Kathy Boulden moved with the crowd, one hesitant step at a time, making her way onto the platform, up the stairs and onto the street.

It was a little after 4 p.m. on Aug. 14, 2003. New York had just been shrouded in another blackout.

Exasperated, Boulden walked to the bus terminal at 42nd Street, where she found thousands of people trying to flee. They didn't much care where the buses were going. They just wanted out.

Boulden grew frightened. The terror of Sept. 11 was still vivid. And now this.

I don't want to be here anymore, she thought.

Boulden didn't get across the Hudson River to her home in Newark, N.J., until midnight, eight hours later. ``I got into the shower,'' she says, ``and I cried.''

That weekend, she and her husband, Bilal Almutasim, talked about moving. Almutasim had been to Florida in the Air Force; Boulden had a cousin in Clearwater and a friend in Kissimmee. They made the decision quickly.

Tampa, they decided - they would come to Tampa. They would find new jobs and start over. Their 5-year-old son, Khalil, would grow up safe. He would work hard in school and go to college. The family would live the American dream.

So it was that the Tampa area drew another family of transplants.

Hundreds of thousands of others have taken the same trail over the past 50 years, searching for their place in the sun and finding open-armed boosters who see in newcomers the promise of continued growth.

As previous Tampa Project stories have shown, this sturdy, dependable growth has given us good things. It has provided jobs, fostered entrepreneurship and helped us survive national economic upheavals. It has carried us to a critical evolutionary milestone - the point at which we could tip toward becoming a world- class city.

But for all the good, there is also bad.

Growth has left us sprawled and divided - one community from another, one business sector from the next. It also has given us an illusion of prosperity, disguising a vulnerable economy that depends on a comparatively undereducated and underpaid work force. This, in turn, has left us with a tax base that barely supports our basic needs for things such as new roads and strong schools.

Change has clearly begun. Wages are rising as companies start or move operations here. The University of South Florida is working with businesses across the Tampa Bay area to nurture a bioscience sector. And a group called Creative TampaBay promotes cultural endeavors, educational programs and other projects to attract the kinds of enlightened newcomers who energize an economy.

But turning this start into something significant will take a shared vision, sacrifice, consistency and patience. That means breaking a long cycle of infighting among local business leaders and politicians over where Tampa needs to go and how best to resolve its shortcomings.

Business leaders say the conflicts are over. They have a plan, they say, and the commitment of others to make it work.

Cities work at building their economies in a variety of ways. Some involve ordinary citizens in the planning. Some don't. In Hillsborough County, the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce does it through an arm known as the Committee of 100. The name suggests exclusivity, and its members represent the area's business elite. Their decisions, however, affect all of us who love Tampa but wish we could make a better living here - Boulden, Almutasim and Khalil included.

Ask the casual observers how we're doing, and they'll likely say just fine. At first glance, the numbers would seem to bear them out.

On average, Hillsborough County gains about 25,000 residents a year - nearly 70 a day. Many cities covet this whippet-quick growth because it generates jobs - jobs building the subdivisions spreading in every direction, jobs in the supermarkets and stores popping up next to them, jobs in the hospitals that now are major employers.

It also attracts companies that need workers.

This phenomenon works so much in our favor that in Hillsborough, about 132,000 jobs were created in the 1990s. Despite a national economic downturn, more than 17,000 have been created this decade. Unemployment in the Bay area averaged about 4.1 percent in June, compared with a national average of 5.6 percent, says the Department of Labor.

All this has diversified our economy, raised living standards and given the future more promise, boosters say. Inc. magazine recently listed the best places in the country to do business. Tampa placed 14th out of nearly 300, largely because of our job creation rate.

Others looking at different data see something less sunny. Although wages have climbed, this group says, they still lag behind dozens of places - the very places we compete with for new businesses and for the educated and creative workers so vital to prosperity.

Moreover, we are dangerously dependent on development. It accounts for roughly 13 percent of all jobs here. If construction slows, no matter the reason, the local economy will tremble.

There is one other trouble spot. Thousands of our most recently acquired jobs easily could be shipped elsewhere.

