In a small and cozy kitchen just off Icicle Road in Leavenworth, Don and Barbara Baker sit at their kitchen table, which resides in a place that, after a few short months of work, has become not only a good home, but a good investment as well.

It’s a funky property.

On about a half an acre of land, the house came with an old church building, a parking lot, and a small population of neighbors used to parking their cars on it. Nestled on the far side of the road from Icicle River with its back against the Leavenworth Golf Club, the Bakers admit it was a bit of a fixer-upper.

While Barbara pours fresh coffee, Don points to the fruits of their labor since moving into the home this past May: dark hardwood floors, warm yellow walls, new windows, new cabinets, and new roofing. New everything, he explains.

“The market could bear the investment for the upside potential,” Barbara said. “Over on the west side we had already maxed out that piece of property and we were looking for something that could increase in value and was in an area that was desirable.”

To say that Leavenworth is a desirable place to live will come as no surprise, but what is interesting is that the Bakers are part of a recent trend, albeit slight, in the Leavenworth real estate market: a willingness to buy.

According to a real estate snapshot by Pacific Appraisal Associates in Wenatchee, the number of home and condo sales in Leavenworth increased 68 percent in the second quarter of 2010 from the same time last year. That’s not to say that there’s a boom going on. Those numbers represent only 47 sales in the second quarter of this year, as opposed to 28 during the same time last year. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the Wenatchee market area, which has seen flat growth recently.

But 2010 first-quarter results saw a 100 percent increase over 2009 first-quarter results as well, which went up to 22 from 11 sales. Whether due to an increase in consumer confidence, an increase in the perceived value of homes with reduced prices, or whether it’s just a good time to buy, buyers in Leavenworth are doing just that.

“There’s less uncertainty in the market and while we are seeing more sales, they are based on primarily sellers getting more realistic with their prices,” said Lynn Stoddard, broker and owner of Leavenworth Properties.

Stoddard went on to say that because many of the buyers in Leavenworth are purchasing discretionary second homes, they have the luxury of being patient and waiting for a home to meet their price range.

“Last year was sort of a standoff and that’s why we did so poorly,” Stoddard said. “I think pricing has come down and therefore the ambitious thoughts about value has given way to practicality of needing to move property.”

That’s how it was for the Bakers.

In September, looking for a change of pace and a place to retire, the couple sold their home of 30 years on Lake Sammamish for $630,000, and traded their $3,600 monthly mortgage payment in for a smaller, more manageable payment of $1,300.

“This had been listed before the economic crash at around $320,000, $310,000, and by the time we bought it a year later it was down to $230,000,” Don said. “We just had it re-appraised and it was back at $320,000. Every dollar we put into it, we got back.”

Stories like that are interesting considering that nationally home sales are at record lows.

This past August, the National Association of Realtors reported that housing sales in July had plummeted 27.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million units, the lowest volume of home sales since 1995. According to the report, part of that drop was expected as the $8,000 home-buyer tax credit came to an end in April, but few thought it would fall to such an extent.

In addition to those numbers, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reported in August that housing affordability had remained near its highest level in nearly two decades for the sixth consecutive month. According to the NAHB’s Housing Opportunity Index, 72.3 percent of all new and existing homes sold in the second quarter of 2010 were affordable to families earning the national median income of $64,400.

Coupled with record-low interest rates from Freddie Mac as low as 4.42 percent for a 30-year fixed mortgage, that could all be good news for buyers.

“I tell my clients that it’s a great time to buy so I have to practice what I preach,” said Maurine Salas, a  real estate agent in the Seattle area, who recently bought a second home in Leavenworth.

Salas bought a two-bedroom, two-bath condo over on Alpine Place at the edge of town. The listing price was $215,000 but she paid $200,000. With 25 percent down, she got a 5.6 percent interest rate which equates to $1,175 monthly payment including her HOA fees, and so far those costs have broken even by renting the place out on the weekends.

“I’ve bought two properties this year, investment properties,” Salas said. “Like I said, just because of the inventory, the motivated sellers, low list prices, interest rates. I mean the interest rates are just record lows … so all those things married together and I can’t help but really firmly believe that this is a great time to buy.”

One factor that has been a big player in lowering housing prices in Leavenworth has been a surplus of inventory in the market. On his website, www.iciclecreekrealestate.com, real estate agent Geordie Romer has been tracking the glut of homes for the past couple years.

“In the last 12 months, 73 houses (single family homes) sold in the Leavenworth area,” he wrote in a May 11, 2010, posting. “At the moment I’m writing this we have 160 homes actively being marketed for sale. This is 26 months of supply – more than two years!”

A healthy market, Romer wrote, has approximately six months of supply.

That glut extended to the condominium market as well, said Touchstone Appraisal owner Cheri Farivar.

“One of the trends that we’re seeing right now is a drop in condominium prices,” Farivar said. “I think the bar got a little too high and there was a bit of a glut of condominiums on the market when the market turned sour. That’s a result of builders coming on with projects when things looked really ‘growthy’ in the 2006 market year.”

By the time those condo projects completed construction in 2008, Farivar explained, the housing crisis had left them without buyers. So they sold for cheap and they sold to atypical buyers: locals.

“A lot of the condo units that would have likely sold to recreational users are now selling to individuals who are going to live in them full time: teachers, nurses, waitresses, people who are actually living here in Leavenworth,” Farivar said.

Elidia Brito, a loan processor at Cashmere Valley Bank, bought one of those condos. Brito said she had been looking for a place to buy for the past couple years but hadn’t seriously considered it until recently. Originally listed at $242,000, Brito said she was able to buy her condo for $133,000 because of financial pressures on the seller.

Brito said she received a limited income loan from Cashmere Valley Bank, paid no money down, and now has a 6-percent mortgage rate that she pays $940 a month on, plus $160 in HOA fees.

Dan Acton, the owner and broker of Leavenworth Real Estate Inc., who sold her that property, said he has seen a lot of sellers dropping their prices. During a phone conversation, he pointed out a listings sheet and recited from memory more than a dozen sold homes whose original listing prices had been anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 higher than currently listed.

Acton was very careful to state that the present situation is far from a “fire sale” up in the Leavenworth real estate market, but if things are priced right, they tend to sell.

“You may surprise yourself in Leavenworth, what kind of bargain you could get,” Acton said. “I’m not trying to ensue the lowball offers but, hey, guess what, I think there’s a lot of Realtors here who would just love to see some offers.”

Bellingham resident Brian Owens did just that.

This past year, he bought a three-bedroom, two-bath, 1,700-square-foot home on Alpensee Strasse on the east side of the city. Owens said the listing price when he and his wife purchased the property was $299,000 but that the original listing was closer to $350,000. With the help of their Realtor, Owens said they offered $250,000 and got it for $257,000, about $18,000 cheaper than what the appraiser later valued it at.

“So we thought let’s try now and if we find a place — great. If not, like I said, we don’t have to buy but we thought this could be the time,” Owens said. “With the prices being down and the interest rates being down, it might not get this good again for a long time.”

The business idea happened organically.

Twenty-nine-year-old Rebecca Darley, the marketing and events manager for the Leavenworth Winter Sports Club, was helping organize the club’s annual ski swap when she noticed some atypical winter sports gear popping in the mix – children’s accessories. Things like baby strollers, kids clothing, and jumpers.

The ski swap wasn’t quite the right venue for the baby strollers, so Darley made her own venue, and her own company to boot. It’s called the NCW Kids Market LLC and it’s a consignment market for kids gear that Darley plans to host in Wenatchee every Spring and Fall.

The first market was this past April, but she’ll be hosting the second one next week, Sept. 10 to Sept. 12 at 225 S. Wenatchee Ave.

“I know so many people that have children that they buy so much stuff for, especially in the first few years if they have a little one,” Darley said. “They go through strollers, jumpers, booster seats, all that stuff. It’s so essential for the first six to nine months that they need them and then they never get used again and they’re in really good shape.”

It’s a simple idea with simple benefits. Darley said that a stroller in a retail store could cost more than $100 and indeed, a quick Google search for strollers in Wenatchee can yield results as high as $669. At Darley’s kids’ market, however, a gently used stroller goes for about $20 to $30, she said.

“Especially in this time right now where we’re in a recession and every dollar you spend counts, it’s a great way to get some of your hard-earned money back,” she said.

But this isn’t just some backyard sale. It’s a legitimate limited liability corporation, and from inception to implementation, it’s a streamlined business model with cost-saving techniques written all over it.

It started online at the Washington Secretary of State website with the application for forming an LLC. It wasn’t the first time she had been through that process. Darley and another partner own AMS Inspection Services, Inc., a Leavenworth-based home inspection service. While Darley said they hired a lawyer to help them set up that company, setting up NCW Kids Market was fairly simple but important.

“It seemed safer for me, I mean, I do share responsibility for the event but it’s not all me,” She said. “If something happens, God forbid, I’m protected.”

Setting up an LLC costs a couple hundred bucks in application fees. Then she went on to creating a website and a logo. Darley said she was able to save a couple thousand dollars by having a friend develop the website for her, as opposed to using a commercial company, but when it came to management and point-of-sale software – which allows her to register seller and product information – she turned to an Atlanta-based technology company.

To buy that company’s software she said it would have cost her approximately $30,000. But for about $200, she could rent the software for the weekend. Perfect for a twice-a-year, week-long sale.

At www.ncwkidsmarket.com, interested sellers are prompted to enter their personal and product information, name their price, and print out the associated price tags so that the items are labeled and ready to go when they are dropped off at the market, saving Darley and her sellers hours of setup time. Profits are split 70-30, with 70 percent of an individual sale going back to the seller and 30 percent going towards marketing, rent, supplies and any other associated costs at the market.

And if the seller chooses, any leftover items will be donated to the Wenatchee Women’s Resource Center, for which Darley can provide a tax write-off.

Darley found other cost-saving corners to cut as well.

In Seattle, she found a couple businesses that were closing their doors and bought their clothing racks at discount prices.

She developed relationships with the Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Wenatchee Downtown Association, which helped her with the difficult task of finding a space to lease for a matter of days as opposed to months.

And she got sponsorship from other local businesses, which for $25-a-pop were given the opportunity to include coupons and company information in “goodie bags” offered out to the first 200 customers. So far, 75 percent of the businesses that sponsored the market in April were choosing to participate again.

“I think that’s a true indicator that it was a success for them,” She said.

All in all, Darley said the start-up costs before the first market in April were pretty high but that they were paying for themselves down the road.

“I was definitely in the hole a little bit, but it wasn’t scary,” Darley said. “I knew that going into it. I set my budget, I did a ton of research and I knew exactly how much my costs were going to be. I knew how much I needed to make to break even and I didn’t quite get there. This go-round I’m looking way better.”

At 27, Dr. Adam Trotter is a young man, his new practice is full of promise and he has found a way to blend his professional life and personal passion.

“I’m huge into jet skiing,” Trotter said.

Because of his affinity for the sport and his knowledge of the skeletal system, Trotter has been invited to serve as the official chiropractor at Blowsion’s Surf Slam 2010 in Pacific City, Oregon. The competition is part of the Freeride World Championship Tour and brings the globe’s most skilled riders to the Oregon coast for three days.

Trotter will be there to treat the pros as well as anyone else who thinks they might need a little back work while out at the races.

“It’ll be great because it will give me the opportunity to work on more sports-related injuries,” he said.

Trotter was born and raised in Wenatchee and after attending Western State Chiropractic College in Portland he moved straight back home to start his practice.

“(It’s) the sunshine honestly,” he said. “I love the area. When I was down in Portland I couldn’t stand how much rain it got.”

Trotter got an SBA small business loan from Cashmere Valley Bank to open his practice on 925 Fifth St., right across from Safeway. His business is about seven weeks old and he said it’s growing slowly but surely. He said the number of his patients has doubled since last month.

In addition to chiropractic services his practice offers massage therapy. He said the two massage therapists he employs have been seeing an average of five patients a day and their maladies have been anything from sports or work injuries to simple old wear and tear.

He said the overhead isn’t high for a small practice like his and other than the two massage therapists he has no other employees. That means he’s been doing his own bookkeeping, receptions and appointment making.

He said he’d like to hire someone to answer the phones and handle the bookkeeping soon, but performing those duties is teaching him quite a bit about managing his own business.

“Hopefully in a month or so I’ll be to the point where I can get a front desk person,” he said. “(But) it’s good to know so I know how to do the billing myself.”

At a time when many banks are feeling the heat – 11 banks have failed in Washington in the past two years, according to the FDIC – Wheatland Bank, a local Spokane-based community bank, is aggressively expanding in Wenatchee.

On Sept. 1, Wheatland Bank will break ground on a new 5,400-square-foot branch building at 1115 N. Miller St. The bank, which has been leasing its temporary location since 2007, has hired Vandervert Construction, LLC as the construction general manager for its new facility and construction costs are expected to be approximately $1.1 million.

That’s just a small price to pay in a massive campaign that began in 2007 to expand into central Washington. A campaign that has yielded huge results.

Wheatland Bank President Susan Horton said that at the end of 2007, Wheatland held approximately $173 million in total assets. Today that number is closer to $249 million, of which, most of that money came from the bank’s four new locations in central Washington: Wenatchee, Yakima, Chelan and Ellensburg.

“The foundation behind that is that we are very well capitalized, we have lots of liquidity, we enjoy excellent asset quality in comparison to what’s gone on in the industry and in our peer group, and so we have faired so well through this economic downturn and through this horrible time in our industry, by really just staying true to the fundamentals of good, solid, conservative banking practices,” Horton said.

A group of farmers and small business owners opened the doors to Wheatland Bank back in 1979 to meet the under served needs of the agriculture industry there. From there, the bank quickly began what Horton calls an organic expansion. In Davenport, that meant lending to wheat, barley, and other dry land farmers. Then they moved into Moses Lake and began lending to farmers in the Columbia Basin.

Since opening, the company has expanded to 13 branches throughout Adams, Chelan, Grant, Kittitas, Lincoln, Spokane and Yakima Counties. Horton said that by expanding into the central Washington and Wenatchee Valley areas, they hope to add tree fruit orchards and hay farming to their lending portfolio.

So far it has paid off.

At the end of 2007, Horton said the bank’s total loans were $134 million. By the end of 2008, total loans had risen to $169 million, a 26 percent growth in one year and a record for the bank. To put that in perspective, that was the year they were still opening their four new branches in central Washington.

Their Yakima branch had the highest amount of loans issued at approximately $24 million, but Wenatchee was a close second with approximately $23 million. All together, the four new central washington branches churned out nearly $70 million in new outstanding loans since first opening in Wenatchee in December of 2007.

How’d they get there? They hired the right people and went out pounding on doors, Horton said.

“(Our people) have proven themselves already,” Horton said. “They have brought in over $100 million of new business in less than two years time to Wheatland Bank, and we’re talking cream of the crop business. Because of the relationships that these people had within their communities that were so deep and so strong, we had opportunities with customers that, had we just been the new bank in town, I believe we never would have had.”

The year of their big expansion into central Washington was also a year that followed closely on the coat tails of the nation-wide financial banking crisis. Horton remembers when, around the fourth quarter of 2007, everything in the industry started turning upside down. For Wheatland Bank, it was too late to pull back.

“We were on the path and we were going to stay focused on our strategic plan,” Horton said. “We had already made the commitment. We had already hired the people, we had already applied for, and or, opened the branches, and it wasn’t a time to have fear and to step back. It was a time to step forward, trust our judgement, trust our people and stay focused on our plan. And we did and it paid off.”

