Marty Campbell - City Council Position 8 Candidate (19. June 2007, 11:54 by Derek) ~ Who Will It Be?

This article was written by Todd Matthews and originally appeared in the Tacoma Daily Index on February 1, 2007. Reprinted here with permission.

For the past four years, Eastside Tacoma resident Marty Campbell has been the face of downtown and its small-business owners. Elected president of the Downtown Merchants Group in 2005, then re-elected the following year, Campbell, a small-business owner in his own right (he owns Stadium Video in the Stadium District, and Buzzard’s Discs downtown), will run this year for an at-large seat on Tacoma City Council. It’s a position currently occupied by another small-business owner, Bill Evans, who has served two terms on the council and will step down at the end of this year.

Campbell, 36, was born in Omaha, Neb., and moved to Tacoma in 1992. He opened Stadium Video in 1994, and Buzzard’s Discs in 1996 — both businesses continue to operate today. He also serves on the New Tacoma Neighborhood Council (an area that includes downtown, the Dome District, a slice of the Hilltop, and the tide flats): he was elected to the board in 2003, the vice-chair position the following year, and is currently its chair.

Campbell joins what could be a crowded field of candidates. North End resident and real estate professional Jonathan Phillips has announced he will run for office, too. Phillips was appointed to City Council in 2005 for a brief stint after Councilmember Kevin Phelps left office six months before his term ended. Other candidates are expected to join the race.
I met Campbell — who announced his plans to run at meeting of the Downtown Merchants Group last month, and told me he planned to formally make his announcement today — at Blackwater Cafe last week to discuss a number of key issues: public safety in the Theater District; whether to move City Hall to a new location; and what issues he would tackle if elected to City Council.

TACOMA DAILY INDEX: I think a number of people have thought you would make a decision at some point to run for City Council. Why have you decided now is the time to run?

MARTY CAMPBELL: I think it’s time. I’ve done work in the community. I’ve done work throughout downtown. When I opened Stadium Video 13 years ago, and Buzzard’s 10 years ago, I became connected to the community. Through that connection, I began to get more and more involved. I became president of the Downtown Merchants Group, president of the New Tacoma Neighborhood Council, vice chair of the Tacoma Artist Community, and in doing that, as my leadership grows, it’s time to make that next step where now I can reach back and help those that have helped me to take the diverse experiences I’ve learned and use that to really help Tacoma as a whole.

INDEX: On that note, I think most people would connect you to downtown. You are a face of the merchants downtown. This is an at-large position. How do you connect with people outside downtown and let them know who you are?

CAMPBELL: I think that’s very easy for me. I live over on the Eastside. A lot of the things I’ve involved myself in are citywide issues. The Downtown Merchants Group is very specific. But through that role, I’ve also been a representative of the Cross-District Business Association to advance them. Through my role on the New Tacoma Neighborhood Council, we work on the community council and work with other neighborhood districts. I’ve also gone to Washington, D.C. to lobby on behalf of small businesses. At the federal level, I’ve made calls to Olympia on behalf of small businesses. While I might have notoriety for doing a lot for downtown, I really am a Tacoma candidate.

INDEX: When did you first start to get politically involved in the city?

CAMPBELL: In October 2003. The City was going to put parking meters throughout downtown. It wasn’t really a plan. It was, ‘We’re going to have parking meters to pay for the convention center.’ Where the money went was ill-conceived. How the money was going to be used and collected – there was no plan all the way around it. We just weren’t ready for meters at the time. And so, becoming a part of that and working on that, I know more about parking meters now than any person should know – particularly for someone who’s not in parking (laughing). But I was able to use that to look at other ways. It’s not that we need them yet – there are still some economic issues of whether or not we are quite ready for them or how they are going to go. But I know that if we get them now, we’re ready to make a plan of how they are going to go in, how we are going to be informed, how they are going to be collected, which ones are going to go in which areas, and, more importantly, how is that money going to be spent? We can’t have it go to the general fund where we have situations like Seattle, where every time they want to raise more money, they raise the parking rates. That doesn’t speak to economic vitality. That doesn’t speak to working together with partners to make a better downtown or neighborhood core, like Sixth Avenue and Proctor.

INDEX: Your political experience dates back four years. Why decide now to run, rather than wait awhile longer and gain more experience?

CAMPBELL: I think I have the experience now. I haven’t been doing this fleetingly the last four years. I have been very committed. I’ve been in there. When I hear of the issue, I got out, I pull the research, meet with other people, talk it out, get all the sides. I look at our council now. I look at Bill Evans, who will be term-limited out. He has been the voice of small-business. We can’t wait four years for there to be a strong voice for small-business, a strong voice for commerce, and a strong voice for our community, and a strong voice for a creative class here in Tacoma – for arts and leadership. We need someone who can be a strong voice for all of those: community, commerce, and the creative class. I think we need to look at developing a business culture that makes businesses thrive in the city. A culture that encourages people to open up more businesses, expand their businesses, bring living-wage jobs to Tacoma, retain what we have first, and then look to bring in more. We need to strengthen communities. The arts in many cities, particularly the creative class, are becoming large economic drivers in cities. We have an opportunity to make art our economic driver by choice, not just because it’s the only thing left.

INDEX: Drilling down on that a little bit more, what are some of the things you can do to encourage arts in Tacoma?