Fortune magazine reported a few months ago on the best cities in which to find a job or run a business. We placed 102nd out of 150. In contrast to Inc., Fortune looked at several measures, including the work force. In job growth, we ranked 26th. But in the percentage of adults with at least a bachelor's degree, we placed 105th.

As with most things, the real Tampa probably is somewhere in between, say some of those at the forefront of development here.

``Are we making progress? Yes,'' says Tom Wallace, founder and backer of a collection of local technology companies. ``Do we need to do more? Absolutely.''

We need stronger schools and colleges, Wallace says. We need colleges to build stronger ties to local businesses. We need strong local businesses to help start-ups.

Without those things, people such as Boulden and Almutasim - whose personal economics are fragile - will be the first to suffer.

Although Tampa has what the couple believed was missing in New Jersey, a sense of peace and safety, they have a new worry. What kind of life will they be able to build here? More important, what kind of future will they be able to make for Khalil?

Starting Fresh

It took the family a month and a half to get ready. On Friday, Oct. 3, they loaded their clothes, two televisions, a few pots and pans, Khalil's bunk bed, and his Scooby-Doo plate into two vehicles. They left behind or gave away practically everything else, including most of their winter clothes.

That evening, Boulden, 39, hugged her 81-year-old mother goodbye.

``I'll call you, Mommy,'' she said.

``Good luck,'' her mother answered.

Neither wept. Both were hopeful.

Two days later, the family reached Tampa. Boulden and Almutasim began job-hunting. They knew they would have to settle for smaller paychecks. They just didn't know how much smaller.

Almutasim, 40, a truck driver licensed to transport hazardous waste, found work first. The job paid $10 an hour. It was barely what he made more than 20 years ago, straight out of high school.

Boulden, a college graduate, had a harder time. Eventually she found a position reviewing claim appeals for an insurance company. It pays less than $30,000 a year.

Combined, the two now earn less than the $58,000 a year Boulden made in New York as a manager for an insurance company. (Almutasim made about $60,000 a year with overtime.)

``You come down here from the East Coast and you find yourself asking, `How do you support a family on these wages?' '' Boulden says.

``Trying to make a buck in Tampa,'' Almutasim adds, ``is pretty hard.''

The numbers show he's right.

From 1990 through 2002, the average wage in Hillsborough County rose from 90 percent of the national average to 92 percent, which added $1,066 a year to the average worker's paycheck.

That left the average worker earning $33,970 that year, about $2,900 less than his or her counterpart nationally. The comparison is worse across the broader metro area: nearly 12 percent, or almost $4,300, less than the U.S. average.

Low wages attract more employers and feed growth. But they also represent a weakness because income influences nearly every part of an area's character and quality of life.

Imagine what would have happened if we had drawn even with the national salary average in 2002: All of us together would have had considerably more to spend, roughly $1.7 billion more.

Much of that, in turn, would have gone into what gives Tampa its character and quality of life.

Do people have enough money to catch a movie or attend a concert? Can they fix up their houses and rejuvenate their neighborhoods? Can they pay the taxes that build roads or hire more police officers? Can they save for their children's college and their own retirement?

All are governed by income. So is the issue of whether Tampa can join the list of top-tier cities over the next 10 or 20 years, becoming a place where people such as Boulden and Almutasim can have a good life and build a solid future.

Four years ago, Wallace - the technology entrepreneur - was frustrated with what he saw as the traditional business community's lack of concern for homegrown enterprises, particularly technology companies. He helped create the Tampa Bay Technology Forum to give them a bigger voice.

Today, he says, many business and government leaders have ``finally woken up and realized that we need more than jobs in the hospitality and tourist industry.''

``We have the momentum,'' adds John Ramil, chairman of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce and chief operating officer of Tampa Electric.

For starters, he says, people are beginning to embrace key ideas - that Tampa needs a vibrant downtown, for instance.

And they're trying to build on this. Chamber leaders have created an economic development plan with five goals:

* Persuading more financial service companies to move support operations here, a successful campaign the chamber began several years ago.

* Creating a bioscience sector in cooperation with USF and a family of companies located mostly in Pinellas County.

* Forging links between local product distributors and Caribbean and Latin American countries and working with the Port of Tampa to help these companies ship their goods.

* Surveying the local light manufacturers, from computer to screen-door assemblers, to learn what they need to grow.

