By RACHEL ZIMMERMAN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

The DuPont Grocery Store & Deli, a fading, no-frills convenience shop whose most distinguishing characteristics are a Doral cigarette display and a large ad for Quinto, is the only place to get a cup of coffee in this town.

But more than that, this tiny oasis of commerce, just off Interstate 5 between Tacoma and Olympia, separates two worlds.

To the north is historic DuPont, population 600, a quaint and lovingly preserved company town built by explosives manufacturer E.I du Pont de Nemours Co. in 1906. It's easy to be transported back in time by the pretty, pitched-roof cottages, the stone commemorative tablets and the white clapboard Presbyterian Church. With little effort, one can imagine Johnson's General Store (now City Hall) bustling with activity and the butcher shop (now a historical society museum) a hub of gossip and news.

To the south is futuristic Northwest Landing, a 3,000-acre planned community expected to have 11,000 residents within two decades, conceived as a model of "new urbanism"by a renowned California architect. Creators of the development had an admirable vision: an urban village where economically diverse, civic-minded homeowners could walk or bike ride leisurely to work at the insurance company or the computer chip maker, or go shopping after dropping their kids off at school. Think "Truman Show," with a Northwest twist.

Slowly, the two DuPonts are beginning to merge into a 21st-century version of a company town.

DuPont operated the explosives plant for nearly 70 years, until it shut down in 1976 and sold the land to the Weyerhaeuser Co. After a bitter legal battle in which the wood-products giant lost the right to build an exporting facility on the site, the company's real estate division decided to build a neighborhood instead.

Surrounded by Fort Lewis, an Army base, and traversed by a system of walking trails, the mixed-use community has drawn business tenants ranging from computer chip maker Intel and State Farm Insurance to Lone Star Northwest, which runs a sand-and-gravel mining operation, and concrete maker Westblock Pacific. The community, now with 786 residents, also has drawn a number of families retired from the military, who like the proximity to Fort Lewis and McChord Air Force Base just to the north, as well as first-time home buyers, singles and families with children.

Northwest Landing's first resident, Pat Goodhind, 65, a retired bank teller, moved here in 1994 with her husband, a retired Army non-commissioned officer. He died last year, but Goodhind still characterizes the community as "the place to be."

"We were drawn here by an adventuresome spirit that made us want to be part of something new as we got older," she says.

Tom Boyce, a retired lieutenant colonel turned algebra teacher, left a gated golf course community in Gig Harbor, where the homes ranged from $350,000 to $1.2 million, for a new life in his 2,600-square-foot custom-designed house, which abuts the forested Edmonds Marsh.

"You can have a lot of houses in one location, but that doesn't necessarily make a community," Boyce says. "People here are really friendly. It's a nice community for walking and jogging."