UW Tacoma helps city reach top-five livability status

Tacoma has been chosen as one of Outside magazine's top five towns to live in - and the University of Washington Tacoma is credited with making a major contribution to the city's revitalization.

"Nothing breathes new life into an inner-city ghost town like a couple thousand college kids," writer Katie Arnold said in the article, which appears in the August 2008 edition of Outside.

When UW Tacoma opened its doors in 1990, the university not only provided the downtown area with a steady stream of college students, it also renovated rundown historic buildings and transformed them into a college campus that has received national awards for urban development, architecture and historic preservation. In 2005, the Sierra Club named UW Tacoma one of the country's best new sustainable development projects.

"We appreciate national recognition for the contributions UW Tacoma has made to the revitalization of the city," campus spokesman Mike Wark said. "What is really being recognized is a community's desire to unify behind a vision that includes historic preservation, access to higher education and downtown community development."

Outside, one of the nation's leading active lifestyle magazines, reaches over 2 million readers a month with coverage of travel, sports, adventure, health and fitness. The August issue is available at newsstands now.