* Luring small to medium- size corporate headquarters here.

Still, it's only a beginning.

And it comes more than 13 years after a consulting firm pointed leaders in this direction, urging them to support promising local enterprises and strengthen the community's basic structures.

The firm, hired by the chamber, warned, ``Tampa's dependence on in-migration, corporate relocations, and growth- related service industries has left the economy vulnerable.

``To become home to a growing concentration of companies with high-wage, high-quality jobs, Tampa must build strong economic foundations in education, technology, finance, physical infrastructure, and quality of life,'' SRI International said.

SRI called on Tampa's leaders to change direction radically. It singled out several ``clusters'' around which to build a new kind of economy - including business services, tourism and entertainment, information technology, and health and biomedical.

SRI also urged local economic developers to quit thinking of neighboring counties as competitors and begin working as a region.

Progress Stalls

Almost as soon as this report arrived, so did trouble.

A chamber president who began pushing for a regional economic group, Harvey Schmitt, was forced to resign. He had clashed with local business leaders who didn't like the idea of sharing the economic development table with other counties, particularly Pinellas.

Nearly 10 years after the SRI report came out, the chamber hired another consulting firm, The Wadley-Donovan Group.

By this time, Hillsborough County had joined several counties and cities in West Central Florida to create the Tampa Bay Partnership, which promotes and lobbies for the region as a whole.

Beyond that, we had developed only one of the areas singled out by SRI in 1991: business services. This gave us the call centers and back-office operations that have been started here by major companies headquartered elsewhere.

In addition, the 2000 Wadley-Donovan report said, Tampa's leaders lack a ``vision of what the Tampa and Hillsborough County community is and in what direction it is going.''

Many chamber leaders weren't surprised. Only months before, they had hired a new president to help the organization set a more active course. The president is the top executive. The chairmen and chairwomen are chosen from among the volunteer members who help set chamber policy.

Then-Chairman Bill McBride, a lawyer and later a gubernatorial candidate, started his term by using the chamber's power to help solve a budget crisis at Tampa General Hospital. He also helped line up two successors, local business owners Sandy MacKinnon, of Yale Industrial Trucks, and Deanne Roberts, of Roberts Communications, and they began forging a plan that went to the heart of the SRI recommendations: build up the community from within.

They hit an early snag when the new president, Jay Garner, turned out to be too confrontational for local tastes and was asked to resign. But, after a quiet year with former Gov. Bob Martinez as chairman, they acted on their plan. The staff produced reports about what Hillsborough needed - better roads, for instance - and began to pressure the county commission to pay attention.

They held community meetings. They produced a report card reflecting the community's attitudes toward local policies and leaders; the grades were nearly all C's and D's.

When they rated county commission candidates, the incumbents who received a thumbs down decided they'd had enough. They threatened to cut off county funding for economic development by the chamber - $350,000 a year. And they didn't relent until MacKinnon said it would never happen again. When tempers cooled, MacKinnon sent a peace offering - flowers.

Roberts continued the push for better roads and public transportation. She also played a key role in forming Creative TampaBay, a group that many say could do more than anything else to transform the area in the long run.

``For the first time, people who want to really do things are coming together to do and think and get things done to make this a better community,'' says Beth Leytham, a marketing consultant who worked with Roberts in the chamber.

It began when Roberts brought in Carnegie Mellon Professor Richard Florida to explain his idea of a ``creative class.'' A city grows, he says, when it attracts and develops a core of educated, creative residents, who, in turn, attract high-wage companies or even start their own.

Also under MacKinnon and Roberts, with Ramil in line as the 2004 chairman, the chamber got serious about bioscience. It organized visits to cities with highly developed bioscience and biotechnology sectors. The push strengthened when Judy Genshaft became USF's president and Bill Dalton took the helm of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, both talking about research that local companies could turn into products.

Genshaft joined a 2002 trip to Baltimore. Afterward, USF administrators applied for a grant from the state-funded Florida Emerging Technology Commission to build a biotechnology center.

``We're collaborating with businesses to move our research into commercial sectors,'' Genshaft said.

Disappointment followed, however. The commission split its $30 million among three other state universities.

