Spokane’s Regional Chamber of Commerce putting out welcome mat for former residents

Spokane’s Regional Chamber of Commerce plans to send "come home" messages to successful business people around the country.

Tom Sowa
Staff writer The Spokesman Review

The goal is to convince people who lived or went to school here to return and bring with them jobs or successful businesses.

The chamber calls the idea its Homecoming Strategy. Chamber President and CEO Rich Hadley said the idea is modeled after a similar plan in Iowa. The program was also inspired by remarks made last year in Spokane by Rich Karlgaard, Hadley said.

Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes Magazine, spoke at the chamber’s annual meeting and talked about the national trend of people moving from crowded cities and relocating to communities like Spokane.

The Homecoming Strategy will include a plan to sift through corporate rosters nationwide looking for now-successful former area residents. In the pitch, former residents will be told that now is a great time to come home to Spokane, said Hadley.

"The nucleus of the idea is to recruit more companies, more jobs and more investment to this (Inland Northwest) area," Hadley said.

The chamber’s first task will be to work with area colleges and school districts to compile a list of graduates and former students.

Hadley said a mechanism will be created to identify promising prospects, who will then be contacted by the chamber or other community groups.

The primary target, according to the chamber’s Higher Education Leadership Group, are officers from Fortune 500 companies with ties to this area.

Another step will be to create a network of folks who left town and then came back to Spokane to run their businesses. Those people will be part of ongoing efforts to create a marketing plan extolling the benefits of living in the Spokane area.

"We’ve already identified some of those people in that category — people like Scott Wetzel of Contineo, Matrical CEO Dan Roark, and John and Nancy Janzen from Maplewood Software," said Hadley.

Using the stories of people who left and then returned will serve as examples of how companies can relocate and thrive, said Hadley. Residents will be asked to suggest people who fall into the "could relocate to Spokane" category.

Shaun Cross, chairman-elect of the chamber’s board, said the area’s K-12 school districts will be a key partner in the effort. The districts will look at ways to counter the view that graduates need to move to pursue careers, said Cross.

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=040103&ID=s1328713&cat=section.business