Ian Crinean looks up from his notes and stares intently at the map.

"I'm thinking of putting in 20 more apartment complexes -- 10 downtown and 10 up at Fort Steilacoom Park," he says. "And I'd add one sports complex by the park and one downtown."

In Kathy Nace's classroom at Idlewild Elementary School, Crinean and 22 other second-grade students are helping write the script for this young city's future. The children have formally joined the city of Lakewood in contributing to its first comprehensive development plan since the Pierce County area formally incorporated 27 months ago.

Less than 10 miles away, Col. Pat Egan sits at his desk in a massive brick headquarters building at Fort Lewis, wrestling with his own set of unknowns and crafting strategies for the Army base to endure and prevail in an era of shrinking defense budgets.

Apart from the armed military police at the gates, the long convoys of military vehicles trundling by and the clatter of military helicopters overhead, Egan says, "We're just like any other city . . . "

These two deeply intertwined communities -- one military, one civilian -- are wrestling with profound issues of growth, quality of life and environmental protection.

The military corridor south of Tacoma stretches about 10 miles from state Route 512 and McChord Air Force Base to the Nisqually River. Most Western Washington residents driving on nearby Interstate 5 only notice it in passing as a dreary landscape of light industry, low-incoming housing and an occasional glimpse of military activity. It is not the sort of scene to attract visitors or would-be residents, local officials admit.

But behind the military fence on one side of I-5, and the blight of Pacific Highway Southwest on the other, the Fort Lewis-Lakewood area is a place of hidden beauty and concealed history, of intense civic effort to transform the area into a thriving community for its current and future residents.

Bill Harrison has worked both sides of the corridor.

Ten years ago, Harrison was the three-star commanding general of I Corps at Fort Lewis, responsible for several active Army divisions and more than 80,000 reserve and National Guard units across the nation. His principal worry was the defense of South Korea, where I Corps is earmarked to fight in support of the U.S. ally in event of invasion from the North Korean military.

Today, Harrison is mayor of Lakewood.

Armed with a cell phone linking him to the new City Hall offices on Gravelly Lake Drive, the retired general is conducting a campaign on behalf of his 62,785 fellow residents that he says is more daunting than an Army battle plan.

His goal is to energize what was once an isolated bedroom community of Tacoma and blighted commercial strip into an economically viable city.

Prosperity or not, Harrison warns, the city faces a 50 percent population increase in the next two decades.

"We have the ultra-ultra rich and the ultra-ultra poor now," Harrison says. "We're going to have to grow up."

Continued:

• Building a future is big challenge