| July 6, 2000
Remond keeps the faith despite Microsoft breakup
threat By REBECCA COOK
Associated Press Writer
REDMOND, Wash. (AP) - In Microsoft's hometown, where people either
own Microsoft stock or fervently wish they had bought it
way-back-when, many don't see the possibility of a breakup of the
company as cause for alarm.
In fact, some see it as an investment opportunity.
While they wait for U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson to
rule in the antitrust case, the people of Redmond are confident both the
town and the corporate giant will do just fine.
"I've heard this debated in this coffee shop before," said Lisa
Evans, an AT&T executive, as she sipped her morning latte at an upscale
shopping center. "In the short run, there will be debate and doubt, but
as an investor I feel really confident about the breakup."
She is so confident that Microsoft stock value will increase in the
long run that she bought more of it last week.
And Redmond, she is sure, will continue booming.
"Would it change? A little," said Evans, who works in Redmond and
lives nearby. "But the talent is here. The people (at Microsoft), they
love it here. They've created this beautiful place, and they're not
going to go away."
When college buddies Paul Allen and Bill Gates moved their fledgling
software business here in 1986, they sparked Redmond's transformation
from sleepy rural suburb to high-tech hotspot.
Since then, the population has swelled by about 50 percent to 43,610.
Nearly 24,000 people work in high-tech jobs here, including about 14,000
employees at two Microsoft installations.
Nearly everyone in town knows someone who works there. But unlike the
company towns of old, Redmond does not live by Microsoft alone.
High-tech companies have flocked here, some serving Microsoft and
some competing with it. Microsoft alumni - those who made their millions
and then left to start such companies as InfoSpace and RealNetworks -
have planted seeds of growth throughout Redmond and the Puget Sound
area.
"Our economy has really grown, and they've been a part of it, but not
all of it," said deputy city executive Linda Herzog. "We're all feeling
fairly confident that the economy in this area is pretty healthy and
diverse."
No one knows what a Microsoft breakup would look like. Would the two
companies continue to operate at the same site? Would half the workers
move? The only sure thing is that it will take years before anything is
final, since Microsoft plans to appeal any breakup order.
Not everyone in town would mourn to see Microsoft taken down a notch.
Some miss the way Redmond was before apartment complexes and strip malls
replaced dairy farms, and before traffic reached nightmare proportions.
"Some people would say it's not so positive," Herzog said of the
transformation. "They'd like to have lots and lots of trees, and
single-family communities that are nice and quiet. It's just not like
that anymore. It's a mixed blessing."
One of the last signs of Redmond's rural roots is the old grain mill,
just across the railroad tracks from the upscale shopping mall where
Evans was having her latte. When the feed store below the mill closed
last fall, some saw it as the final nail in the coffin for old Redmond.
Grain mill worker Earl Kuppenbender, 59, said he does not bear any
ill will toward Microsoft for the suburban growth that has nearly cost
him his job. He just wishes he had bought their stock years ago.
"It's been good to the area, brought a lot more business in," he
said.
Some longtime residents, like bartender Judy Lindstrom, 40, cannot
afford to live here anymore.
"The cost of living - my god!" she gasped. But she owns Microsoft
stock and accepts the changes as an unavoidable cost of the booming
economy.
"They've done an awful lot of positive things for this area.
Generally, people are happy that they're here," she said, as her early
morning customers watched the stock prices ticking by on the bar TV.
She is not worried about the future for Microsoft, or her town.
"Microsoft is not going away," she said. "They can break it up, but
they're not going away." |