In addition to loans and assets, deposits – which are typically slower to pick up – have also been increasing.

At the end of 2007, deposits were $149 million. At the end of 2009, they were $210 million, a 33 percent increase. Between their four central Washington branches, Horton said they have $25 million in deposits, with Yakima accounting for about $12 million of that. Horton expects that will increase with the construction of the new branch.

“Perception-wise, people are used to walking in and seeing a traditional teller line, and they’re used to having a drive through and an ATM,” she said of the amenities the new branch will have. “So we know that when we open our Wenatchee branch … I think that’s going to make a big difference to people. They want to see that we’re going to make a commitment. We are making a long term commitment to central Washington.”

In a little more than three months the Wenatchee YWCA Café AZ’s on First St. has provided more than 3000 hours of job training to those in need.

“The people that we train are new in the field, with no experience, and they come to us needing basic job skills,” said Jenny Pratt, executive director of the Wenatchee YWCA. “Most of them are very young.”

It took the YWCA about 18 months and $100,000 to renovate it’s largely unused basement and storage area and turn it into Café AZ’s. Pratt said the entire cost of the remodeling was accounted for through community donations of goods and services. The YWCA only spent about $2,000 of its own funds on the project, she said.

The cafe is a nonprofit charity and it accepts workers through organizations like WorkSource and the AARP. Pratt said that while they take both men and women into the training program, most are young mothers or women over 55 in need of job retraining. The cafe puts about 12 to 15 people a week to work but their wages are paid by the employment program that sent them.

Pratt said they had the idea to open the cafe because with common fund raising events like luncheons and golf tournaments the overhead was high and they didn’t help anyone in the process. But with this project Pratt said she expects the business will be self-supporting within six months and even help fund other YWCA programs.

“We did it because we have the space, we were training people already and we decided to move away from the traditional fundraising models,” she said.

The café is named after A.Z. Wells, a local orchardist and philanthropist who established a $1 million trust specifically to establish and aid the YWCA and other Wenatchee-area charities about 50 years ago. Pratt said that Well’s wife was a great supporter of the YWCA.

“This is a tribute to him and all they helped us to accomplish over that last 50 years,” she said. “We wouldn’t be here today without their forethought and support of local nonprofits.”

The café is open for breakfast and lunch and Pratt said they also provide catering and boxed lunches. Like other restaurants they have daily soup and salad specials but they also feature a few of their own unique creations. Pratt recommends the “Emma Gene’s salad,” named after A.Z.’s wife, replete with their homemade vinaigrette and the “Don’t Knock It Till You Tried It” sandwich, made with warm brie and chocolate chips on a toasted panini.

In an exam room at the Eastmont Animal Clinic in East Wenatchee, Dr. Randy Hein held up an X-ray of a canine knee joint, and pointed to the dark lines of a condition that, up till recently, meant euthanasia for many aging pets: arthritis.

“There’s a dirty joint,” Hein said looking at the X-ray. “And again you can see the bony proliferation, see how it’s flushed out right there, and right in here we have a lot of arthritic changes. We still do have a little bit of cartilage though … so I thought we could do Jack some good.”

Jack, he explained, is an 11-year-old Golden Retreiver that had severe arthritis. Typically, dogs in Jack’s position would receive a combination of anti-inflammatory drugs and some physical therapy. When those finally ran their course, they would need to be put down, Hein said.

Thanks to a new procedure Hein is offering at his business, called Vet-Stem Regenerative Cell Technology, that Golden Retriever is doing much better.

“Jack was at the point where he wouldn’t walk up to the mailbox, and now he will trot and run up to the mail box about 40 yards from their house.”

The procedure involves isolating stem and regenerative cells from an animal’s own fat and then injecting those cells back into the injured or degraded tissue. The stem cells that are derived from the fat tissue during surgery, Hein said, are called mesemchymal stem cells. They are 1,000 times more abundant than the stem cells found in bone marrow, and can be differentiated into liver, heart, cartilage, nerves, and blood vessel cells.

For Jack, that meant surgically removing his stem cells from the fat, sending them to a laboratory for refinement, and then injecting them back into his aging joints within 48 hours.

According to the Vet-Stem – the San Diego-based company that developed the technology – website, the regenerative cell therapy has been effective in returning to prior levels of performance in up to 75 percent of the dogs that have undergone the procedure.

Those are pretty good chances of success, but Hein admits it isn’t guaranteed to work on every dog and the procedure isn’t cheap. It costs between $2,800 and $3,000, he said, which includes the costs for X-rays, surgery, lab work, and re-injecting the stem cells.

Hein said that Vet-Stem Founder, Dr. Robert Harman, originally developed the procedure for use in horses in 2002, and after receiving good results, expanded the application to dogs in 2007.

“The stem cell will attach to the injured cell, and like Dr. Harman said, it provides cellular CPR to that damaged cell, so that cell can literally repair itself and continue functioning as a normal cell,” Hein said.

According to its website, Vet-Stem has authorized more than 2,100 veterinarians throughout the United States and Canada to perform the procedure, but Hein said that he is the only certified veterinarian in Washington providing the service east of the Cascades.

So far, he’s performed the procedure on two dogs. Anne Conway is the owner of the first, a 14-year-old Australian Sheppard-Rottweiler mix named Roxy.

“She was getting to the point, just in the last four years even, where she was degrading and we were thinking, ‘Okay, how soon are we going to have to put her down?’” Conway said. “You know because you don’t want to have to see her get to the point where she can’t get up and out, and you have to carry her everywhere. She’s a really big dog.”

So she met with Hein and he recommended they try an experimental run at the procedure. The results were promising.

“She plays now,” Conway said. “She’s out in the yard and she plays at the fence with the neighbor dog and she plays in the house here more than she has in years … she’s just like a pup again.”

With the Cascade foothills looming over his shoulder, Greg McPherson, owner of Tiny’s Organic in East Wenatchee, surveys a 10-acre field of vegetables and reminisces on his farm’s latest metamorphosis.

“Probably any grower who grows apples here in the Valley can tell you that you might have one or two good years, and then you might have one or two bad years and it can wipe you out,” he said of the hardships of growing for the wholesale market. “It’s always a challenge.”

As a farmer, McPherson has probably been through every business model in the books. From the 1980s to present, McPherson has sold his crops on everything from the wholesale market to the farmer’s markets. They even implemented a home delivery model at one point. Nothing paid off.

So a few years ago, instead of growing crops and praying for good weather and customers to buy them, McPherson switched the equation: sell first, then grow.

It’s a model called Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) and it is one that, for many small farmers, is the difference between owning a farm and working at, say, a fast food chain.

“CSAs started in the early ’90s as a model for getting the small-scale farmers a set core group of subscribers who would help them stay afloat,” said Mike Cochran, CSA coordinator for Farm House Table and Community Farm Connection, a local non-profit that connects customers with CSA programs in the Valley. “It was a risk-sharing strategy, so if their crop failed, the people investing don’t get as much produce as they would (normally), but if the crop is huge, and if they have an unbelievable amount of peas, the subscriber gets a lot more peas in their boxes.”

For anywhere from $750 to $1,000, depending on the time of year they sign up, customers can buy shares in Tiny’s CSA program. But unlike stock on Wall Street, these shares buy subscribers a 10 to 18-pound box of straight-from-the-farm produce, every week, for 22 weeks. That’s typically enough for a family of four or two very enthusiastic vegetable lovers.

Tiny’s runs a relatively large CSA and has found a niche market by selling to Seattle-based customers who don’t have the ready access to fresh produce as local Wenatchee residents do. Erin McPherson, Greg’s daughter and Tiny’s CSA program manager, said they started with 150 shares but are now closer to 400 and are hoping to grow further.

“Basically we’re guaranteed that everything we grow is going to get sold because it gets sold up front,” Erin McPherson said. “So when I go to plant seeds in February and March, I usually know how many people I’m planting for.”

Sherri Schneider, executive director for Farmhouse Table, which also runs it’s own 150-member CSA,  said that part of the beauty of the CSA business model is its ability to sustain what has traditionally been a rich farming heritage.

“We have a great agricultural history and tradition here in Wenatchee, but a lot of it is based around big orchards selling to big warehouses where fruit is shipped out globally,” Schneider said. “There are a lot of micro farmers that can’t grow that kind of volume, nor are they interested in that. They want a different kind of lifestyle.”

About 12 miles out the Chumstick Highway in Leavenworth, Tierra Garden Organics is one of those farms.

In a sun-baked valley, surrounded by steep hillsides and green pine trees, time at the little four-acre plot has the unique quality of being told in vegetables.

With her pants rolled up to her knees and a pair of muddy flip flops on her feet, Eron Drew, co-owner of Tierra along with her husband, Willy, steps gingerly through the spray of a water sprinkler and points to the living sundial that is their farm.

“Generally it starts off in the spring geared more toward greens, and then as we get into the high season you start getting things like the corn, and tomatoes, basil, peppers, eggplants, and then we taper in the fall with pumpkins and winter squash and potatoes,” she said nodding to different plots as she bounced along.

It’s a small farm that operates between a CSA and the farmers’ markets. For $400, share holders get 18 weeks of vegetables. Enough to fill an 18-pound rubber tote each week.

Last year, Drew said they sold about 35 CSA shares but found it to be a bit too much. So this year they tailored it back to 25, which she said allows them to grow a greater diversity of produce and to interact with more people at the markets.

So far for the couple, the CSA has been a very sustainable business model.

First of all, they operate on a strictly cash basis, i.e. they have zero debt. They lease the land, and while the couple has owned the business for the past three years, Drew said it has supported their family for the past two. The first year they broke even.

In addition, after the initial infrastructure was set up, their costs have been scaling back each year. Last year, she said their expenses were approximately $15,000. This year, she expects that to be closer to $7,000.

While their costs are going down, Drew said having that money in advance of the harvest has been key to their success.

“It definitely helps us bridge the gap between winter and spring and gives us start up money so we can purchase seed and amendments and any replacement equipment that we need in the spring,” she said.

But another big plus to the CSA is the diversity of vegetables. Walking through the farm, Drew points to things like purple Kohlrabi, softball-sized leaks, and a yellow bean called Indian Woman, which is good for cooking in tacos and soups, she said.

“It’s like Christmas every week,” she said. “If you love to cook and you love to eat, it’s like Christmas because you open up this box and there’s all this amazing produce.”

In addition to providing new and exotic veggies, the CSA farms typically include a weekly newsletter with recipes that help educate their customers on how to use them.

At the time of reporting, it was lemon cucumber and snow pea week at Tiny’s.

“You can’t get this kind of stuff at a grocery store,” Erin McPherson said. “If we’re not getting the support of the community to be able to do this, then we’re all just going to have to buy everything from the grocery store and won’t have the variety, the freshness, or small farming really.”

The Wenatchee YMCA turns 100 this year. That’s the news, but there’s more to the story.

The Y in Wenatchee is one of the oldest YMCA’s in the state, as well as one of the oldest businesses still in its original building in the city of Wenatchee, said Eric Nelson, executive director of Wenatchee’s YMCA. But it is also no stranger to financial hardship.

Its hundred-year-long history is marked by a financially turbulent beginning but eventual fiscal triumph.

“There were a lot of times (that) they were very close to going out of business,” Nelson said. “So I look at those times and tend to look at things in the long-term viewpoint that there’ve been tough times before and we know we’re going to be here for another 100 years.”

In its first 100 years, the YMCA has become an institution in the lives of many Wenatchee Valley residents. The Y serves one in three children in Chelan and Douglas counties. Through its youth scholarships, leadership programs, aquatic center and camp the YMCA impacts the lives of roughly 10,000 local children and young adults a year.

Of its 5,000 members, Nelson said about half are under the age of 18 and it’s the Y’

s policy that no child who wants to participate in YMCA programs is ever turned away because of an inability to pay. As a result the Wenatchee YMCA gave about 6,000 youth scholarships in 2009 and he said they expect to award even more this year.

Nelson said that while roughly 75 percent of the Y’s operational costs come from membership and program fees, the remainder is covered by individual financial contributors and endowments established by community members throughout the years to help subsidize youth scholarships.

“We’ve been blessed with some tremendously generous people in our history,” Nelson said. “(The) United Way and contributors allow the Wenatchee YMCA to put 100 percent of the money they raise in a year to youth scholarships.”

With summer leadership camps like the T-Wave program, which focuses on promoting service, teamwork and social responsibility, costing nearly $200 for non-members, providing thousands of scholarships a year can be expensive. The Y also offers an adult program, called the open door program, which allows adults and families making less than the median income for this area to pay substantially lower prices for a membership.

“Pretty much everybody, regardless of income, can have access to the YMCA,” Nelson said.

Yet since each YMCA is individually incorporated, not every Y enjoys the financial stability the Wenatchee Y does. Thanks to endowments funds, financial contributions and sound fiscal management, the Wenatchee YMCA has been debt free since 1944 and was even able to step in and take over the Eastmont Aquatic Center in East Wenatchee after voters turned down a levy in 1999 that would continue to fund the center.

As a testament to the success of its youth programs, a few of the Wenatchee YMCA’s native sons, including Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed and Publisher of The Wenatchee World, Rufus Woods, spoke at the YMCA’s centennial luncheon in June. Both attended YMCA leadership camps in the ’40s and ’50s, Nelson said.

“There’s an awful lot of people who have given a lot of time and money to get the YMCA where it is today,” Nelson said. “And to put us in a position to be of even greater service in the next 100 years in the Wenatchee Valley.”

When it comes to banking, it’s hard to think of money as having grass roots. But in an era marked by billion-dollar bailouts, failing financial institutions, and fledgling cash-strapped businesses, a grass roots banking movement is in full swing.

It’s called “Move Your Money.” It is a national campaign designed to inspire depositors to transition their money away from the large, international banks that received hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in bailout money, and into the credit unions and community banks that bolster local communities.

“The government policy of protecting the ‘too big and politically connected to fail’ is badly hurting the small banks, which are having a much harder time competing in the financial marketplace. As a result, a system which was already dangerously concentrated at the top has only become more so,” said Arianna Huffington, owner of The Huffington Post and one of the founders of the Move Your Money movement.

John Annaloro, president and CEO of the Washington League of Credit Unions, has been watching the movement take hold.

“In my career, I cannot remember a time when the public has been so worried about the health of the financial services system,” Annaloro said. “Most people are evaluating, or reassuring themselves that where they have their accounts is the right place to have them.”

And for good reason.

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) Troubled Banks List, the number of financial institutions reporting quarterly financial results dropped from 8,012 to 7,932 in the first quarter of this year. During the same quarter, 41 FDIC-insured institutions failed, 37 were merged into other charters, and the number of insured commercial banks and savings institutions on the FDIC “Problem List” increased from 702 to 775, bringing the total assets of “problem” institutions from $403 billion to $431 billion.

In Washington alone, nine banks have failed so far this year.

“It’s the financial system that’s seemingly having the most problems and the largest banks in the United States that were deemed too big to fail that needed to be bailed out with hundreds of billions of dollars of capital injections,” Annaloro said. “The community banks and credit unions are in a much different configuration.”

Jennifer Lehn, executive vice president of Numerica Credit Union, can attest to that.

“We had tremendous deposit growth in 2009,” Lehn said. “It was well in excess of 20 percent and so I think that was certainly a case where consumers were perhaps not feeling good about where their money was sitting and wanting to move it to a strong locally based organization.”

That’s in comparison to a typical year of deposit growth of 10 percent, Lehn said.