Call Centers Come

Amid this tumult and change, a number of big companies began moving call centers and back-office operations here. So many came that boosters proclaimed Tampa ``Wall Street South.''

These relocations pumped up the economy. Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, for example, have invested hundreds of millions of dollars here and are among the area's largest employers.

Our appeal to them was based not on the area's atmosphere of creativity, however. It was our low cost of living and pro-business environment - including our low wages and taxes. In other words, the relocations highlighted the things the experts had been telling us to change, perhaps reinforcing the idea that the old ways worked.

The man credited with recruiting these operations, Robin Ronne of the Committee of 100, makes no apology for this. ``Our role is to market and sell Hillsborough County,'' Ronne says.

The march of these operations to Tampa reached a high point in June. Drawn by a package of state and local incentives, Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. announced plans to move 500 jobs here, paying an average of $72,000 a year.

Then came a sharp reminder that many of these support positions can leave as easily as they come. Capital One announced plans in July to move out 1,100 jobs, the kind of portable call center positions that go where labor costs less.

This focus on ``selling Hillsborough County'' contrasts sharply with the current trend in economic development - one that echoes SRI's advice from more than 13 years ago that we build on existing enterprises.

Its core idea is that we should focus less on marketing and more on strengthening local services: education, recreation, public arts and other things that make a city desirable. This approach, adherents say, will attract educated, capable people, and the higher- paying jobs won't be far behind.

``Jobs follow people instead of people following jobs,'' says Ed Malecki, a professor at Ohio State University who specializes in economic development.

The scientists, engineers and others prized in today's economy can live anywhere, adds James Diffley, of the economic development consulting group Global Insight Inc. They want vibrant downtowns and neighborhoods - in short, character.

These are the ideas Roberts and her predecessors had begun to promote.

Making this approach work won't be easy, warns Scott Faris, who ran a technology company in Clearwater in 2001 before becoming a consultant in Charlotte, N.C. It requires a fundamental change in thinking that can be short-circuited at almost any point by politics.

Politicians use new job announcements to show voters they're doing a good job, Faris says. These announcements grow scarce when the focus is on building companies from the ground up, which can take years.

``We're talking about a completely different kind of economic culture,'' he says, one that requires sacrifice and commitment.

In simple terms, it takes money, usually tax money, to pay for the things needed to create business sectors - roads, for instance, and university research facilities. But as the chamber learned, that's anathema to a politician who has built a career opposing higher taxes and spending, to a businessperson whose success depends on low wages and taxes, and to a voter fed up with government excesses.

Politicians and voters here have a history of cutting down nearly every proposal to invest in such things. One exception was Tampa International Airport. At first, it, too, was condemned as a terrible idea that would cost taxpayers a fortune. It's now one of the region's most valuable assets. Another exception is the county's health program for the poor, passed in 1991. It's been lauded as a national model, but supporters have had to fight to keep it from shrinking.

Last year, USF officials returned from a chamber trip to San Diego sobered by how much it has accomplished while time has been passing us by, but they were optimistic because San Diego started down its path to prosperity just 25 years ago. If we could invest in bioscience development now, imagine where we could be by 2030, they said.

A lesson in sacrifice and commitment came three weeks later. The state had lured a new division of one of the very San Diego companies the visitors went to, the Scripps Research Institute. Not to anywhere near Tampa, but to Palm Beach County.

A key element of the deal was that Palm Beach County put up about $250 million to match a state investment. Hillsborough County, in contrast, has put less than 0.2 percent of that, $400,000, into USF's new research park.

Local officials put a bright face on the Palm Beach deal, saying that even there, Scripps will help USF's aspirations.

Another setback followed. Earlier this year, the governor vetoed an $8 million allocation approved by the Legislature to expand USF's research park.

``We know this is an uphill climb,'' says chamber President Kim Scheeler. ``I think we'll succeed, but biotechnology will never be huge for us.''

The hope, he says, lies in the chamber's current ``diversity'' strategy, encouraging growth in several areas. He's convinced that the current leaders, particularly Ramil and Genshaft, who now chairs the Committee of 100, have the stamina to stick with it.

``It's like all the stars are aligned,'' Ramil says. With Pam Iorio as mayor and Tom Scott as county commission chairman, ``I think we have the people who will put issues of the past aside and really work on this.''

