By ED OFFLEY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

For the city's young people, Lakewood is generally viewed as a stable and positive place in which to grow up, but several interviewed on a cool spring morning say their school and career plans will inevitably take them away.

Kyu Yon Kim is one of them.

The 19-year-old daughter of Korean immigrants, Kim arrived in Lakewood with her mother and sister from Seoul six years ago, not speaking a word of English. But after a year of English as a second Language preparation in the Clover Park School District, she entered the mainstream student population and took it by storm.

She is graduating with a perfect 4.0 average and has taken advanced placement courses in physics, French and Japanese, worked in several volunteer projects and has a part-time job at a Lakewood eye clinic. Named one of three Washington Scholars from the Lakewood area, Kim will enroll at UCLA this fall.

Kim credits the strong support from her family for her success but said her community was a place that enabled her to thrive. "This is a peaceful, quiet neighborhood where people are really friends," says Kim, noting the diverse makeup of her school class enabled her to meet and get to know students from vastly different backgrounds.

"This is the place I grew up in," Kim says of Lakewood. "It means a lot to me."

To city leaders like Mayor Harrison, the pressing challenge is to transform the city into a place where people like Kim will want to live, work and raise families.

"We don't yet have meaningful, life-sustaining jobs for our young people that will enable them to raise a family, own a house and make a good living," says Harrison. Demographic studies of the area show the vast majority of Lakewood residents work outside the city.

This year, the city is pressing ahead with economic and city development plans to entice major employers. The city is seeking to become the southern rail terminus for the Regional Transit Authority located near the I-5/state Route 512 intersection; to begin a cleanup of Pacific Highway, and to win approval for annexation of Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base into the city's growth management area -- a step that will result in several million dollars of state money not now available.

Harrison also acknowledges that, apart from Lakewood Mall, there really isn't a formal "downtown" in Lakewood. The city has grown up with a casually developed street system that has generated a number of retail clusters. "In Vancouver (Wash.), there was an old downtown the city renovated," says Harrison with a grin. "We don't even know where downtown is."

City Development Director Dave Bugher thought it might be inclusive to get the next generation involved in this citywide effort, so he took a set of photos and maps to Kathy Nace's classroom where his son, Conner, is a student.

Idlewild Principal Howard King said the kids have jumped into the planning process with exuberance, and are in the process of learning the issues about Lakewood's growth so they can prepare their own city planning map.

"This just kind of happened," says King. "But it's not unusual in this school district. The parents are incredibly involved."

Ian Crinean has been focusing on the problem of limited streets and highways connecting the eastern and western sides of the city, which is divided by the three large lakes.

"We can put a ferry system on every lake in Lakewood," says Crinean.

The class' input will be included in the city's final development plan document.

"A lot of the kids in Kathy's class will probably be here 20 years from now," says the principal.

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