Why are they seeing that growth? Lehn said she felt it had to do with the structure of a credit union. Operating on a not-for-profit basis, credit unions are 100 percent owned by the members who bank with the institution. There are no stock holders, she said, and any profits made by the credit union are either retained in equity or are distributed back to members in one way or another, through advantageous loans, deposit rates, or lower fees.

According to a May 2010 report by the Federal Reserve, commercial and industrial loans on banks’ books fell 18.5 percent in 2009, the steepest annual decline since 1985. At a time when most banks are cutting back on lending to businesses, Lehn said the amount of Numerica’s loans grew by 8 percent last year and was on track to increase to 11 percent this year.

Additionally, Lehn said Numerica had approximately $100 million in outstanding business loans and their goal this year was to administer $25 million in new business relationships.

“We do absolutely realize that, at this point, some of the banks are having to hold back and we’re trying to step in and fill that void,” she said.

Scott Anderson, president and CEO of North Cascades National Bank (NCNB), said being rooted in the community allows them to more readily offer lines of credit to local businesses.

“It’s much more personalized and I think because we’re smaller and more fleet of foot, we’re able to offer a more flexible kind of customer-tailored solutions for businesses in our communities rather than a one-size-fits-all approach,” Anderson said.

Started in 1986 to meet the under served needs of farmers and orchardists in Chelan, Wash., Anderson said NCNB had also seen significant growth from disillusioned businesses and individuals leaving Wall Street and depositing their money locally.

According to the company’s 2009 annual report, average deposits were $273 million last year, a year-over-year increase of 4.5 percent.

But growth isn’t everything.

Ken Martin, president and CEO of Cashmere Valley Bank, a local institution whose roots go back in the community to 1932 and now has approximately $1.05 billion in total assets, said their objective this year was to make safe and stable decisions, and to limit deposit growth in order to follow the limited lending opportunities in the community at the present moment. As a community bank, Martin said Cashmere Valley Bank is ultimately tied to the local economy.

“A community bank’s performance is just a reflection of the overall community,” Martin said. “We don’t out-perform our community.”

Martin said that while having that community presence, and keeping community dollars locally was an important aspect of community banking, customers’ thinking about moving their money should choose a bank based on its menu of services and individual merits.

“There has certainly been the backlash [against Wall Street banks] as people have looked for a safe place to put their money,” Martin said. “I would prefer to get new customers over time for other reasons than a crisis. I would rather have a long-term success because of your convenience, your products, your value and your people. That’s a much more stable, manageable, and sensible type of growth.”

In a tight economy, a little elbow grease and a good idea can go a long way.

Darren Reynolds, owner of Caffe Mela, can attest to that. With polished hardwood floors, a neon sign hanging from warm, greyish-brown walls, and a sparkling chrome Diedrich coffee roaster in the corner of his newly remodeled basement, it’s hard to imagine the downstairs space was ever anything other than a cozy room for sipping coffee.

But when Reynolds opened the doors to his cafe, located at 17 N. Wenatchee Ave., back in 2006, the basement was nothing more than a dusty storage space full of decades-old junk.

“We referred to it as the dungeon,” Reynolds said. “It was extremely dirty. The floor was covered in a felt, linoleum pad that was placed there in the ’20s when the building was built. It would disintegrate as you stepped on it and become air born; and it was a health hazard, and you just really couldn’t be down here.”

But Reynolds didn’t let that dissuade him from finding a creative use for the dingy digs. After hundreds of hours of moving leftover garbage from previous businesses, scraping the floors, painting, cleaning, and all the other dirty jobs that came with the turf, the newest addition to Caffe Mela is finally ready for business: coffee classes.

Starting August 14, Caffe Mela will be holding regular coffee classes in everything from home brewing 101 for the casual coffee drinker, to advanced espresso making for aspiring baristas. For Reynolds, it’s all part of adding value to his original product – a Seattle-style coffee house – and coming up with creative ways for it to expand.

It’s not the first time Caffe Mela has grown. In addition to importing and roasting its own coffee beans for sale on the wholesale market, Reynolds just opened a second branch of Caffe Mela in East Wenatchee this past April. Offering classes, he said, is a way to support his wholesale customers by helping to train their employees, and a way to educate his own retail clientele by inspiring their palates for the bean.

Admittedly, Reynolds said that the expansion was an exciting yet risky venture, but one that was managed by performing most of the labor himself, with the help of employees and family. By keeping most of the grunt work in-house, Reynolds said he was able to keep his remodeling costs to about $3,000. He estimates that number would have been more than $10,000 if he would have hired a contractor.

“It’s definitely taking a gamble on something like this,” Reynolds said. “With our sales, we don’t make money to just cover this kind of thing. We had to go out on a limb and invest in this facility down here in the hopes that we would recover this in the future, as with any business venture.”

Expansion can be a risky investment for any business, especially at a time when most businesses are cutting down on costs. But Reynolds said that, rather than a deterrent, the down economy motivated him to find better ways to make his business thrive.

“It comes down to finding ways to diversify and make money effectively,” he said. “If we were just screaming along and making all kinds of money I wouldn’t be as motivated to get out there and try to find new ways to do business. We have to be creative. You have to come up with new ways to expand the business and really search out what the best hat is going to be going forward.”

For as long as Dr. Ed Womack has owned Cascade Veterinary Clinic, Inc., P.S., he has made a point of providing health care for his employees. It was just good business.

In addition to offering the latest in things like ultrasound imaging, digital radiographic x-rays, and laser-guided surgical procedures for his animal clientele, providing health care for employees was an integral part of attracting good people and staying competitive.

“We want to have something that makes people feel like they are worthwhile here and that we are providing things that they might not be able to get elsewhere,” Womack said from the clinic’s large, hospital-clean procedure room, amidst a bustle of scrub-wearing veterinary assistants and furry, four-legged patients.

Womack became part owner of the business in 1996 and full owner in 2002, but the business began in 1964 as more of a mom-and-pop operation. In 1998, Womack moved with the business into a brand new, 6,250-square-foot facility, complete with an in-house lab for diagnostic testing, boarding facilities, and multiple rooms for treatment and surgical procedures. Over the years, the business has grown from a handful of staff to 18 full-time employees and six full-time veterinary doctors.

But while the business and its menu of services has grown, Womack said that paying for health insurance has gotten harder.

“Our problem in the past five to 10 years is, it seems like every year that we would re-new the premiums for the same amount of insurance, (the cost) would go up 20 to 30 percent and that’s a huge amount to jump,” Womack said. “So what that would force us to do then is to change the policy to raise the deductible that people have to pay, or make some changes so that we could still afford to provide that insurance for people.”

If you’ve had to buy insurance in the past decade that testimony probably comes as no surprise.

According to a 2009 survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit research organization that focuses on health care issues facing the United States, premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance have gone up a total of 131 percent since 1999. To put that in context, the report found that worker’s wages had risen only 38 percent, and inflation only 28 percent in the last 10 years. In 2009, the average premium for family coverage under an employer-sponsored health insurance plan was $13,375, with employees paying $3,515 and employers paying $9,860 on average.

Nancy Porzio, director of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Seattle District office, said she has seen many small businesses cutting health insurance in an attempt to pinch pennies.

“In these difficult economic times, (business owners) need to look to where they can cut some costs and unfortunately (health insurance is) a place they can immediately cut some costs,” Porzio said. “They don’t want to do it. The employers I meet with consider their employees part of the family and they want to give them as much as they can, but if you’re trying to keep your business operating at a profit sometimes you have to make those hard decisions.”

Obama’s health care reform law

To stem the problem of rising health care costs, on March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. The culmination of 15 months of political debate, the implications of the law are broad, controversial, and for many business owners like Womack, they are unclear.

For a fun brain teaser, flip to any page in the thousand-page collection of legalese and see if you can wrap your brain around it. The section applying to small business tax credits begins:

“IN GENERAL.—Subpart D of part IV of subchapter A of chapter 1 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (relating to business-related credits) is amended by inserting after section 45Q the following: …”

Fortunately, the government has set up two websites that can help employers navigate the murky waters of health care reform, www.healthcare.gov, and its former archived, yet still viewable site, www.healthreform.gov.

According to healthreform.gov, in addition to extending health care to millions of uninsured across the country, beginning this year, an estimated four million small businesses will qualify for health insurance tax credits that will dish out $40 billion over the course of the next 10 years. That could be huge for qualifying companies like Cascade Veterinary Clinic, which pays nearly $70,000 a year in employee insurance premiums, and could save nearly a third of that cost under the new law.

How do we pay for it?

According to the Employment Security Department there are 2,930 firms in Chelan and Douglas counties with fewer than 20 employees that could conceivably qualify for the small business tax credits.

While that could be a great opportunity for many small businesses, Womack and Porzio remain skeptical about where that money will come from and how it will affect businesses down the road, especially when there are so many conflicting reports from various organizations.

“It concerns me a lot,” Porzio said. “As a tax payer and a home owner, I’m very concerned about (how we’re going to pay for the reform), and I have a daughter and I wonder what the future is going to be like for her. Personally, I think there will be some changes to the health care reform before it actually takes place.”

According to a March 2010 report by Deloitte LLP (a worldwide firm, dealing in audit, financial advisory, risk management and tax services, that develops proprietary research in order to help its clients understand issues of the day), the health care law will raise nearly $438 billion over the next 10 years through tax increases on high-income individuals, excise taxes on high-cost or “Cadillac” health plans, and new fees on selected health-care related industries such as medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and tanning salons.

According to the Deloitte report, $86.8 billion of the moneywill come from Medicare tax hikes that will affect higher-income tax payers, and $123.4 billion will come from a new Medicare contribution levied on unearned income.

That may seem like a lot of money, and it is, but Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler said that by providing coverage to the uninsured, it will reduce the cost of uncompensated care in the system, which will result in $500 million in savings each year in Washington state alone.

“It’s also important to point out that the current system was not sustainable,” Kreidler said. “It was devolving around us as we saw the growing numbers of uninsured, the growing numbers of employers that were dropping health insurance. It meant that the level of the percentage of the population that were either exposed to being underinsured or had no insurance was growing and the cost was rising exponentially. This is a good reform from the standpoint of helping us transform the system.”

Effect on WVMC and other larger employers

Dr. Stuart Freed, medical director at Wenatchee Valley Medical Center, said that the hospital estimates
it will see an additional 20,000 to 25,000 previously uninsured people from the four-county area it serves seeking primary care and preventative maintenance as a result of the new legislation.

“Many of those folks are seeking care now or already have been seeking it, and they’re seeking it at their most vulnerable time and they’re least effective time,” Freed said. “In other words, I’m going to wait till I have chest pain before I see a cardiologist.”

Freed said that there will not be enough physicians at the hospital to provide primary care to all those people, but that the hospital is currently working on a contingency plan to handle the increased load, such as using nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants more efficiently.

Another question being raised by the new law is how its new insurance mandates will impact larger employers, such as the Wenatchee Valley Medical Center, which also provides health care for its employees.

Beginning in 2014, employers with more than 50 employees that do not offer coverage, and who have at least one employee who qualifies for government tax credits, will have to pay a fee of $2,000 for every full-time employee after the first 30 employees. For those employers with more than 50 employees that do offer health insurance, but still have an employee who qualifies for government subsidized health insurance, they will have to pay the lesser of $3,000 per qualifying employee, or $2,000 per full time employee after the first 30 employees.

According to Wenatchee Valley Medical Center Accounting Manager Carol Frasier, the hospital employs 1,209 full-time equivalent employees. In 2009, it paid $12 million in health-related benefit costs, and covered approximately 2,583 people. Under the new law, if the hospital decided to drop its health care coverage the possible cost for doing so, instead of being $12 million in costs, would be closer to $2.4 million in fines.

Dr. Roger Stark, health care policy analyst for the Washington Policy Center, a Seattle-based non-partisan think tank, foresees this dynamic having big consequences for Washington state.

“You look at a fine of $3,000 and you say, ‘Whoa, I could save $7,000 here if I just pay the fine and allow my employees to go find their own insurance.’ It’s a dollars and cents thing,” he said. “It’s going to be an economic decision for businesses and our guess is it’ll start with small and medium-sized but ultimately we could foresee Microsoft and Boeing doing this, rather than paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars of health benefits for their employees.”

Freed said that while the center has no intention of dropping its health insurance plan, it would likely have to adjust its deductibles and premiums in order to drop below the threshold of what is considered a “Cadillac plan.”

Meanwhile, business owners like Womack are still wondering what the health care reform will mean for them.

“It’s a little bit scary for us as employers to see what our employees might have to go through and deal with,” Womack said. “But it’s one of those things that I guess we just take it as it comes.”

History is chic and downtown Wenatchee has it for sale.

That was the message to business owners and business professionals on July 28, during the Wenatchee Downtown Association’s “Downtown is Looking Up!” tour.

About 20 to 30 people gathered in the afternoon heat for a casual stroll down Wenatchee Avenue and a brief glimpse of some the historic buildings that comprise Wenatchee’s nationally recognized historic district. Some were vacant, some newly remodeled, but all were shown in the hopes of igniting some creative sparks in the minds of local entrepreneurs.

The tour included stops at Fuel Sports Bar & Rock House, The Gentry Hair Salon and Shoppe, Caffe Mela, the Dore Building and Jones & Jones Funeral Home, and the YMCA.

“A lot of people have business savvy, but they don’t necessarily have a vision for design and so when you walk into 12,000 square feet of office space that’s still ‘landlord white,’ still has the previous tenant’s carpet, it’s hard to see the vision,” said Wenatchee Downtown Association Executive Director Sarah Dempsey of the large, block-sized property of the Dore Building at 135 N. Wenatchee Ave., which is currently up for rent.

Dempsey said she hoped that by showing people what was available and what other business owners have already done, it would inspire people to reclaim some of the unique facades that comprise Wenatchee’s historical and architectural heritage.

“We are fortunate that we have a nationally recognized historic district and that we have so much of the original building stock left,” Dempsey said. “That gives you a sense of place. To be cliché, you could go to a mall and every mall looks the same. When you have buildings that were built in 1906, or a whole block that was built in 1920 for a car dealership, that’s the sense of character that you want to retain because nothing else is like Wenatchee.”

Here’s a little history behind some of the stops:

The Gentry
Built in 1920 on the site of one of Wenatchee’s oldest homes, the Warren Building was originally an automotive business. Over the years it housed various restaurants and cafes, and most recently The Gentry Hair Salon and Shoppe. Featuring the original brick walls, the salon has a rustic yet newly clean vibe. “There’s drawbacks to these old buildings as well,” Gentry Owner Kris Kruse said. “These bricks are pretty old and even though we dust weekly, there are little chips from time to time.” But she says she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Caffe Mela
In the basement of Caffe Mela is a spot that owner Darren Reynolds hopes will become a tasting room of a different sort: a coffee tasting room. What was once a dusty storage room now features an enormous Diedrich coffee roaster – that looks more like a steam locomotive than a bean machine – the original yet newly refinished hard wood floors, warm, earthy wall paint, and a green-electric sign on the wall that proudly displays the word, “open.” Reynolds and his wife live in the apartment above the cafe. “I do love living downtown,” he said. “It’s kind of like urban living in a not-so-urban environment, which is great.”

The Dore Building
The Dore Building at 135 N. Wenatchee Ave., is a humongous, block-sized empty space for lease. Built in 1905, it originally served as a box factory and then became an auto dealership for the next 20-odd years. From 1929 until the late ’80s it was used for a variety of furniture stores, and due to the large size of the ground floor – 12,000 square feet – owner Gary Dore said that a furniture store is probably what the space is best suited for. Dore said he hoped to rent out office space above the ground floor, as well as a 5,300-square-foot space below it, and that prices were negotiable. “You just gotta tell me what you want, but I’d like maybe 50 cents a foot,” Dore said.

