Trying to sell Spokane amid the scandal

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Thursday, June 9, 2005

Trying to sell Spokane amid the scandal

By BILL VIRGIN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

A public relations firm regularly sends out advisories listing the latest economic development news items, particularly in tech-related businesses, from Spokane and the Inland Northwest.

Suppose that advisory landed on the desktop computer of someone from outside the region, someone who has never been to Spokane and might have only a limited idea of where the city even is, much less what it's about. Someone who just might make decisions about new plant investments or business relocations.

What would be the first impression that would come to mind -- the advisory's message that Spokane is a happening place with a vibrant tech economy?

Or would it be ... you know, that "other" story?

The Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Spokane Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau recently issued a statement calling on Mayor Jim West to resign because of the ongoing controversy over his behavior during and before his tenure in office.

"The chamber's job is to advocate for the Spokane region at the state and federal levels in order to secure funding for important community projects and to create a good business climate," the statement says. "The current situation has diluted our message and taken the focus away from our primary mission. The CVB's job is to sell the Spokane region as a preferred convention and visitor destination. This situation is making it difficult to do so. Instead of selling Spokane, we are defending it."

Just in case the point wasn't explicit enough, the statement concluded with this: "There are over 50 CEOs on the chamber and CVB's boards and they have told us that they would not have their jobs today if they had done what Jim West has already admitted to doing. We believe that the community needs a new CEO."

For his part, West says he intends to stay in office and fight attempts to oust him, which must make for some interesting conversations between the business community and City Hall ("yeah I know we asked him to resign, but is he still planning to attend the ribbon cutting?").

Even if West departs, on his own or with a push from the electorate, the story is likely to linger. Although the story has no direct connection with economic development, it threatens to linger in the minds of decision-makers. "What is remembered by a lot of people is not the specifics" of the scandal but that something unpleasant occurred, says Ted Levine, founder and chairman of Development Counsellors International, a New York-based economic development and tourism marketing company.

Here's where that hurts. Site selection, Levine says, is a process of elimination. The decision makers looking at the 11,000 economic development groups around the country start with a region in mind, winnow that down to an area, then pare the list to a number of cities, then reduce it to a number of sites in one city.

The lingering questions left by a scandal make it "awfully easy to be eliminated in that process." The operative question decision makers pose to themselves, Levine says, is: "Who needs it?"

Bob Potter is one who would like to see the Mayor West saga go away. "We can all get frustrated about the story," he says.

But as director of the Inland Northwest Economic Alliance, he's dealt with a much worse image hit -- the Aryan Nations neo-Nazi group operating in northern Idaho. Potter says the region tackled that problem with an active human-rights campaign. Mayor West's situation poses much less of a roadblock to economic development, he says. "There's so much to offer in Eastern Washington and northern Idaho beyond that stuff."

And it can be argued that a city or state's reputation for a gamey political climate, no matter how well-known, isn't a fatal impediment to economic development. If it were, Chicago and New Jersey, to cite two prominent examples, would never have landed a company.

More important, both Potter and Levin say, is what companies hear from other companies about operating costs, the labor market, the ease of doing business. "If you can show cost comparisons, that makes a tremendous difference," Levine says.

"Mayors come and go," Potter says. If that's as much a hopeful mantra for Spokane as an observation, Spokane can find some reassurance in Levine's remark that a scandal "does hurt for a while, but it's not going to hurt forever."

Maybe so. Maybe some other city will oblige by coming up with a fresher scandal to replace the Spokane story.

But the tone of the chamber's statement indicates that Spokane's boosters would prefer not to wait much longer for the day when the world thinks of their fair city, and the name of the mayor (and the reason why that name is known) isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

P-I reporter Bill Virgin can be reached at 206-448-8319 or billvirgin@seattlepi.com. His column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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