
During the 1970s, canneries prepared local produce and logs replaced milled lumber as the area’s primary commodity. In turn, the logs were shipped from Olympia to ports throughout the world. Dealing in one commodity yielded a crisis for the Port of Olympia when the Pacific Northwest’s timber industry tanked.
Coffee Replaces Logs on the Olympia Waterfront
Today, AWB member Larry Challain and his company, Batdorf and Bronson Coffee Roasters, benefit from foot traffic attracted by the Port of Olympia. Shoppers enjoy a farmers market, dine at waterside restaurants and buy B&B coffee. Challain built the 5,000 square-foot coffee roastery in 1998 on port-leased property.
Former AWB Chair Ron Rants launched his property management company in Thurston County in 1973.
“We were on the front end of a population and state growth boom,” said Rants. “When I started we were developing buildings to lease to the state.”
Today, The Rants Group is integral to the redevelopment of the Olympia waterfront and has built modern office and retail complexes.
Along with the good comes the bad. Across town, the closure of Tumwater’s Miller Brewery, in 2003, ended a 106 year history of brewing beer and brought significant loss to the community. Four hundred employees lost their jobs, with the multiplier effect projected to take at least that many more.
Thurston County’s jobless rate typically rides one to two percent lower than neighboring counties, with industry providing many bright spots. However, in March 2003, a study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that Thurston County had a job growth of 4.10 percent that placed it sixth among all counties in the U.S.
Some AWB members are taking their place in the job growth. Olympia’s Ostrom Company, an AWB member since 1992, is a family owned and operated company founded in 1928. Annually, they provide 13 million pounds of mushrooms to the Northwest and employ 275 area residents.
Thurston County’s promotional materials do emphasize its proximity to Interstate 5, and not just for import centers. AWB-member Joseph Carman is a fourth-generation manufacturer of mattresses and box springs. His family business, started in 1891, is now one of the largest bedding manufacturers in the state.
Carman moved Spring Air Northwest to an industrial park in Lacey in part for its interstate access, but also for quality infrastructure and the opportunity to use Industrial Revenue Bond financing for his new plant that employs 80 workers. It certainly does not hurt, either, that the City of Lacey levies no impact fees on industrial development.
Finally, Thurston County has become a haven for a growing number community banks. For example, Venture Bank, Heritage Bank and Olympia Federal Savings are located here and compete with Timberland and Anchor banks from neighboring Grays Harbor County and bigger national banks and credit unions like Twin City Credit Union.
Lacey is known as one of the first communities to have a retirement community when it established Panorama City in 1963 located on 120 acres adjacent to Chambers Lake.
Future Looks Bright for the County
Challain is optimistic about Thurston County’s economic future.
“The good news is Olympia has all the elements it needs to grow, and will continue to grow,” he said. “We’re moving our downtown store across the street into bigger space, which is a vote of confidence for the future of our downtown.”
Rants values Thurston County for its mixed-use opportunities, but also as a place where his own children are able to join him in business.
“We were so dependent on state jobs before,” he stressed. “When my kids got out of college, where were they going to work in this community? We’re becoming more diversified.
“We’re becoming a much larger retirement community. We’re out of the hubbub, but still on the corridor, two hours from anything. It’s a good place to be.”
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