Jones & Jones Funeral Home
It’s a funeral home, there’s no mistaking that. The cremation furnaces in the basement make it hard to forget, but it wasn’t always so. Built in 1906 by Conrad Rose – an assertive county commissioner who carved out Chelan County from Kittitas and Okanogan counties  – the large, mansion-like building was Rose’s home until 1924 when he sold it to David Jones for use as a mortuary. Over the years, the layout of the building has been changed and remodeled, and in 1967 a chapel was built on the main floor. Today the building is home to a maze of hallways, apartment complexes and what Pat Scofield, the real estate representative for the home, thinks could make great office space. For $995,000, the 23,000-square-foot building could be yours.

Lenders can be fickle these days, as Stephen Bollinger found out when he went to secure financing to purchase the 20-year-old Run of the River Inn and Refuge in Leavenworth. He tried to secure a commercial loan for the purchase of the property and found it wasn’t as quick a process as he would have liked.

“It took us eight months to close this transaction. Part of the problem was we got delayed by banks who were interested and then not interested and banks being wishy-washy about lending to small businesses,” Bollinger said.

He turned to the Small Business Administration (SBA) for help. The SBA offers a commercial loan product that partners with regular banks called the 504 loan program. Business owners can use it to buy a new property, purchase their existing space or use it to build new. For business owners it means double the paperwork, but the rewards – including ultra-low interest rates – can be great for those who stick it out.

Tom DiDomenico, vice president and senior loan officer with Evergreen Business Capital, a Certified Development Company (CDC) licensed by the SBA to help administer the SBA’s 504 loan program, said the program offers a second low-rate mortgage behind the bank’s first mortgage, making it easier to obtain the first mortgage on the property.

The bank loan typically covers 50 percent of the property value, the SBA 504 loan, 40 percent, and the borrower typically makes a 10 percent down payment.

“It’s a unique product,” DiDomenico said. “The 504 helps to leverage bank financing for commercial real estate because it gives the bank a stronger collateral position when the SBA participates.”

The program doesn’t cover everything however. The property must be owner-occupied, so it doesn’t cover apartments, condominiums, or mini-storage facilities. In addition, new business start-ups pay an additional 5 percent down. Typical loan paperwork is still necessary. DiDomenico estimated it takes people anywhere from two days to six weeks to put the documentation together, depending on how organized the borrowers are.

Finding the right help

Jason Tveten and his brother, Brandon used the 504 construction loan program to build their new dental office at 222 N. Chelan Ave. in Wenatchee. They worked with DiDomenico, and obtained the balance of their financing through Washington Trust Bank.

Jason Tveten said the process went smoothly and quickly for their new building.

“It didn’t seem like a lengthy time,” Jason said. “But if you were on your own trying to figure out how to do the paperwork, I don’t think you’d be able to.”

Bollinger agreed. He said finding the right person who understands the entire SBA process is crucial.

“A big part of any of this is having capable people in the driver’s seat on the transaction. We started the process working with someone who didn’t thoroughly understand the SBA system,” Bollinger said. “That cost us some time, and delayed our closing.”

Bollinger later switched to Lisa Vincent, vice president and senior loan officer for Northwest Business Development Association, another CDC.

“After we got with Lisa, it only took us another two-and-a-half to three months total,” Bollinger said. He obtained the remainder of his financing through Pacific International Bank.

Lower interest rates on new construction

One of Vincent’s new construction customers were Steven and Tanya Tramp, owners of the new Comfort Suites at the Park in Wenatchee. The Tramps were second-timers on the SBA program. They had used the 504 loan to purchase Scotty’s Hotel, upgrade it into a Travelodge and add a $1.5 million addition the building. That was their first introduction to the SBA, Steven said.

The Tramps sold that property four or five years ago, paying off their SBA loan and becoming eligible to borrow again. This time, they took out the maximum on the SBA 504 – a $2 million loan. They obtained an additional $6 million in financing from a bank in Denver, Colo. and put down another $2 million themselves.

Steven said the process was quick for that size of a loan package, and while he could have financed the whole loan without the SBA, it would have cost them more, especially on the interest rate.

“It’s often 2 to 3 percent less on the SBA portion of the loan package, and that’s huge when you are talking high dollars,” he said.

Equipment covered too

Munchen Haus owners Oliver Brulotte and his wife, Pamela, broke ground on a new brewery at 935 Front St. in Leavenworth on May 13. They went through DiDomenico for the SBA loan, and through Audrey Bessonette and Claudia Cockerham with Peoples Bank for the rest of the financing. Brulotte said the entire process took eight or nine months.

“A lot of that time they were waiting for us, though,” Brulotte said.

Plans started brewing for Icicle Brewing Company a year-and-a-half ago, and they brought on head brewer Dean Priebe of Leavenworth about six months later. They began talks with Peoples Bank in October. Then plans for the brewery building changed part way through the process, which required new paperwork and new construction cost totals.

The current 4,200-square-foot building plan will cost $1.25 million and is being constructed by Corstone Contractors LLC of Snohomish on a lot that the Brulottes owned. It is due to be completed in November, with the taps open in spring 2011.

The Brulotte’s deal was different in that, in addition to commercial property, the financing also included equipment. DiDomenico said that’s another feature of the 504 loan that many ought to consider. The loan can cover major equipment that has a lifespan of at least 10 years. Brulotte said that was a major advantage that sold him on the program.

“We didn’t pursue getting a loan without the SBA assistance. We wanted that margin of safety that 20-year-fixed rate gives us, and having the equipment bundled in gave us the lowest cost we could get on equipment financing,” Brulotte explained. “Not everybody can fit the program, but for us, this was fantastic.”

Tveten and Bollinger said they would go through the entire process again, regardless of the paperwork.

“It’s definitely worth the effort, especially in terms of the interest rate, and banks are much more amenable to business lending with an SBA loan in your pocket,” Bollinger said.

Potential borrowers can contact a CDC or their local bank to get the process rolling or for more information.

On July 1, the federal government threw into effect one of the newest provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a 10 percent excise tax on tanning salons.

The tax is just one ingredient in a cocktail of levies raised to help pay for the new health care reform law – which went into effect on March 23 and seeks to provide health care for millions of uninsured across the country – but local tanning salon owners say the tax is unfair.

“We’re doing half of what we should be,” said It’s Your Tan Owner Wayne Gibbs of the impact the recession has already had on their business in the past two years.

“That’s tough, and then to add 10 percent off of that, now you’re doing 40 percent of what you were doing. Most people don’t have a 60 percent profit margin to survive on, and with that tax we’ve lost 60 percent of our revenue along with the recession. That’s huge.”

That’s assuming of course that Gibbs will be absorbing much of the cost of the 10 percent hike, but he admits that the tax will likely force him to increase his prices to some extent, which he fears will have a negative impact on his business, located at 117 N. Mission St. in Wenatchee.

“It will effect a certain amount of business, I’m sure,” Gibbs said. “Especially in this economic climate, I’m sure it will. Pricing has been a big deal the past couple years.”

For example, Gibbs said that by just offering a coupon for half off the cost of a $45 tanning service, he can get twice as many customers. The reverse, he fears, is likely true as well.

According to the Internal Revenue Service, tanning salon business owners are expected to collect the 10 percent tax from customers at the time they pay for tanning services. Businesses are then expected to pay the tax quarterly when they file their IRS Form 720. The first return for the indoor tanning services tax is due this October 31 for the third quarter period, which will include July, August and September.

Thirty-year-old Ryan Fila, co-owner of Electric Ray’s Tanning Spa, said he is going to do everything he can to minimize the impact of the tax on his customers.

“Prices are going to have to be different accordingly, but our goal is to try and make a difference so it doesn’t hurt our clients,” Fila said. “I’m probably going to eat (the tax). I mean at least take a majority of it so it’s not such an impact that it turns people away.”

Fila and two other partners opened the doors to their business at 212 Fifth St. in November 2007, just before the recession hit. He said they got into the business because they wanted to change the way people thought of tanning salons and challenge the negative connotation associated with tanning, namely that it is unsafe.

Depending on who you talk to and which websites you visit, the American Cancer Society or the Indoor Tanning Association, you’ll get different stories on what is a safe dose of ultraviolet light. But while the health implications of tanning may be up for debate, the business costs are not. Fila said that they needed $300,000 to $500,000 in start up costs just to open their doors.

“I mean this one alone cost more than my Hummer I paid for,” Fila said of one of their state-of-the-art tanning beds, which he imports from Holland.

He hits a button and the machine whirs to life.

“Welcome to your ProSun Tanning Bed,” a robotic, female voice says. “Relax and enjoy this tanning session.”

For now, neither Electric Rays nor It’s Your Tan have seen an impact on sales from the new excise tax, but both agree it is something they will continue to watch.

By Lee Fehrenbacher

High up on Stemilt Hill, overlooking the Columbia River and deep within the sprawling  Kyle Mathison Orchards, Kyle Mathison kneels down next to a cherry tree and picks up a handful of deep, brown soil.

“This here, this is what I like to see,” Mathison said.

At 57 years old, the vice president of research and development for Stemilt Growers Inc., one of the largest tree-fruit companies in North America, doesn’t look like the typical corporate exec. Wearing blue jeans and a red short-sleeved button-up, Mathison has a wide-shouldered frame, a healthy stride, and a long ponytail that reaches to the middle of his back — not to mention a contagious enthusiasm for talking about dirt.

“It helps gather nutrients for the trees, helps breakdown the soil, and that helps create that soup,” he said, rubbing the dirt between his thumb and forefinger. “You can see that soil is alive with micro-organisms.”

He’s talking about composting.

In 2005, Mathison began a 23-acre composting operation on Stemilt Hill to provide an organic, nutrient-rich fertilizer for his cherry trees. It’s a process he likens to a slowly simmering soup, and every year for the past five years, Mathison has been simmering approximately 160 truck loads of culled apples, pears, and leaves from the Stemilt factories — waste that would have otherwise gone into landfills.

Earlier this year, Mathison opened the second – though he hopes not the final – phase of his composting operation, the Stemilt Organic Recycling center: a green waste transfer station for things like yard waste, tree trimmings, and wooden crates. Garbage for most, but for Mathison, that waste is just more fuel for the fire.

Wiping the dirt on his pant leg, Mathison stands up and waves to an employee in a large excavator. A furious rumble of noise hiccups to life as the worker starts the machine and begins loading a pile of tree trunks onto the teethy conveyor belt of a very large grinding machine, which creates mulch for the compost.

“Do you want to go down to the composting site?” he yells.

The large, $400,000 grinder used for making mulch, makes short work of tree trunks and is an essential tool in creating compost on a large scale. LEE FEHRENBACHER/WBJ

Grow your own…compost

Down a muddy road, in the midst of the green-leafed cherry trees that surround it, Mathison’s 23-acre composting farm is a big, open dirt field with windrows of rotten fruit, manure, wood chips, and yard waste piled high. Semi trucks and truck scales sit at the ready to haul the compost in and out, while a giant auger pulled by a tractor slowly churns the long rows of steaming, rotting vegetation.

“This is where we’re physically making the compost,” Mathison said while taking a handful of the hot material, which is kept between 142 and 145 degrees Fahrenheit. “The idea is to not allow the compost to go anaerobic. It’s a digestive process and like anything it needs oxidation in order to keep the process going … this looks like the first turn where they’re just mixing the grass clippings, the horse manure, apples and prunings all together. You can kind of smell it.”

It is a pungent, earthy, almost fruity smell.

Give him the opportunity and Mathison will talk your ear off about the science of composting. As the fourth generation grower of a family that homesteaded Stemilt Hill in 1893, Mathison’s childhood was an education in fruit growing.

“My great grandfather, who started this farm, he always said ‘the deeper the snow, the better the cherries.’”

The idea behind that rule-of-thumb, Mathison explained, is that snow acts like a blanket that traps amino acids and nutrient-rich minerals like zinc and iron in the soil, creating that organic soup, which explodes to life come springtime. Compost works the same way, but with a little more care as to what goes in it.

Mathison explained that he is creating a nitrogen low compost – approximately 40 carbon molecules to every nitrogen molecule – which allows the soil to grow in a fungal-based ecosystem as opposed to a bacterial base. He’s creating humus, which he says is the sheltering environment he needs to promote a certain type of micro-organism to thrive. The micro-organisms in turn break down the soil, releasing the minerals and phosphates necessary for a healthy tree’s diet.

Mathison was getting lots of potassium and calcium from the rotten apples and cherries that came from the Stemilt warehouses, but that wasn’t enough.

“A lot of times, they need the grass clippings, they need the horse manure, they need the other things to make it more complex,” he said of the compost. “I think the more complex you can make your compost, the bigger array of micro-organisms.”

So he opened a yard-waste recycling center.

The Philosophy: Quality, not quantity

The site, which is located at 719 S. Columbia St., isn’t much to look at. An empty gravel lot with block-lined driveways for emptying the back of one’s pickup truck, it’s one of Stemilt’s former packaging plants. After Stemilt’s purchase of Dovex earlier this year, though, the site went unused and Mathison began leasing it from Stemilt for 10 percent of his monthly gross revenue.

Currently the recycling plant adds about 40 truckloads of yard waste to the 160 truckloads gathered from Stemilt’s plants. Those 200 truckloads equal approximately 8,000 tons of natural waste, which in turn yields 4,000 tons of compost. That’s more than enough to feed well over 1,000 acres of orchard.

But Mathison will be the first to tell you that making compost is neither cheap nor easy.

The grinder used for mulching tree trunks was approximately $400,000, the excavator used to load it was approximately $120,000, and the tractor and the auger used to churn the compost was about $40,000. Together with the cost to build the truck scales, prepare the composting and recycling pads, and get all the necessary licensing for both sites, he estimates his initial investment was nearly $1 million.

“I’m not getting rich that’s for sure,” Mathison said. “Some months I get close to breaking even and maybe sometimes it’ll continue that way, hopefully. You’ve got to get focused on doing the right thing and hopefully you get enough volume to pay for everything. It takes time.”

Where Mathison gets his value is in the fruit. Since introducing his homemade compost, Mathison said his fruit is noticeably better. It tastes better, looks healthier, feels firmer, and is able to be stored for longer periods of time. It may not be the cheapest fruit, he said, but it is a superior fruit. For Mathison, superior fruit equals higher demand, and higher demand translates into keeping more jobs here in Wenatchee.

“The bottom line is I wake up every morning and I’ve got two things I want to do, that’s create memory and trust.”

The memory part comes from something he calls the “caveman instinct.” Basically, when you bite into a delicious fruit, you remember where it came from and you go back. The trust part has to do with his philosophy behind composting.

“When people buy my fruit, they trust that I have the same morals, the same ethics, the same environmental consciousness as they do, and I try to build that,” he said.

Which is why, he said, he built the recycling center.

Standing outside the gates to the center, Mathison squints into the sun at a line of landscaping trucks filled to the brim with tree limbs waiting to enter. It’s a small operation, he admits, but he has bigger ambitions. Someday, he said he envisions creating a curb-side, green waste pick-up system through an organization like Waste Management, in which yard waste would be picked up and delivered to the recycling center.

“We would be preserving our landfills so they would last longer … but everything takes time and if you keep dreaming and keep that in mind,” he said trailing off in thought. “That’s my goal, that it would somehow be more of a community thing.”

As he speaks, a gentlemen from one of the landscaping trucks approaches and asks if Mathison works at the center and whether the facility was open. “Of course,” Mathison said.

