The biggest remaining locally-based financial company couldn’t resist the offer of really cheap office space at what, for three years, had been the home of the previous biggest locally-based financial company, Washington Mutual.

For one Seattle woman I know, who’s been working for Russell after being laid off from WaMu, it means she’ll be back in her former building.

For Seattle civic boosters, it means a modest stemming of the downtown office glut and several hundred more customers for local lunch spots.

For Tacoma civic boosters, it means the loss of the town’s biggest private employer, the anchor of its downtown revival hopes, the great white-collar hope that T-Town could rise beyond its economic tripod of shipping, manufacturing, and the military.

For Russell’s out-of-state owners, it means nothing more than an everyday cost cut, a paean to the Almighty Stock Price.