But some of our political leaders haven't embraced this movement. Neither have the pro-growth, antitax forces backing them.

We have no vision for how to propel the metropolitan area forward on all fronts, including the economy. And although we have people with energy and passion pushing for change, they're frustrated because no one seems to be able to pull together all the divergent interests.

For that matter, even some chamber members don't like its new strategy, Scheeler says. Many protested when he reassigned Ronne as economic development chief and made plans to hire one with a broader mission.

``Some say we've had success with relocations and we should stick with that,'' he says.

We are still a place divided, with the future hanging in the balance.

Hoping For Better

Ask Boulden and Almutasim where they see hope - in Tampa's recruiting jobs from the outside or in building from within - and you'll get a simple answer: both.

Boulden longs for a better job. It's not that she minds the back-office position she has. Without it, she might have ended up in a tourist job making less. It's that she can't ``make it something of your own'' - can't grow with the company or climb a career ladder - because the home office is elsewhere.

For Almutasim - experienced as he is driving trucks - either strategy probably would expand his job opportunities.

The couple love their newly adopted city, the laid-back, open feeling. Others may complain about services, but their son has parks and public ball fields to play on, and they feel safer.

In New Jersey, ``they don't have baseball fields like they do here,'' Almutasim says. The basketball courts are locked up to keep out gang members.

It's different here. ``It's comfortable,'' Boulden says. Khalil is doing well in preschool. He's playing Pony League baseball. His father is an assistant coach.

But Boulden and Almutasim are uneasy about the future.

When she first saw the apartment they'd found over the telephone from New Jersey, she cried. It's near USF in a complex that looks like a motel. With the couple's relatively low pay, she wonders whether they'll ever be able to afford a house in a better neighborhood. With the exception of their rent, their household expenses are nearly as high as up North.

If taxes go up, it would become even harder for them to save for a house. She doesn't want to think about what would happen if rising wages compelled her employer to leave Tampa for cheaper labor elsewhere.

Almutasim tells a story about one of his job interviews. He asked whether the company had pension and 401(k) benefits. One of the workers responded, ``You all think you've got rights?''

It distressed him. So did the news that his son's after- school program would cost $75 a week.

``I'm just a man trying to make sure my kids survive,'' he says.

If Tampa could develop a broader, long-term strategy with homegrown companies, as the chamber's consultants say we should, presumably we would all enjoy the dividends.

First, when a city has more $100,000-a-year jobs, it has more $50,000-a-year jobs, too, economists say.

Second, these jobs generate more tax revenue, which means more services, such as after-school care, and other public investments.

Third, we probably would acquire a new generation of business leaders with a greater commitment to Tampa. They might pay for a zoo expansion, fund concerts in the park, push for better services. They would want Tampa to shine, and they would have the money to pay for the polish.

But engineering this isn't easy. It takes not only commitment but a clear view of the community's strengths.

``You can't pick the kind of growth you're going to get,'' says Jim Hosler, lead researcher at the Hillsborough County City-County Planning Commission. ``It's based on your natural advantages in the global scope of things.''

TIA is one of these. USF is another. So are Boulden and Almutasim.

Both have skills and drive. Almutasim speaks Spanish and English. And they understand the sacrifices it takes to succeed: Both have parents who left their homes seeking opportunity. Almutasim's father emigrated from Haiti; his mother from Mexico. Boulden's parents moved from rural areas to cities in the North.

Meanwhile, although both have found much of what they were looking for here, they yearn for more.

``Your parents wanted to give you more than they had,'' Boulden says. ``And you want to give your children more than you had.''

It's the American dream.

The question is whether we can make it more attainable for the Bouldens and Almutasims of Tampa - and by the same token, whether we can afford not to.

Special Report: The Tampa Project
Salary Gaps Force Grads To Look Elsewhere
Lack Of Bank Headquarters Leaves Hole In Community
Immigrants' Successes Highlight Benefits Of Cultural Diversity
Call Centers Bring Strength, Economic Possibilities

Reporter Lindsay Peterson can be reached at (813) 259-7834. Reporter Guy Boulton can be reached at (813) 259-7624.