“You got more important things to do than wait around on us. Let’s get you unloaded,” he said, leading the way into the facility.

Bed and breakfasts are a different type of lodging from big chain hotels, but exactly how they differ can be a matter of opinion. Some say it’s the smaller size, others the hot breakfast that draws travelers to them.

These unique lodging establishments specialize in a unique experience. Some businesses accomplish this through a special atmosphere, setting or through fresh local food for meals.

Nathan Allen, owner of the Swantown Inn Bed and Breakfast in Olympia, Wash., and president of the Washington Bed & Breakfast Guild, a statewide association, said it’s not unusual for bed and breakfast owners to offer such services as locally sourced food.

“A lot of us have vegetable gardens where we grow a lot of the food we serve for breakfast, such as blueberries for the scones, the grapes for the sorbet, etc. The guests get a real kick out of that,” Allen said.

Allen, who is originally from Australia, said it is tough to define what makes a typical bed and breakfast though. He offers Wi-Fi and caters to business travelers as well as vacationers in his, but noted a bed and breakfast could be found in a modern house, a Victorian home, a tent, a country inn, or more.

“It’s hard to pigeon-hole bed and breakfasts into one sort of picture,” Allen said. “The commonalities are the smaller size of the establishment, being self-run, and the breakfast.”

But at least one local bed and breakfast owner said they don’t serve a hot breakfast, and never have.

La Toscana in Cashmere

Julie Moyles, co-owner of La Toscana Winery and Bed & Breakfast at 9020 Foster Road in Cashmere, said: “We do an in-room basket with fresh fruit, muffins, cheese and croissant or bread. They can pack that up and take it with them if they don’t want to eat it in the room. That way, guests don’t have to comb their hair and sit down to breakfast at 8 a.m. in the morning with strangers.”

La Toscana has been in business since 1989, and so far, the in-room basket has worked for them. In addition, they too offer something different – a working winery and tasting room on the premises. The one-acre property has a half-acre planted in grapes and two private rooms for rent. Warren Moyles makes about 450 cases of wine each year on site, and said that both businesses complement each other, which helps to maintain their success.

“Some of the bed and breakfast guests even get into the wine making process. They help bottle or crush grapes and often buy the wine too,” Warren said.

Going IvyWild

For some owners, running a bed and breakfast is an opportunity to mix two business ideas into one.

Richard Kitos, co-owner of the IvyWild Inn Bed and Breakfast‎ at 410 N. Miller St. in Wenatchee, is focused on food. Kitos, a former Los Angeles-area caterer and former owner of LaBonne Terre restaurant in Olds Station, is currently working with the city of Wenatchee to open a new restaurant on the ground floor of the IvyWild. He’s been working on that project since he and his wife, Ashley, purchased the property in 2006.

Right now he is offering cooking classes in the space, and said the pairing of restaurants and bed and breakfasts is prevalent in Europe, where travelers can take a one-week vacation in Tuscany and learn to cook as they go.

To further define his niche, Kitos said most of his food is seasonal and locally sourced. That’s one main difference between his place and most hotels, he said.

‘Upscale’ experience at Featherwinds

Over at Featherwinds at 17033 River Road in Leavenworth, the atmosphere prevails, said co-owner Dawn Barnhill. She said they provide an “upscale” hot breakfast, dinners, and desserts, but the food is served up with an expansive natural view that includes bears, elk, and deer.

“People just come here to enjoy the seclusion, enjoy the food and enjoy the service,” Barnhill said. “Sometimes they don’t want to be in a hotel on a thoroughfare with 400 other guests and their children.”

One of the key points of Featherwinds is that the property’s two bed-and-breakfast facilities are adults-only, to cater to parents who just want to get away for the weekend — alone. But children are always allowed in the three guest cabins, she said.

Slow economy affects B&Bs differently

Whatever the main reason for their success, area bed and breakfasts are seeing business pick up after higher gasoline prices and a nationwide recession caused a slowdown for many in the industry.

Allen said members in more remote locations have seen their business decline 20 to 30 percent. The Swantown, however, had its best year ever in 2009.

“We didn’t see a drop until December,” Allen said. “We are starting to book up quite well now, but we are in a pretty good position to be booked.”

For Barnhill, the slowdown started for her back when gas prices rose at the end of 2008. But, she said, return business has carried her through.

At the IvyWild Inn, business “hit a wall” in 2009, said Kitos. This year, business is picking up slowly, but it is picking up. He attributes that to Seattle visitors who want to come to eastern Washington to escape the rain.

Allen said that though gas prices are still hovering around $3 per gallon and the recession has hit many people’s wallets hard, travelers can still get away for what he called a “staycation” — taking shorter trips, closer to home.

“Maybe they just stay for a weekend instead of the full week,” Allen said.

David and Angie Lawrence, who purchased the Apple Country Inn Bed and Breakfast in February, said they  have been booked nearly full every weekend since they opened and haven’t been affected by the slower economy thus far.

Elk. Wine. Gourmet food. WiFi. The bed and breakfast model includes all these things and more. It all comes down to the owner’s goals, Allen said.

“Bed and breakfast owners are a very diverse group. Some innkeepers want to make money, others just  enjoy hosting people in their homes,” Allen said. “If it boils down to any one thing for travelers, it’s the level of personal service they receive, no matter where they stay.”

On a picturesque bluff overlooking the Columbia River, Alvaro Diaz sits with two friends in the modest, white-washed kitchen of the Morris West migrant farm camp and finishes an early lunch.

After months of following the harvest season up from California, as summer stretched north from farm to farm, and with more than a thousand miles under their belts, the three have just arrived in Wenatchee for the local cherry harvest this month.

“We’re just doing a job that a lot of people here won’t do,” Diaz says in Spanish through an interpreter.

Wearing a San Diego baseball cap and a blue T-shirt, the 60-year-old Diaz has tired eyes and a slight evening shadow on what is an otherwise smooth face. He speaks slowly and thoughtfully, and has a lot to say when it comes to harvest work, a profession that he says is dependent upon foreign migrant workers.

The numbers back him up.

According to a 2009 report by the Washington State Employment Security Department, Washington growers employed a total of 996,000 seasonal farm workers statewide in 2008. In the month of July alone, 19,381 seasonal farm workers were employed to help harvest the cherry crop. Of those jobs, 11,657 were in north central Washington.

The report also found that of the nearly 1 million seasonal workers employed in Washington, an estimated 50 percent were thought to be unauthorized to work in the United States.

Diaz used to be one of them, he said. He came to America illegally in 1975 but was granted amnesty through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The law made it illegal for employers to knowingly hire illegal immigrants while creating a pathway for certain illegal immigrants who were already in the country — like Diaz.

Diaz said that many of the people like himself who received amnesty in 1986 are almost ready to retire, but there is a whole generation of young workers who need a chance to work legally in the United States.

“The government should take advantage of these workers because they are young and strong and they are here,” Diaz said. “The government should give a chance to all these people. We don’t just benefit these people but also, we benefit the government.”

Migrant workers nothing new

Washington has always been reliant on a seasonal migrant work force. A quick trip to the Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center can tell you as much.

According to an essay by the museum’s Public Relations Coordinator Chris Rader, in the early 1900s the migrant work force was predominantly Native American. In the 1920s, it became Filipinos. During the Great Depression, Washington saw an influx of displaced farmers from Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas known as “Okies,” who later became immortalized by John Steinback’s book “The Grapes of Wrath.” During the 1940s, Mexican farm workers took the place of soldiers away at war, and in the 1970s the orchards became populated with traveling hippies.

As the Washington tree fruit industry grew, so did the demand for workers and the practice of hiring undocumented immigrants increased, Rader wrote in her essay.

“What has taken place since then is everybody in government, out of government, and the private sector has winked at what’s been going on,” said Bruce Grim, executive director of the Washington State Horticultural Association. “The border was as porous as a sponge and consequently there were jobs available here … that not many people wanted and (the illegal immigrants) filled in very nicely and everybody kind of winked at the status of people’s names and social security numbers.”

Meanwhile, Washington’s agriculture has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry.

According to a 2004 study funded by the Washington State Horticultural Association and the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission, tree fruit’s impact on the state’s economy is approximately $6 billion annually, of which $1.5 billion is generated in the greater Wenatchee area.

“This valley doesn’t exist without tree fruit,” said Charles Pomianek, executive director of the Wenatchee Valley Traffic Association. “That hospital, it’s not there. The clinic’s not there. The PUD would be here, but they wouldn’t be selling their power locally. It’s just that simple.”

Pomianek said that the state of Washington ships more than 100 million, 40-pound boxes of apples a year, and more than 35 percent of that is shipped out of the greater Wenatchee area. It can take upward of 45,000 people in a single month to harvest that kind of crop statewide, he said.

Losing those people due to their legal working status would be bad for the industry, Grim said.

“We are a multi-billion-dollar industry built on the back of a largely undocumented, illegal work force,” he said. “That’s not tenable. We have to have a fix for that.”

The shape of things to come

For Grim, that means comprehensive immigration reform including increased border security, helping create some sort of pathway to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in America currently, and a more sophisticated identification process so that employers can be sure that employees are who they say they are. But he doesn’t see any of that happening this year.

“I don’t believe there will be any chance on immigration reform prior to next year at the earliest. We are now in the election cycle, like it or not, and this is a very divisive issue quite clearly.”

Lorie Dankers, public affairs officer and spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office, said one solution to undocumented immigration is to crack down on employers who hire undocumented workers.

“The reason we are focusing on the employers is because we believe that it is important to comply with the law, and it’s also a way to deter illegal employment, and employment is the magnet that brings people to this country illegally.”

From fiscal year 2007 to May 31 of fiscal year 2010, ICE increased its number of I-9 inspections (the process by which a company’s employees’ legal status is evaluated) from 254 to 1,525. Furthermore, in 2009, ICE issued 52 fines resulting in $1,033,291 in penalties. So far in 2010, that number has risen to 134 fines and $3,556,695 in penalties.

One way for growers to avoid hiring undocumented workers is to go through the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Worker Program.

“What it does well, ultimately, is after you’ve jumped through all the hoops and paid all the money, you end up with employees who are legal, they have temporary visas that enable them to be here in the United States and to do anything that a temporary resident can do,” said Executive Director of the Washington Growers League Mike Gempler. “They can go up to the nearest border patrol agent and shake his hand.”

Gempler admits, however, there are significant barriers to using the program such as a lengthy application process, increased costs, and greater management demands. This is why, for the past 10 years, Gempler said he has provided H-2A agent services through the Northwest Growers Association for agricultural employers wishing to use the program. A drop in applications this year led them to discontinue the service, he said.

Pathway to Reform

According to the Employment Security Department, H-2A applications have fallen from 29 in 2009 to 14 in 2010, though the number of workers requested has stayed the same at roughly 2,000 people.

West Mathison, president of Stemilt Growers Inc., said that while Stemilt has had success with H-2A in the past, increased costs associated with the program have pushed them to avoid it in 2010. Like Grim, Mathison said he would rather see comprehensive immigration reform that would address providing some kind of legal working status to the undocumented immigrants already working in the country and paying taxes.

According to a 2009 report by the Social Security Administration (SSA), the agency’s Earnings Suspense Fund – an account that keeps record of wage reports for wage earners whose names and social security numbers cannot be matched to the SSA’s records (in other words, undocumented immigrants) – had a balance of $836 billion in wages.

“I think a lot of the folks who come here to fulfill that seasonal work would actually prefer to go home and would prefer to go back to Mexico, and it seems like with the pressure on the borders, and all the money that we spend trying to tighten these borders, it has essentially made the risk, the cost, and the human element of crossing the border more expensive, more dangerous, and more risky,” Mathison said.

Back at the migrant farm camp, Diaz, who hasn’t been home to see his family in Toluca de Lerdo, Mexico for four years because of the high cost of traveling, said he, of course, would also like to see immigration reform.

“Many people say that we’ve come to take advantage of things here but you don’t come from a poor place to do bad things in another place, it’s to progress,” Diaz said. “We’ve come to help our families and make our lives better and to help our children in school and have a better life. We’re not looking for a prize, we just want the government to say, ‘Go ahead and work free,” so we can feel free to look for work. Many of us have come more than a thousand miles, just looking for work, not looking for problems and not looking to make problems. We’re workers, nothing else.”

What could be more American than a hot dog? That’s what Bill Thompson asked himself before going into business as “Hot Dog a la Cart” in November 2009 in the empty lot at the foot of Orondo Street. Thompson, who begins each day cooking onions, steaming buns, and setting out condiments, said customers tell him daily how long they’ve waited for this. But his isn’t the first time a hot dog stand has set up in the Valley.

In early 2002, Mike and Michele Kenny and Melinda and David Gilliver opened a Cupid’s Hot Dogs franchise in a former espresso stand at the corner of McKittrick Street and North Wenatchee Avenue. It lasted until mid-2003 when the stand gave up its permanent space and went mobile. Its run as the official Wenatchee hot dog stand ended shortly thereafter.

Eight years later, whether it is due to economic timing, location, or the dogs themselves, Thompson’s cart, now located in the Stan’s Merry Mart lot at 733 S. Wenatchee Ave., is doing well. He wouldn’t say how many customers he gets per day but said business has grown steadily each day since he opened. He’s also easy to spot from the street – he’s the guy wearing the hot dog hat, rain or shine.

Thompson has now purchased a second cart, leased a second location next to The Windmill and is now serving up hot dogs at the Stemilt packing house where hungry truck drivers need to be fed in a hurry. He also has customers begging for a franchise license. With so much interest coming his way all at once, it can only mean one thing: Wenatchee has finally become hot dog heaven, and for Thompson’s customers, it didn’t happen a moment too soon.

Gathered around his cart on any given day are both new and repeat customers snagging a quick $3 lunch who say things such as, “it’s about time,” or, “there should have been a hot dog stand here forever.”

That pleases Thompson, 66, who is a metal machinist by trade, but has owned several drive-through and sit-down restaurants in the past. This is his first time as a mobile cart owner.

Over the years he has dabbled in a little bit of everything including mini-storage, RV campground management and advertising sales. Selling chili dogs is a long way from fabricating fuel cells for nuclear reactors and submarines, but he certainly had no trouble building his own cart for around $1,300. In doing so, he may have inadvertently started a new Wenatchee food trend that somehow didn’t take place in 2002.

‘A boom in mobile hot dog vendors’

Marc Marquis, environmental health director for the Chelan-Douglas Health District, said that out of 41 mobile food units permitted by the agency, eight of them are hotdog vendors, and five of them are new licenses issued this year. Taco trucks that have long been the area’s mobile food staple, have double that amount, with 16 licensed, but unlike hotdog vendors, the number has been pretty stable, Marquis said.

“It’s accurate to say we’re experiencing a boom in mobile hot dog vendors,” Marquis said.

His office reviews the applications, performs the initial and then twice-yearly inspections on all the mobile food vendors, and issues the annual licenses and bumper stickers. All mobile food vendors have the bumper sticker with the health district logo on it if they are licensed, Marquis said. Consumers can look for that label on the cart or wagon to see that it meets food safety standards.

It takes only seven to 10 days to get licensed if everything is ready to go and it is a pretty simple process, he said. The application and licenses cost $360.

“There’s nothing particularly new about mobiles, it’s just that the little hot dog carts are a new thing. The taco trucks are everywhere and they’ve been here for years, so people don’t even think about them anymore,” Marquis said.

Thompson said he noticed the taco wagons last winter during the slow times at the mini-storage business and thought: Why not do something a little different?

