The University of Washington Tacoma rises boldly from the restored downtown buildings of the hilly city's past. The campus claims Tacoma's identity and spurs efforts to rejuvenate the city's core.

The University of Washington Bothell, by contrast, nestles shyly in a lovely, tree-studded setting off Interstate 405. In many ways, it's a prettier, more peaceful campus than Tacoma's. But without strong support from its community, UW Bothell has struggled to raise money and attract students.

The contrast between the two schools matters more than you might think. It illustrates how much a university depends on its surrounding community.

UW Tacoma, embraced by the city's business and civic leaders and its residents, faces no greater challenge than figuring out how to build on its successes. In November 2006, for example, the campus raised its fundraising goal by $5 million, to $30 million, because its solicitation efforts had exceeded expectations.

Like UW Tacoma, UW Bothell also welcomed its first freshman class as a full fouryear university in the fall of 2006. It's also expanding its suburban presence, including a new campus entrance from Highway 522. But UW Bothell's future is more uncertain. It finds itself competing with the main campus in Seattle for students and struggling to improve ties with its community. And it faces the prospect of another competing campus in Everett.

Both branch campuses are products of a 1989 decision by the Washington Legislature to authorize five new public campuses across the state in an effort to expand access to bachelor's and master's degrees.

That decision is why Bothell and Tacoma are home to branch campuses for UW and why Spokane, Tri-Cities and Vancouver are home to branch campuses for Washington State University.

To understand the impact of the expansion decision in Tacoma, you have to go back to the 1950s, when Interstate 5 punched through the city and the Tacoma Mall followed. The mall drained downtown of its department stores and foot traffic. Adult-entertainment stores and street crime took over. The downtown shuddered from a decayed economy.

"It just kind of ended the magic," says Ryan Petty, director of the city's community and economic development department.

What brought the magic back, according to Michael Sullivan, a former director of the city's cultural division, was a confluence of forces in the 1980s, including the involvement of powerful civic and business leaders and the rising popularity of historic preservation. Sullivan is now a principal in Artifacts Consulting Inc. of Tacoma and an adjunct professor at UW Tacoma.

"Tacoma was incredibly well-represented at that time," he recalls. "We had great seniority and great uniformity in terms of our legislative delegation wanting a campus." But there was debate about where to locate the campus and some opposition to reusing old buildings, Sullivan says. The city's decision in 1990 to restore Union Station as a federal courthouse tipped the debate to the downtown location. The 1911, copper-domed nod to Beaux-Arts architecture represented the port city's past as a railroad hub. And its restoration popularized in the public's mind the notion that downtown was a place worth caring about, Sullivan says, and that a university could set up shop there, too.

"As we look back on it, the hearts and minds of Tacoma, which were all tied up in Union Station's success, were particularly prepared for a university to go into strong, sturdy buildings," Sullivan recalls. "There was sort of an acceptance of reusing older buildings because Union Station was going to be saved."

UW Tacoma opened in 1990, occupying four floors of the 1907 Perkins Building, which housed a newspaper plant for many years. In 1997, the permanent campus, part of the Union Station Historic District, opened to wide community support. The impact it had on Tacoma's identity cannot be overestimated, Sullivan says.