Pullman a big beneficiary of Schweitzer Engineering Labs’ growth

Most observers agree Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories’ exponential growth has been good for Pullman – especially its real estate agents.

Last year, Coldwell Banker Tomlinson managing broker Mick Nazerali sold more than 70 homes worth roughly $18 million.

“Schweitzer Labs has been phenomenal,” Nazerali said, “particularly from 2007 to 2010, when home prices were falling everywhere else. We would have been devastated if Schweitzer hadn’t been growing.”

The median home price in Pullman today is $224,000, compared with $170,000 in Spokane and $186,600 in Coeur d’Alene.

Nazerali, a lifelong Pullman resident with 26 years of real estate experience, cited factors besides SEL that also influence the local market.

“Particularly in the past 10 or 15 years, we’ve seen more parents buying property for their kids to live in with a couple of roommates while they go to school, rather than entering the rental pool,” he said. “Typically, they sell the house when their kids graduate. I’ve had a dozen sales so far this year related to that scenario – either buying for their kids or selling because their kids are leaving Pullman.”

Also driving the market are move-up buyers – “people in 30-year-old homes who are trading up to nicer homes in new subdivisions, an option we never had before. They’re selling $250,000 houses and buying $400,000 houses.”

SEL’s announced plan to hire 850 local employees over the next several years will drive prices higher, Nazerali predicted. “There’s going to be a huge demand, and we can only build homes so fast.”

Another beneficiary of SEL’s growth is Washington State University – but not in the way one might guess.

When the Legislature voted in 1890 to establish a state agricultural college, Pullman’s population numbered only a few hundred. For most of the following century, WSU’s overwhelming influence made Pullman essentially a one-company town.

Today, the university employs 4,581 faculty and staff.

When SEL completes its next hiring phase, it will employ more than 3,000 workers at its Pullman headquarters and production facility. And that will help WSU recruit faculty.

It’s called the “Two-Body Problem,” a term borrowed from physics and the title of WSU economics professor Jill McCluskey’s research project. She’s looking into how well universities accommodate spouses and partners when seeking or promoting women faculty in STEM departments – science, technology, engineering and math.

“Schweitzer Labs really helps in terms of hiring and retaining faculty,” McCluskey said, “because now there’s another employment opportunity for their spouses or partners” – or, if single, a better chance of meeting similarly well-educated partners somewhere other than on campus. “And we use that when recruiting faculty members.”

SEL’s growth also impacts education another way, and it’s not entirely positive.

Pullman’s public schools are starting to see “significant growing pains,” Superintendent Paul Sturm said. He estimates that 850 new employees at Schweitzer Labs could mean anywhere from 280 to 425 additional students.

“We have three pressures on us right now, starting with population growth,” Sturm explained.

Since 2000, the town’s nonstudent population has increased from 24,675 to 31,682.

“Someone told me we’re one of the fastest-growing school districts in the state,” Sturm said. “We’ve grown more than 20 percent during the past six years, and that rate is accelerating. Seventy of our 170-student increase this year was due to a smaller high school graduating class than the incoming freshman class.”

Adding to the pressure was the district’s decision to switch from half-day to full-day kindergarten next year, doubling the demand for those classrooms.

A reconstructed Pullman High School will be ready in December with greater capacity than the original facility it replaces. The district also built six new elementary classrooms two years ago and is adding four more.

Voters recently approved a $23.5 million bond for a new 18-classroom elementary school that will open in the fall of 2018. “But when we planned that school,” Sturm said, “we didn’t know Schweitzer was going to make the hiring announcement. So that changes the calculation in terms of how soon we will need those classrooms.”

Sturm, who joined the school district as assistant superintendent 14 years ago and took over in 2006, said Pullman is coming to terms with the new normal of growth.

“When I arrived, there was a tendency toward remaining static. Since then, community leaders have coalesced around sustainable growth. Not wild, crazy growth,” he said, “but understanding that we could benefit from some growth. More services and amenities are possible when you have a few more people.”

Can school district employees still afford to live close to their jobs?

“We’ve always heard that it’s too expensive to live in Pullman,” Sturm said. “A number of our employees, as well as other people who work in Pullman, live in the smaller, less-expensive outlying communities – Palouse, Colfax, Uniontown. Those are pretty easy commutes, particularly for anyone who comes here from the West Side.”

Sturm said Pullman remains a desirable place for educators to work because it is a university town. “But we are starting to feel the same hiring pinch other districts have felt, particularly with certain specialties – special ed, psychologists – and substitutes are hard to come by. We’re in the process of re-evaluating our compensation in regard to recruitment and retention. It’s definitely on our radar.”

When asked what, if anything, he would change about Pullman, the superintendent replied, “The fact that WSU students are only here part of the year impacts the sustainability of retail shopping. But it would be nice if we had more services.”

Ed Schweitzer eagerly seconds that notion.

“My wife is from Mexico City,” SEL’s president said, “so she downsized from 22 million people to 32,000. That was a big change.

“She loves Pullman because I’m here, our kids are here, our grandchildren.

“But she also loves, loves, loves going up to Spokane for Nordstrom and whatnot.

“A lot of people would like to see more restaurants, more shopping in Pullman,” Schweitzer said. “I think it’s high time that we attracted more retail opportunities.”