“I knew that if Wenatchee had taco trucks, it was ready for something new. I decided to offer them a different choice,” Thompson said.

He said he can’t afford to retire and likes to stay busy, so he still works the mini-storage management job that he moved here from Oregon to take, and works mornings at the hot dog stand by Stan’s Merry Mart on North Wenatchee Avenue. He leases the space from Dick’s Tires across the street, and sets up around 8:30 a.m. six days a week. His customers start coming by around 9:30 and it’s steady work until he closes at 2:30 p.m.

For now, he will alternate between this spot and the new one next to The Windmill, while his second cart serves Stemilt through November or so. Weather permitting, of course.

“When the wind gets really bad, we can’t sell. The air dries out the buns, plus people don’t come out as much when it’s windy, so it hurts sales,” Thompson said.

Hot dogs attract hot offers

So far, he figures he’s sold more than 2,000 chili dogs in six months, but wouldn’t say how much he sells on any given day, only that “the people of Wenatchee have been good to me.”

He’s even got a punch card system for repeat customers, some of whom come every single day that he’s open.

“People enjoy this, it’s a treat for them. A lot of people like simplicity and you can’t get that at McDonald’s or Burger King,” Thompson said.

In keeping with health department standards all the food he serves is pre-cooked, pre-chopped or in a package. The toppings are plentiful and fresh for the  quarter-pound Polish and twice-smoked Monster dogs he serves up. The sides, which are soda, chips or candy, cost $1 each.

But his popularity is no laughing matter to some. Thompson said a man from Yakima offered him $10,000 if he would grant him a franchise with the same name, product, cart, and outfit, including the hot dog hat. He’s still considering that one.

In the meantime, he’s staying busy with weddings and special events. Yes, weddings. He’s catering one this summer in a ball park.

“Life has been a blur,” he said.

While he wouldn’t share his recipe for the hot dog cooking liquid, he said his recipe for success is deceptively simple.

“Put out a consistently good product, be visible, and have a good personality – be a people person,” Thompson said. “And make sure you follow the health department rules and regulations.”

Lead: A soft, malleable, heavy metal found in batteries and bullets, some paints and gasolines, and ceramic pottery. It’s highly resistant to corrosion, has a low melting point making it easy to work with, and perfect for use as solder. It’s also highly poisonous.

Lead has disastrous effects on the human nervous system if ingested. It accumulates in soft tissues and bone, and causes blood and brain disorders as well. In fact, lead used in cooking pots and eating utensils has been blamed for the downfall of the Roman Empire.

But up until 1978, it was used in everyday house paint, creating a health hazard for residents and their children. While lead hasn’t been in house paint sold since then, hundreds of thousands of gallons of lead paint still lurk in pre-1978 homes, and now the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is enforcing rules to make sure contractors take care of lead paints correctly.

The EPA ruling was originally passed in 2008 but not enforced until April 22, 2010. The ruling states that any contractor that performs renovations or repairs on pre-1978 housing and child-occupied facilities such as a daycare center, preschool, or kindergarten must test for lead paint or assume it is there if the job will disturb more than six interior square feet or 20 exterior square feet of paint. In addition, the lead-based paint tester must be certified by an EPA certified trainer. The cost of the training is around $300 and time lost from jobs.

However, not following the rules will cost contractors a $37,500 fine per violation.

Kris Alberti, executive director of the Northwest Independent Contractors Association, based in Soap Lake, Wash., teaches lead paint certification classes all over the state. She said the new criteria has the potential to impact 8.4 million projects in the United States over the next two years. In Washington state, about 55,000 registered contractors will be affected. At least, that’s how things stand now.

Alberti said later this year or in early 2011, the Washington State Department of Commerce will take over as administrator for the program, and she has heard talk that the ruling will be expanded to include commercial buildings as well. That means commercial building owners who want to renovate must either become lead paint certified themselves, or hire someone who is, before doing tenant improvements or making other changes.

Jamie Rimmer, co-owner of Rimmer and Roeter, a local general contractor, said should the commerce department extend the ruling to include commercial buildings, it would make it more difficult and more costly to do renovations for many area building owners. But the lead-based paint issue isn’t new, he said.

“It’s been around for quite a while, the EPA is just taking a firmer stance on it,” Rimmer said. “When asbestos guidelines first came out there was a shock factor and everybody thought the sky was falling, but we dealt with it. The hard part for developers right now is how to deal with the extra cost.”

Asbestos regulations are something that Joel McDonald of Inside Design Carpet One knows well. When it comes to asbestos in flooring, it’s better not to disturb it and just put a new floor over it, he said. Asbestos guidelines are stricter and abatement can run a homeowner thousands of dollars.

“But with the lead paint issue, you can’t just paint right over the surface. We have to go through the process of containing the lead. It’s a simple process, but it adds to the cost,” McDonald said.

Dan Dean, owner of Overall Construction Services, said he became certified in March and does all the lead paint testing for his company. He tested the job site he’s working on right now – a 1976 home remodel – and found no lead paint, but he knows that on the next job he contracts he might not be so lucky.

For Dean, obtaining the certification made sense for many reasons, but he worries about competition from uncertified, under-the-table contractors.

“Not all employees have to become certified, which is good because employees can come and go,” Dean said. “But there are a lot of out-of-work contractors out there doing jobs for cash and many of them are not going to do the lead testing, so they can bid the jobs lower because of that. It creates an uneven playing field.”

Dean said he hopes unlicensed contractors will be caught as a result of stricter enforcement.

Many homeowners looking to hire a contractor are not even aware this ruling has gone into effect, said Alberti. Her office and the home builder associations in the state, such as the North Central Washington Home Builders Association, are trying to get the word out, but she said there are 245 certified trainers in the state to cover 55,000 contractors, making it a monumental task.

For more information on the EPA ruling, check out the EPA website.

Hiring and training a new employee is costly, especially if it turns out to be a wrong fit. Statistics show the cost at around one-third of the employees annual income, said Judy Lamphiear, training consultant and business services specialist at SkillSource.

No wonder the thought of hiring can send a chill down many business owner’s backs. But SkillSource has ways to help businesses reduce the risk of making a hiring mistake, and make sure employees have the skills they need to be productive.

From screening applicants, to Work Experience, to On the Job Training (OJT), employers can take advantage of as many different types of services as they’d like or that their employees qualify for. Lamphiear said more employers would use them if they knew more about them.

Ready from the get-go

For Jason Williams, owner of Axeon Technologies in Wenatchee, the OJT program means he doesn’t have to worry about hiring someone who can’t do the full job right away. His networking and computer business requires well-trained technicians, but not everybody he wants to hire has all the skills in place at the get-go.

“Sometimes I find the person with the right personality and I want to hire them based on that. If they don’t have the skills, I send them to SkillSource to see if they qualify for the program,” Williams said.

If they do, part of the employee’s wages and training are covered though the OJT program, and he gets a fully-functional employee he has hand-picked in a just a few months.

“When SkillSource helps defray the costs of training, it gives opportunities to workers who could have been passed up in the hiring process,” Williams said.

The OJT program offers up to a 50 percent reimbursement of the new hire’s gross wages while in training for three to six months, depending on the wage set by the employer. In addition, up to 50 percent of the cost of formal training, such as workshops and seminars, can also be reimbursed. The program can cover costs for uniforms and tools not provided by the employer as well.

Long-term employees can be eligible for training too. Workshops, certifications, skill-specific formal training and training-related expenses can be covered at 50 percent as well.

To qualify, the position must be full-time (32 hours or more per week), regular (not seasonal or temporary), and in an in-demand occupational field. The employee must meet certain eligibility qualifications as well.

Worry-free hiring

An employer creates a task list required for the job , signs an agreement with SkillSource, and training begins. As the training moves forward, the employee’s progress is monitored and the employer submits a monthly invoice and performance evaluation.

Cheryl Keeley, office administrator for Express Locations, a dealer for TMobile, said her office has tried both the Work Experience and On the Job Training programs in addition to other services.

Before she hired, she called Lamphiear and requested the agency provide applicant screening for her. They did, narrowing down hundreds of resumes to the top five for her to interview. From those five, the person Keeley hired went through a targeted OJT.

Keeley said the process was simple and resulted in her obtaining a new employee who is an expert on MS Excel, just as she needed her to be. Keeley also tried out another employee through the Work Experience program that did not result in a hiring but did offer benefits to both her and the trainee.

“She was a former waitress going through the Work Experience program and getting training. She was able to get some experience working in an office environment and learn where she needed to hone in on her skills. As an employer, the Work Experience program cost us nothing, so it was a total win-win for us to have her here for two months,” Keeley said.

Keeley added that she would try both programs again, and encouraged other employers to give them a try.

“I don’t feel that people in the community understand the full realm of what SkillSource can offer.  Working with the people SkillSource has trained has shown me that they really know what they are doing,” Keeley said.

Williams agreed.

“SkillSource is definitely a great resource for me as a business owner. With the program, I’m not as worried about how long it’s going to take for a new employee to be fully productive and revenue generating,” he said.

Funding for the SkillSource programs such as OJT come from the Federal Workforce Investment Act passed in 1998. The act encourages business participation to help develop a skilled work force. The funding is distributed to the various SkillSource centers by the state. There is no cost to businesses for the OJT program other than the employee’s normal wages.

Lamphiear said the federal government is putting increasing emphasis on the OJT program as a way to get people who have lost their jobs during the recession back to work. She said the program serves employers of all industries and workers of all ages.

To see if an employee is eligible for the OJT program or for more information on the other programs that SkillSource offers, contact the office at (509) 663-3091 or e-mail Judy Lamphiear  at Judyl@SkillSource.org.

Critics said customers might shop there on weekends but during the week the place would sit empty. They said it would go out of business in its first two years. Costco, however, proved all those naysayers wrong. On June 23, it celebrated its 15th anniversary in East Wenatchee.

Scott Elliott, the store’s general manager, attributed the store’s success to its loyal members. Right now, the store has 37,000 members and membership continues to grow at a 2 to 3 percent rate per year. Customers come from as far away as Canada to shop the 136,000-square-foot East Wenatchee store, he said. Some are families that make a once-a-month trek to spend between $800 to $1,000 per month on groceries; others are businesses that spend $35,000 or so per month on merchandise to stock their own store shelves.  Sales have put the East Wenatchee store’s rank at 350 out of 568 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico.

Elliott, who has been the store’s general manager for four years, said this store, built in 1995, is actually smaller than many of the newer stores that Costco is opening now, which run from 151,000 to 156,000 square feet.

“Wenatchee is limited in how much it can carry due to its size,” Elliott said.

Still, the store offers most of the services the larger stores carry. During Elliott’s tenure, the store opened a service deli four years ago that serves prepared foods, rotisserie chicken, salads and “take ‘n bake” items. The most popular item in the deli is the chicken, Elliott said.

“We probably sell over $300,000 in rotisserie chicken per year,” Elliott said. “It’s our No. 1 deli item and it’s $4.99.”

The store also added a hearing center two years ago where customers can get hearing checks and hearing aids. Since the store added the center, business has “boomed” in that department, Elliott said.

Elliott also oversaw the expansion of the pharmacy two years ago, which has helped customers to get their orders filled quicker. But the store itself isn’t slated for an expansion of its own – yet.

“We probably need to grow sales by another 20 percent annually before we could qualify for an expansion. But it’s not entirely out of the question in the future,” Elliott said.

He said his goals right now to help increase sales are to increase the size of the store’s produce department. He estimated the store sells $500,000 worth of produce every month out of what he called a 17-pallet area. He’d like to take that to a 28-pallet area, and use the store’s current produce walk-in cooler for a dairy cooler.

He is also planning new services in the meat department, which sits adjacent to the service deli. Customers will be able to choose their steaks from a central cooler like they can at some grocery stores.

But he said he will also keep on doing what he has been doing, which is selling quality products at a low warehouse price. Most of the items he sells are marked up typically no more than 14 percent, he said, making margins slim. But volume is where Costco makes the money, that, and warehouse shopping-style savings.

“We like to set the pallet out, take off the plastic, and let the consumers shop right from there. That’s the Costco philosophy, and it means less handling, stocking shelves, and other expenses so it’s a very efficient way to sell,” Elliott said.

That philosophy seems to be keeping the store busy during this recession. He said sales have continued to rise – though at a slower pace – all throughout the recession. He attributes that to individuals, families and businesses shopping at Costco to make sure their dollar goes farther.

“We still saw increases even during the worst of the downturn,” Elliott said. “Our CEO believes good companies can gain market share during tough times, and we are doing just that.”

The store currently employs a diverse workforce of 215, with 55 percent full-time and 45 percent part-time staff.

Elliott is the store’s fourth general manager since it opened June 23, 1995.

The roots for CyMa Services LLC, a company offering computer and Dish Networks services, are rather organic.

Co-owner Erick Gonzalez said the idea came while working on his first business, a 40-acre orchard out near Pangborn Memorial Airport. At the time, Gonzalez said he did everything by hand, including the paperwork. Even though keeping the files by hand was a burden, he realized he was afraid to use a computer. Then he realized he was not alone.

“We started to see there was a need in the community to provide computer services to our people, for our Latino people,” said Alejandra Gonzalez, Erick’s wife and co-owner.

On May 18, the North Central Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce awarded CyMA Services the award of Best Latino Business of the Year, which both Erick and Alejandra say has been a much appreciated recognition.

Sitting in their office on 44 Rock Island Road in East Wenatchee, the couple jives well together. Wearing a business shirt and blue sweater vest, Erick possesses a calm smile and prefers to speak his thoughts in Spanish through his wife. Alejandra, on the other hand, has on a vibrantly-colored blouse that matches her lively and friendly personality, and the knack for finishing her husband’s thoughts.

“Now everything is changing and we need to go with technology, and many of the people who are right here, from Mexico or from other countries, I think we didn’t have the chance to have that alternative,” Alejandra said.

Alejandra acknowledges that, of course, that doesn’t really apply to the younger generation who, at 13 years old are already techno-experts, but it is true for the older Latino generation who never had an education in computers and need a neighborhood resource that speaks their language in more ways than one.

“Sometimes a company says, ‘Oh, call this number,’ and you are talking to people that live, I don’t know where, in Hong Kong, and we’re trying to communicate and we can’t understand each other, and it’s so hard,” she said.

So three years ago, Erick approached his brother-in-law Juan M. Sanchez, the third CyMa co-owner and a whiz with computers, and they formed the business. “Cima” means the top of a mountain in Spanish, and “Cy” and “Ma” represent the first two letters of Erick’s niece and sister, Cynthia and Maria.

To start things off, Erick said, he took $30,000 from his orchard business and set up shop at a location near the mall. That was a tough year, he said. In addition to what turned out to be a bad location, the crew spent too much on advertising trying to get the message out into the community and before they knew it, the money was gone.

“So we put the money to start, and the $30,000 go …” Eric pauses and blows a deep sigh. “Away very quick,” Alejandra chuckles and Erick nods.

But the group held on, pulled back on their advertising spending, and moved to their present, more visible location. Today Erick said he spends approximately $1,000 a month for advertising on two radio stations, La Super Z and La Nueva. Slowly but surely the business began to roll in. Erick said their second year, instead of losing money, they made a small profit and this year they are on track to do even better.

“We try to offer first-quality service, be friendly, and be fast,” Alejandra said. And you know that is a key and I think that’s why people look for us because they know that if they call and have questions we will be with them. We will spend the time to help them, to try to assist them. Si?” she asks of her husband. He nods.

