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SBA downsizing has silver lining – Outreach to AHANA will serve small businesses well, Bert Caldwell says.

AHANA, founded five years ago to help minority businesses, has not worked itself out of a job, but it has worked itself toward a new one; counseling more businesses, and helping caretake whatever survives of the Business Information Center when the U.S. Small Business Administration cuts off support for the program at the end of September.

Bert Caldwell
The Spokesman-Review

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/business/story.asp?ID=22112

Although all the details have not been worked out, AHANA http://www.ahanabusiness.org/ Executive Director Ben Cabildo will be moving his office into the downtown Spokane Regional Business Center, which houses the SBA. The small-business incubator he oversees will remain in a suite of offices in the Mary Cliff Center. The move will be the third for Cabildo and AHANA, which were first housed in donated space in the Fifth Avenue Medical Building.

AHANA’s arrival downtown will be the silver lining to the downsizing of the Spokane SBA office, which for years has been a tremendous resource for businesses all over Eastern Washington and North Idaho. Once a district office, Spokane has become just a branch of Seattle, and the staff has been cut as part of a SBA strategy to deliver services more efficiently. The decision to eliminate funding for the information centers is another step down that same path.

Spokane officials worked hard over the last year to maintain the SBA presence in the Inland Northwest but, accepting the inevitable, have shifted their focus to exploring ways of maintaining the center and its books, tapes and other training materials, as well as the associated business counseling. AHANA has emerged as a potential solution to some of the new challenges.

SBA opened the centers in the mid-1990s, and Spokane was among about 80 cities that eventually got one. Since then, SBA materials have been supplemented by those from other economic development groups.

Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce President Rich Hadley says the cost of keeping the center open was minimal, and use was high; about 10,000 people a year. The SBA’s interim regional director has indicated the training materials can be kept in Spokane, but that is not certain.

Among the programs anchored at the information center is SCORE, a group of retired executives who counsel young business owners. Cabildo has been a SCORE counselor for several years. He says bringing AHANA in to help with the center makes sense because there is little difference between counseling SCORE clients and AHANA clients. Blurring the line between the two constituencies will help bring AHANA into the mainstream, he says.

Non-minority business owners, especially women, have represented an increasing share of AHANA meeting attendees, Cabildo noted.

Jon Eliassen, president of the Spokane Area Economic Development Council, says Cabildo has skills and contacts that have not been readily available to all small businesses.

"He’s got an incredible network," Eliassen says. "He’s like a one-man consulting shop."

He says the SBA, EDC and chamber hope to bring other groups in who can round out the services readily at hand for business owners looking for help.

"They should be only one step away from the tools they need," Eliassen says.

Cabildo says there will be a learning curve to climb with the move, but he obviously relishes the heightened profile AHANA will enjoy at the center of regional business activity.

"That’s our goal; to be sure we are included so we can make a difference."

There are many in the region’s business community concerned about the direction SBA has taken in its effort to control its costs without sacrificing services. Really, what the agency is doing is shifting those costs and responsibilities to someone else.

The outreach to AHANA and other groups shows local officials are determined to make the best of an unfortunate situation.

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