State Farm leaving Tacoma, WA

Jan 11

Marc Stiles of the Puget Sound Business Journal reports that at the end of 2018, State Farm is shutting is call center in downtown Tacoma, 33 miles south of downtown Seattle.

It was only a little more than four years ago that State Farm came to Tacoma in the fourth quarter of 2013 to occupy two buildings that Russell Investments had vacated when that firm relocated to downtown Seattle.

The bad news is that Tacoma will lose about 1,400 jobs. The possible good news is that the office space is high quality and could attract firms that offer higher wage jobs than the relatively low-paid positions at the call center.

H. Pike Oliver

H. Pike Oliver focuses on master-planned communities. He is co-author of Transforming the Irvine Ranch: Joan Irvine, William Pereira, Ray Watson, and THE BIG PLAN, published by Routledge in 2022.

Early in his career, Pike worked for public agencies, including the California Governor's Office of Planning and Research, where he was a principal contributor to An Urban Strategy for California. For the next three decades, he was involved in master-planned development on the Irvine Ranch in Southern California, as well as other properties in western North America and abroad.

Beginning in 2009, Pike taught real estate development at Cornell University and directed the undergraduate program in Urban and Regional Studies. He relocated to Seattle in 2013 and, from 2016 to 2020, served as a lecturer in the Runstad Department of Real Estate at the University of Washington, where he also served as its chair.

Pike graduated from San Francisco State University's urban studies and planning program and received a master's degree in urban planning from UCLA. He is a member of the American Planning Association and the Urban Land Institute and a founder and emeritus member of the California Planning Roundtable.

https://urbanexus.com

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