In a small, crowded room above the ice, announcer Ernie Rodriguez sits at a microphone and watches intently as turquoise and beige jerseys collide and swarm on the hockey rink below. Beneath him, the Wenatchee Wild battle it out against the Bismarck Bobcats. It is Friday night, and one of the last games of the 2010 National American Hockey League’s (NAHL) Pepsi Robertson Cup is under way. The crowd is on their feet in record numbers, chanting, “Let’s go Wild!”

There is a shot on goal against Bismarck. It’s blocked. The crowd relaxes for an instant and Rodriguez let’s out a long, howling, “Oooowwwwooooooo!” A hefty man with a clean-shaven head and glasses, Rodriguez places a hand over the microphone and yells to Todd Kensey, who is in charge of the music, “Todd, you should play ‘the Boys are Back in Town.’ Look who showed up tonight!”

The Wenatchee Wild offense was there in full force – and so were the hockey fans.

During its six-day duration, the tournament ushered in a record 20,489 people through the ticket turnstiles, and brought nearly $800,000 in spending to the Wenatchee area, according to the Wenatchee Valley Sports Council (WVSC). The  previous record-holding Robertson Cup venue was in Fairbanks in 2007, with a total attendance of 11,523 people.

“A surprising foundation of crazy hockey fans has been created since the existence of the Wild over the past two years,” said Eric Granstrom, director of marketing for the WVSC. “The Wild have led the league in attendance for the two years of their existence and (The Robertson Cup) played out even better than anybody had anticipated.”

Cost of the cup

The event’s success is impressive considering this was the Wild’s and the Town Toyota Center’s first run at hosting what is, at 34 years old, the longest running junior hockey tournament in the United States. But making that play to host the cup wasn’t just a drop in the hat, Wild volunteer Melissa Carlson said. It was a calculated investment.

“I think one thing that people really aren’t aware of is that it is the responsibility for the host team to pay all expenses for the tournament,” Carlson said during the Friday night Wenatchee-Bismarck game. “This week, the budget that we have is just under $300,000 to host this tournament. That is a direct expense to the Wenatchee Wild.”

Carlson said that price tag included everything from ground transportation and air fare to meals for the approximately 150 players, coaches, assistant coaches, and traveling trainers, etc., associated with the  four visiting teams. Of the $300,000 budgeted, Carlson said the Wild allotted $150,000 for transportation and lodging, with the remainder going toward things like advertising, merchandise, and  rent to the Town Toyota Center.

One of the main things Carlson said she had been focusing on was coordinating 1600 meals for the players over the course of the week.

“And let me tell you, feeding a hockey player is no easy feat,” she said, holding up an elaborate color-coded chart used to help her remember the various feeding times.

While the cost to get their foot in the door was high, Carlson said the Wild saw it as an opportunity to showcase the team, the Town Toyota Center, and bring business to the area.

“The Wenatchee Wild is footing the bill for this entire venture, and we’re hoping to just break even, maybe make a small profit on this,” she said.

While other cities that have previously hosted the event typically expect to earn anywhere from $50,000 to $75,000 in profit, Carlson said the Wild, as a newcomer, was only hoping to make a mere $10,000.

“So this is not really a revenue generating event for us, but for the community it’s an amazing opportunity,” Carlson said.

Valley economic impact

According to a report by the National Association of Sports Commissions (NASC), the gross impact on local spending as a result of the Robertson Cup was $769,993. After accounting for various monetary leakages that occur – such as the percentage of ticket sales that gets kicked out to the NAHL – a total of $292,597 remained in the community as local income.

To put that in perspective, the WVSC estimated that, after its entire first year in business, the Wild’s direct economic impact to the Wenatchee Valley was approximately $3.5 million —$136,000 of that came directly from sports tourism.

Conversely, the WVSC estimated the direct sports tourism impact of the Robertson Cup to be $192,352, while the NASC quoted $514,356 in direct spending by event spectators. Of that, $207,758 went toward food and beverage, $122,524 went toward retail shopping, and $108,026 went toward hotel expenditures with 1,332 total room nights recorded.

“We were probably up 6 to 8 percent,” said Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill Manager Sean Hein. “It definitely brought in business I can tell you that.”

During the tournament, there was also an advertising push by the local ports to get people out and about in the local community and in and out of the region through Pangborn Memorial Airport.

“There was definitely an uptick in traffic, particularly through the weekend,” said Jen Boyer, media relations manager for Horizon Air. “The incoming traffic was a little more spread out over a few days, as people came in early. The majority left Sunday and Monday, Sunday being nearly sold out and Monday was 20 percent fuller than the previous four to five weeks.”

That uptick, whether from a window of sunshine or a surge of visitors over the weekend, reached out to Desert Canyon Golf Course as well.

“We had a good week last week,” said Head Golf Professional Mark Rhodes. “The beginning of the week wasn’t that good but Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday were busy. I think it’s safe to say we were probably up 20 percent.”

While the Wild did not end up winning the championship – a title that fell to Bismarck by the end of the weekend – they did emerge victorious over Bismarck that Friday night.

After a goal by the Wild’s Jeff Jubinville, Rodriguez let out another wolf-ish howl and then turned to his side to squirt a shot of Vick’s throat spray into his mouth. At two games a day for the past four days, Rodriguez has had more to say about the Robertson Cup than anyone.

“It’s a lot of yelling,” he laughs.

For more stories on the Robertson Cup see:

http://wbjtoday.com/blog/chelan-douglas-ports-capitalize-robertson-cup/5776/

http://wbjtoday.com/blog/miracle-ice-goalie-jim-craig-speak-robertson-cup-banquet/5315/

The 2010-2011 Washington state budget included new taxes for beer, candy, cigarettes, and more. Local grocers say they are already feeling the pinch, but hope the taxes don’t have long-term impact on their sales.

Bret Bertolin, senior economist with the Washington State Economic and Revenue Forecast Council, said a reduction in consumption was factored into the state’s revenue estimates. A 17-percent decline is expected for cigarettes, 7.71 percent for candy and gum, 6.67 percent for soda, and 7.99 percent for bottled water. The state has predicted a 40-percent decline in the sale of chewing tobacco and a 35-percent decline on the sale of little cigars due to tax increases.

The only tax increase without a reduction in consumption figured into the totals is the beer tax, but at least one local minimart owner foresees reductions coming, and reports of beer “hoarding” prior to the tax’s June 1 effective date made national news.
Whether declines in consumption are temporary or permanent, only time will tell, but minimart owners say consumers are already changing their behavior.

Tobacco sales

A $1 per-pack increase on cigarettes went into effect on May 1. The tax on other tobacco products such as cigars and chewing tobacco increased as well. The increases mean an additional $300 million in revenue for the state through 2013 when the tax expires.

Jeff Boese, who has managed Ernie’s Grocery at 525 S. Miller St. for 20 years, said the tobacco tax increase has affected the store’s income. Tobacco sales account for one-third of the store’s total revenue and, at the moment, cigarette sales are down approximately 10 percent, but he doesn’t think the decrease is permanent.

“Every time there is an increase, there is that drop, but in six months, it will be back to a steady flow,” Boese said.

Frank LaFayette, owner of Western Market at 1732 Fifth St., said there’s been a few complaints about the price going up on cigarettes because of the tax but it hasn’t been as bad as he thought it would be.

“I have had more people talking about giving up smoking lately. I hear ‘it’s time to quit’ quite often. Whether it actually happens or not, I don’t know,” LaFayette said.

Carletta Berger, manager of Tony's Market in East Wenatchee, stands by the cigarette counter. YVETTE DAVIS/WBJ

Carletta Berger, who has worked at the family-owned Tony’s Market at 1688 Grant Road since high school, said people haven’t given up smoking because of the tax increase, but they have backed off and her business reflects it.

“We usually get over 100 cartons of cigarettes in but our last order was under 100. That usually happens, though. People back off when the tax goes into effect and then they accept it and come back in,” Berger said.

Candy, bottled water, soda and gum sales

The removal of taxable exemptions for bottled water, candy and gum became effective June 1. Those new taxes are expected to generate a combined $194.7 million in revenue through 2013.

In addition, a tax increase of 2 cents per 12 ounces was levied on carbonated beverages. The state is expecting revenues of $113 million from the tax. The soda tax increase takes effect on July 1 and is supposed to expire on June 30, 2013.

Stores were already hearing complaints from customers even before the taxes went into effect.

Berger from Tony’s Market said she steadily hears two main complaints from customers on the new candy, gum and water taxes.

“Either I hear, ‘tax all the candy’ or better yet, ‘why not tax everything including the chips and everything else and just get it over with?’ Or, that the government should spend within their budget like everybody else has to,” Berger explained.

Berger said it’s also hard for retailers to figure out which candies are going to be taxed and which are not. The Department of Revenue put out an 88-page document detailing the tax, which Berger said is way too long and way too confusing to be helpful.

LaFayette from Western Market said he expects the candy tax will generate a lot of complaints from the kids, but he and Boese both said it is too soon to tell how long the new taxes will affect sales. Right now, they are holding steady.

Beer sales

Taxes on non-microbrewery beer increased 50 cents per gallon or 28 cents per six pack effective June 1. The tax doesn’t apply to microbreweries that produce less than 60,000 barrels or less per year. The beer tax increase is set to expire in June 2013, but is slated to bring in $180 million in new revenue during the time it is in effect.

Berger said she expects to see consumption change later this year.

“I don’t think the taxes will affect sales this summer, because in the summer months, consumers are not watching their pennies as tight as they do in the winter time,” Berger said. “Construction workers and migrant workers just buy what they want during the summer, but when winter comes around, they check prices more closely. So I’m sure we will see a huge impact in the winter.”

LaFayette said he’s been through tax increases on beer before and isn’t overly worried.

“People just pay it and keep on going,” he said.

For a complete list of 2010 legislative changes, see the DOR’s website.

Valda Sarty, owner of Elements Salon and Wellness Spa at 1108 Crescent St., said the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) new plan to build an off-ramp from the George Sellar Bridge to Ferry Street, using Crescent Street to get there, will negatively impact her parking. And if the parking goes, she just might go, too, she said.

Sarty isn’t the only business owner on the block with parking concerns. Brian Thorpe, owner of Global Car Care at  at 1106 Crescent St., has purchased a new building on North Wenatchee Avenue and is already planning to move. He will relocate that business, and his Orondo Street garage in mid-June, to avoid the construction and what he sees as potential loss of parking for his customers. Though some of the other area business owners share his concerns, so far he is the only business on the street that’s actually moving.

Several of the others are in wait-and-see mode, waiting for construction to start, and to see if the DOT or the city of Wenatchee will alter plans to include additional parking. Right now, the DOT and city are in talks about the parking issue, but no solutions have come forth.

Eric Pierson, project manager with the DOT, said the way the plan is drawn now, access to the Crescent Street businesses will be either from Park Street off of Mission, or via a one-way street into the area from Ferry Street. Drivers exiting the bridge from the off-ramp won’t be able to turn on Crescent Street.

“The reason for that is the traffic volumes on the ramp need to be separated so they don’t stop on the ramp and get rear-ended, causing accidents,” Pierson said. “The access is basically the same as it is right now.”

The parking, however, won’t be.

Right now, most of Sarty’s clients and employees park in the city-owned cul-de-sac at the end of the street. Part of that will be used for the off-ramp. It isn’t a striped lot, and Pierson said it was never meant to be used for parking. However, he said the DOT is in talks with the city to retain as much of the lot as they can.

City of Wenatchee Engineer Gary Owen said the city is looking at turning what’s left of the cul-de-sac into either a public or private striped parking lot and is also considering additional parking on city-owned land behind Elements, along the grassy hillside. Owen said he knows business owners will be “sensitive” to the parking issue, but said he doesn’t have any specific plans to present to them yet.

He is waiting for further discussions with the DOT to bear fruit.

“Right now we don’t have a good plan but we will try to accommodate everybody. They (the businesses) moved in there with the expectation of a certain amount of parking for them and their customers, so we will try to minimize the impact,” Owen said.

However, the city isn’t ready to offer solutions to the business owners, he said.

“We don’t want to promise something and then have it not be possible,” Owen said.

The other existing parking area, the Locomotive Park parking lot, is slated to be moved permanently to the Ferry Street side of the city-owned property as part of the overall project, removing additional spaces from the Crescent Street parking allotment.

Other business owners on the street said they are watching and waiting to see what occurs before they make any moves.

Sue LaChapelle of Bikerstown located at 1016 Crescent St., said the business has two years left on its lease, which is about the same amount of time they have before off-ramp construction begins.

“We are not trying to move quite yet, but we are looking into it,” LaChapelle said.

She said she talked to the DOT but didn’t make any headway.

“We tried to offer other suggestions but they weren’t taken seriously,” she said.

Sarty said she feels her discussions with the DOT, thus far, have been futile as well.

“It is not solving the problems for the business owners,” Sarty said.

But not every business owner on Crescent Street is worried.

Manny Flores, owner of Arod Shop at 1102 Crescent St. said he has no concerns about the project. He said the construction will cause some problems but he will not be moving. Flores has a fenced parking lot for his customers as well as some on-street parking.

Alan Beidler, owner of Sage Real Estate, said he thinks the off-ramp will actually improve visibility for Crescent Street businesses that stay put.

“It will be a change, but in the long run, I think it will work out for them,” Beidler said.

About 50 miles north of Wenatchee, nestled on a hillside just beyond the Beebe Bridge, Rio Vista Winery sits on a picturesque stretch of the Columbia River, amongst green trees, grape vines, and sandy beaches. From the second story patio of the tasting room, owner and winemaker John Little points out over his small vineyard to the slow-drifting, brown waters below.

“There might be 25 boats out there on any given day,” Little said of the fishing boats that tend to pop up in July.

While his winery is just one of a handful that have sprung up in the Lake Chelan area in the past decade, Rio Vista is the only winery that can lay claim to being reachable by boat. In the month of July, Little said, 50 percent of their clientele come by river. Though, he admits, most of the fishermen are usually too busy to stop by for a drink.

“Their wives are the ones out wine touring while they’re fishing,” He laughs. “The wives wave at the fisherman from here.”

While most of that boat traffic has a motor or a wing attached, Port of Chelan County Economic Development Director Ron Johnston-Rodriguez is intent on adding paddlers to the mix.

This month, on June 18, the Port of Chelan County is hosting an event called Weekend on the River, when interested kayakers will be invited to camp out at Rio Vista winery on Friday night, and then kayak down to Chelan Falls Park the next morning.

The event boasts live music, food, and of course wine, but the real purpose of the party is to promote business through what Johnston-Rodriguez calls an untapped resource: the Greater Columbia Water Trail (GCWT), a 500-mile-long paddling trail that stretches across three rivers, 12 counties, and 24 cities, all the way from Canada through Wenatchee and on to the Tri-Cities.

Johnston-Rodriguez foresees a day in the not-too-distant future when businesses like hotels and outfitting companies will sprout up along the Columbia River in order to cater to a growing source of tourism: kayaking.

‘A rising tide’

According to a 2007 report by the Vermont Tourism Data Center at the University of Vermont, an estimated 29 million Americans participated in canoeing and kayaking activities in 2001. That was up from 2.6 million in 1960, making kayaking the fastest-growing water sport in the nation.

“And they figured this stuff out a long time ago on the East coast because many east coast rivers have water trails and they have hotels, and bed and breakfasts – it’s a whole economy based on paddling these rivers,” Johnston-Rodriguez said. “And so we thought well, it seems like there ought to be an opportunity for that here.”