CAMPBELL: We need to get an identity for arts in Tacoma. We need to have one umbrella identity that is recognized throughout the entire region. Also, an arts incubator. There’s talk of that going around – stepping up and, like we did with the small business incubator, perhaps partnering to fund an incubator to teach artists the art of business so they don’t put their art aside to take a job that pays the bills, and never get back to art. Allow them to create art to pay the bills so they can continue to grow. There’s a lot the city can do to encourage art. It needs to look at investing in the arts in the way they invest in business districts in the city.

INDEX: Should City Hall relocate to a new building outside the central business district [City Manager Eric Anderson discussed the idea as recently as last week, at a council committee meeting]?

CAMPBELL: I was a meeting yesterday where we were discussing that a little bit. I would need to see more information on the costs. However, the ability to design a building that has all the latest technology built into it – they have such an old building there that to upgrade the technology, you could build a new building. To upgrade it to where you need to be could be done for the same cost of building a new one. Why not build new? And something that is sustainable over the next 50 years? And where you could begin clustering your work groups? As it is, they tried to get them on this floor, there isn’t enough room, they put some on this floor, some on that floor. When you can cluster services on one floor and cluster your employees together, and get them to work together better, only good things can happen. We need to make it easier for the citizens to come inside when they need help, and it’s all on the same floor, and they don’t have to go to six different places, they’re more engaged and connected. If through the use of technology and combining clustered groups to generate more creative ideas and share information faster, and building a more energy efficient building, if you can do that without there being an enormous tax burden, then I think it makes sense. In business, you upgrade your facilities every so often.

INDEX: I’m thinking of that area in the Theater District. A lot of merchants around City Hall are concerned about public safety in the neighborhood. If you pull City Hall out of the neighborhood, you take away a very stable population during the day that spends money and is a good neighbor. Would there be an impact on those merchants?

CAMPBELL: You’re right. If you pulled City Hall out tomorrow, it would destroy it. But let’s vision it out over five or seven years. First of all, if the City decides to move, you’re not breaking ground for two years. And you’re not done for three years after that. So they’re not moving for another five years. Now, where are we at in the Theater District in the next five years? The Winthrop is now a hotel. All those other projects between there and the Elk’s Building – they’re up and developed. The Elk’s Building is rehabilitated by that time. The Broadway Local Improvement District is done. By the time you’re looking at moving out, you already have an entirely redesigned neighborhood that has just greatly increased its density. Assuming City Hall is going, there’s almost the assumption that it’s not going to be replaced by something really good. Maybe the City moves and we land a whole new business downtown with more employees.

INDEX: Let’s talk more about the Theater District. To my knowledge, the issue dates back at least to March 2006, when the New Tacoma Neighborhood Council hosted a community meeting. Merchants in the area continue to complain about the crime and public nuisance activities. Do you think enough has been done? What has been done? And do you think this issue will be something you would take up as a Councilmember?

CAMPBELL: No. A lot. And Yes. No, there has not been enough done. If enough had been done, we wouldn’t be languishing. When we put out that report from the neighborhood council, from the forum that I hosted, there still hadn’t been enough done in the two years before that. That was just a piece of getting the puzzle solved. That wasn’t the start of it. That was the middle of being hopefully toward the end of the process. What more needs to be done? There needs to be more bicycle patrols in the area. Swing shift bicycle officers. One of the things we addressed there was lights. We need to work with the merchants to have them light up the building. We need to get in there and just go after it. I think we’ve turned the corner. With the Winthrop and working with their new management to get out that 10 to 20 percent bad element, that’s going to be key. I think as we continue to put pressure on getting the pay phones removed at Ninth and Commerce, get the pay phones out of there, that’s an element. I think we’re really on the downhill slide, the downhill momentum, to getting it cleaned up.

INDEX: The issues we have talked about have all been focused on downtown. How do you raise visibilities of other business districts in Tacoma?

CAMPBELL: You make them successful. Sixth Avenue has done a great job of having great new restaurants, great new places to shop. Lincoln District has done a good job of advertising their needs, their diversity, and their need for the city to come in and help with certain issues of safety in the neighborhood. But they have come in and laid out their own plan. You help them develop a plan for success in their district. And then you ensure that plan is followed through on. You don’t build a plan and shelve it. If you tell a district, ‘We’re going to come in and help you plan your district,’ you don’t come with the money just to fund the plan. You fund the outcome, too. I think mostly you have to find a way to help the districts tell their stories. Every district, from neighborhood to neighborhood, you have great stories. You have people who have great long-term stories. One thing the City should do is really get behind a “Buy Local” or “Buy Tacoma” campaign. A campaign that says, “Spend your dollars in locally-owned and operated businesses.” Those dollars recycle so much better into our community. You’re not sending it off to New York City or any other city. Why should we work hard to bring our money in to the city, and quickly send it out? Encourage the citizens to support their friends and neighbors, and their businesses, and hire their friends and neighbors. You encourage those businesses to grow so they become not the Blackwater Cafe of one, but the Blackwater chain of five.

INDEX: Why get involved in civic issues in the first place? Have you been interested in politics all along?

CAMPBELL: I grew up on a small farm outside Omaha. It’s just, that’s what I do. That’s my expertise. That’s what I love – getting out there and helping people.

The other candidates in this race include:

David Curry
Jonathan Phillips
Marilyn Strickland