The same report, which focuses on several well-established water trails stretching from New York to Maine, found that the spending habits of 90,000 paddling tourists on the trails had contributed $12 million in total economic impact and supported approximately 280 full-time jobs. Further more, the report stated that the median paddler group spent an average of $215 per trip at places like lodging establishments, restaurants, grocery stores, and service stations. Non-locals spent an average of $414 to $498 per trip, or $46 per day.

Those are promising numbers but a lot needs to happen before the GCWT can hope to claim the same.

If you build it, they will come

Gus Bekker is on the board of directors of the Washington Water Trails Association (WWTA) and has been working with Johnston-Rodriguez to develop access points for kayakers along the Wenatchee Valley Reach segment (basically from Rock Island Dam to Rocky Reach Dam) of the GCWT.

He said the sites they’re working on are pretty primitive: fire pit, sloping gravel beach, maybe a picnic table or two, but that that makes them cheaper to implement. Currently they have about three to four official sites, with about that many on the horizon, including a couple camping sites owned by the Douglas County Public Utilities District near Wells Dam, and another day-use spot above Beebe Bridge owned by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“These folks don’t usually need a lot of facilities, and they’re actually a bit more adventurous,” Bekker said.

But that doesn’t mean they don’t like to spend money.

According to a 2007 survey conducted by the WWTA, 76 percent of paddlers surveyed in the Seattle area were between the ages of 30 and 60 years old; nearly 40 percent had a bachelors degree; and 47.4 percent made between $70,000 and $150,000 per year. In addition, the 2007 Vermont Tourism Data Center report found that the median paddler traveled 3.5 hours to reach a waterway.

A good sign for Wenatchee, just a mere 2.5 hours from its west coast neighbors, and all signs, at least as far as Johnston-Rodriguez is concerned, are that Wenatchee is ripe for the paddling.

“I think we’d be looking at an approximate 1 percent increase in visitors to the area,” he said, admitting that at some point you have to do a little guess work. “I think we’d be looking at an additional 30,000 to 90,000 visitor days and generating $5 million to $15 million in total traveler expenditures.”

First things first though, he said they need to start with the little things such as identifying and developing the access points and creating a map to show paddlers where to find them ─ a process that begins on June 18 at Rio Vista Winery.

Looking out over his 3-acre vineyard, John Little is all for it. Eighty percent of his business, he said, comes from out-of-town tourism. Its first year, the winery had pretty meager sales, but this year (its third) the Littles are on track to triple its annual gross profit ─ a fact that has been bolstered, he said, by the growing wine and tourism industry in the area.

“A rising tide floats all boats,” He said. “As the industry develops and gets bigger, we all benefit.”

The people at Tree Top Inc. aren’t much for flashy parties.

In a small cafeteria room, lined with lockers and decorated with a few floating balloons, Joe Brooks, the director of business operations, stands in front of a good-natured and laughing crowd at the Wenatchee plant.

In the back of the room is a fair spread of catered food, and a long row of “homemade” sparkling cider. The 50 or so workers seated before him – some with their hard hats still on their heads – have just finished their shifts for the day. It’s the company’s 50th anniversary celebration.

“By a show of hands, how many of you have worked here for five to 10 years?”

About a quarter of the workers raise their hands. Brooks then asks how many have worked there for 15 years. No one raises their hand. Twenty years? Still no hands. Then Brooks asks how many of the workers have been there for more than 25 years. More than half the hands in the room go up.

“It takes that kind of individual for us to be successful,” Brooks said. “I think the key to Tree Top’s success has been good people. You can say what you want for technology and everything else, but when you have good people with integrity you can build upon that. This is your birthday party because you have built this.”

And build upon it they have.

Staying true to its roots

Started as a small cooperative for apple juice production fifty years ago, today Tree Top is a fruit manufacturing powerhouse that commands nearly 1,400 apple and pear growers throughout the Northwest, more than a thousand employees, and up to $359 million in annual gross revenue.

Over the years, the company has grown and evolved with the times into a worldwide presence, but not at the expense of its humble identity, said Tree Top President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Stokes.

“The basic being of Tree Top, the ‘who we are,’ really hasn’t changed,” Stokes said of their small town heritage. “That really continues to prevail throughout the organization and that’s one of the reasons I think we are very successful too, because we stay pretty true to our roots.”

After 35 years with the company, Stokes should know. Wearing a pair of dockers and a flannel button-up, the silver-haired, 60-year-old corporate exec began working at the Wenatchee plant as a superintendent when he was 25 years old. Back when the company made only $12 million in gross revenue, he said.

In addition to its outstanding branding as a home grown, quality product (the name Tree Top comes from the early 19th century belief that the best fruit came from the tops of the trees), Stokes said its product is successful because it is also highly diversified and, as a food item, is in high demand.

“This plant got Tree Top into supplying ingredient products to major food companies,” he said. “We supply food products to the largest 25 food manufacturers: Quaker Oats, Nestle — I mean you name them, we supply them.”

Today approximately 60 percent of Tree Top’s revenue comes from the ingredient business. Ingredients, Stokes explained, require higher quality fruits, and higher quality fruits demand higher prices. As a cooperative, Tree Top’s goal is to pay the highest possible prices to it’s grower-owners for their fruit, he said.

The first sprouts of Tree Top

While the ingredient business is big now, Tree Top’s roots started on a different vein more than 50 years ago.

In 1951, Life Magazine ran a pictorial article that showed a bulldozer shoving a mountain of discarded apples into the Yakima City Dump. At that time, farmers had to pay to dispose of low-grade apples, or “culls” as they were called. Ugly apples would be dumped in the Columbia River, buried in canyons, and piled at city dumps.

A dump truck in the 1950s dumps a truck-load of apples onto a mountain of "culls" or low-grade apples. Before Tree Top began using these apples to make juice, approximately 20 percent of apple crops at the time went to waste. COURTESY PHOTO

That’s when Bill Charbonneau, Tree Top’s founder, came along with the idea to use those apples instead to make a high-grade apple juice. Though it started as a private company, Charbonneau later pushed for the formation of a cooperative in order to better control the supply of what had once been an ugly duckling.

“The whole industry was boosted up because there was suddenly a price put on the bottom of these apples that were just being discarded,” said Dr. David Stratton, professor emeritus of history at Washington State University.

Stratton has spent the past year studying Tree Top and has written a book on the history of the company. The WSU Press will release the book, titled “Tree Top: Creating a Fruit Revolution,” next month.

“The Tree Top story is one of crisis, adjustment and success over 50 years,” Stratton said.

The most recent example of Tree Top’s ability to adapt as a business, he said, was with China’s emergence as the world’s leading producer of apples. With seven times the capacity of Washington state for apple production, China flooded the market with below market prices for concentrate and Tree Top simply couldn’t compete.

So they decided not to, said Tree Top Corporate Communications Manager Sharon Miracle. In 2008, Tree Top decided to move away from concentrate production and closed its main concentrate producing facility in Cashmere. That plant is now for sale, she said; the Tree Top name still visible from Highway 2.

But later that year, Tree Top switched gears and purchased the Sabroso Company, a 45-year-old leading manufacturer of fruit purees for things like ice cream, baby food, beverages, and bakery fillings.

“Tree Top has had one crisis after another, but has made the adjustments and has been innovative, bought new facilities, and closed old facilities that did not fit the new business model,” Stratton said. “It has been a struggle but they kept going and have been successful.”

Business as usual

Back at the 50th anniversary lunch party in Wenatchee, Tom Stokes said they will continue to broaden their product line, strengthen their brand, and deliver as much back to their growers as possible, but for the most part, it’s just business as usual.

“I don’t like to take it out too far these day, but I don’t see the next few years really changing Tree Top a lot, who we are.”

Indeed, evidence of their longevity is sitting around the lunch tables.

Karen Sue Arnold has probably worked at Tree Top the longest out of anyone else in the room. She started working the graveyard shift in 1969 when she was 21 years old. With short hair, a petite figure, and a tiny, endearing voice, she’s made a life around the company.

“I made a lot of friends and they’re just super people,” she said. “There’s not a lot of us old ones left, but it’s fun. I didn’t figure I’d be here that long but now I can’t really imagine being anywhere else.”

He might store a few boats and RVs out back, but Brian Thorpe, owner of Brian’s Automotive and Global Car Care, said the inside of the 6,000-square-foot former Dahl’s Boats building will be devoted entirely to the one thing he’s always been crazy about: cars.

Thorpe purchased a half interest in the building at1840 N. Wenatchee Ave. with Kevin Kennedy in early April, and plans to consolidate his two car care businesses into the one location. In addition, used and speciality cars will replace boats for sale in the showroom, a sideline that is new to his business.

Thorpe first opened Brian’s Automotive at 317 Orondo Ave. in 1993. The business offers general automotive repair, which covers everything from oil changes to engine replacement and computer diagnostics. He said the Orondo location’s lot is good sized – approximately 17,000 square feet – but the building itself is only 1,000 square feet, which is too small to meet his needs.

He later opened Global Car Care, a European car repair and service shop, at 1106 Crescent St. in 2002. While it’s been a “great location” for him, he said pending construction of the new Crescent Street off-ramp from the George Sellar Bridge hurried up his search for new digs.

“I’ve always been looking for a nice larger building, but they are hard to come by in Wenatchee. When I heard about the off-ramp project, it forced me to look a little harder,” he said.

Thorpe said the new location will be a lot more spacious. Eventually he will bring all his employees from both businesses to the new site, which will have seven working bays and room for training upstairs.

“We’ve got room to grow,” he said. “This is a dream property for me.”

Thorpe said having all his operations under one roof will allow him better quality control and enable him to set up to do the things he wants to do. That includes a new sideline: car sales. Thorpe is already more than half way through the process of obtaining his dealer’s license. He envisions having a bookkeeping and finance department on site as well as part of the new venture. And he’ll offer something unique to car buyers – a like-new service contract on a used vehicle.

“Busy people don’t want to worry about their car. With the service contract built into the price of the car, for the cost of a latte a day, I’ll absorb the cost of repairs and upkeep and take that worry off the car buyer’s shoulders,” Thorpe said.

The warranty would cover most everything including oil changes, belts, fluid leaks, brakes, hoses, major equipment problems like engines and transmissions, starters, air conditioning and heating units. What this does, Thorpe said, is take the stress out of buying a used car.

“It’s stressful to replace an automobile. If people know that when they buy it, they won’t have any big repair bills for the next three years — it makes it as painless as possible for them,” Thorpe said.

He will be open at the new location by the first of July.

Marson and Marson Lumber of Leavenworth is celebrating its 55th anniversary with new truss plant technology. It isn’t brand new, but it’s barely used, and in some ways, it represents a sign of the times.

Ken Marson, president of the family-owned company, said the downturn in the housing market has put a lot of used equipment up for sale at prices as low as 30 to 35 cents on the dollar. Unfortunately, that equipment came from another company not as lucky as his, Marson said.

“I feel bad that our industry has been challenged so much across the country that a lot of them have had to close their doors for lack of business, but there is tons of used everything out in the marketplace now. And the prices were so good, we were able to go ahead and make the investment,” Marson said.

The company had been using 25 year-old equipment to churn out trusses in much the same fashion as it had been since the 1960s. Marson said that over the years, the company has kept up with design standards and codes, but hadn’t made the necessary investment in equipment updates, until now.

Marson purchased a five-blade saw and a truss setup and press system that were both warehoused when their owners went out of business. Both provide him with the latest in truss making technology for a fraction of the price he would have paid two or three years ago if he had bought them new. He also saved $100,000 on a two year-old boom truck for deliveries.

Randy Stafford, manager of Star Rentals at 1115 Walla Walla Ave. in Wenatchee, said he wasn’t surprised that Marson got a deal, but said the used market is slowly coming up in price right now as the economy makes steps towards recovery.

“When the manufacturers’ new products didn’t sell, they quit ordering new parts for new machines and let inventory drop down. The used market got flooded and that drove the prices down,” Stafford said.

Unfortunately, now that things have picked up a little bit the manufacturers are backed up three to four months to get the new product to the shelf, he said, and it is taking him that long to get new equipment for his rental fleet from the manufacturers.

“It takes time for the guys with the parts to supply the manufacturers with the pieces they need for the equipment. The manufacturers don’t produce all those parts themselves, they are made all over the world and if one guy has shut down the process, it takes time to get it all running again. It’s a vicious cycle we all have to live through,” Stafford said.

But not everything on the used market right now is a steal. Marson said he was unable to find a used laser system at a good price and ended up buying one new, he said. But he still got a deal on it.

“The company just wasn’t selling any, so they called us back and offered it to us at 25 percent off. That worked for us, and the laser company gets something out of it too,” Marson said.

Like everybody else it seems, Marson had construction plans for a truss plant ready to go, but found himself holding off. Part of that was due to the location rather than the economy.

He planned to build a new truss plant down the road at the Big-Y junction, but held off while the new interchange was built. He’s now glad he did. If he had built that and purchased the equipment new a couple of years ago, he would have paid more and had more overhead to worry about. Now that the equipment is installed and operational, he can always move it down the road should the company build in the future.

The only downside to the purchase is that his old equipment may not sell very well since there is so much already on the market.

“Probably half of it we will have to sell for scrap metal. It’s good equipment that would be purchased under normal conditions, but the slower economy means less buyers are out there looking,” he said.

The new equipment can make trusses much faster than before, about 25 to 50 percent faster. In addition, the new setup triples their capacity. That isn’t important at the moment, with the housing market still slow, but Marson hopes it will be in the future because when the industry turns around, he’ll be ready.

“Before we couldn’t grow our business because we couldn’t handle the increased production. Now, like everybody else, we just need homebuilding to pick back up in north central Washington,” Marson said.

Local business owners found many reasons to celebrate the opening of Wenatchee’s two newest hotels, the Comfort Suites at the Park and the Springhill Suites, which together add another 194 rooms to the area’s 1,154 room inventory.

Among the reasons for celebration were increased potential for large conventions and shows, name brand recognition of the properties as a draw for tourists, and overall quality of both hotels. For Valley residents, the hotels added job opportunities as well.

The 85-room Comfort Suites at the Park hotel at 195 E. Penny Road opened in September 2009. The owners are Steven and Tanya Tramp of Princess Properties. The Tramps originally planned to build a four-story Hampton Inn on the property but switched brands after costs proved too high to make the project feasible. The new three-story 43,225-square-foot hotel is an all suite product that is designed to compete with the Marriott and Hampton brands.

Before construction, the Tramps had to obtain use and sign variances from original lot developer, the Chelan County Port District, and communicate with Penny Properties LLC, the owners of the neighboring Cordell Neher building about the change in plans. Now that the $8.5 million property is open, it is doing well, said Steven Tramp, despite not being included in the Wenatchee Valley Visitors Bureau’s marketing efforts.

The Springhill Suites at 1730 N Wenatchee Ave. opened in March 2010 and added another 109 rooms to the Wenatchee inventory. The property was constructed and is owned by kVc Development of Spokane, Wash. The same company built the Wenatchee Holiday Inn Express in 1996. Charlotte Mayo is the general manager of the Holiday Inn Express. Jon Patty is the general manager of the Springhill Suites. The 62,675-square-foot, four-story hotel cost around $13 million to build and brings the latest model of the Marriott brand to Wenatchee.

The sale of the property and location of the new hotel was aided by the creation of the new Hawley Street extension by the City of Wenatchee in 2007. The project fixed the dead-end at Walnut Street and Wenatchee Avenue, opening up the intersection for vehicle access.

The new hotels are the last built in Wenatchee since the Best Western Heritage Inn (now LaQuinta Inn & Suites) in 1993, the Holiday Inn Express in 1996, and the Comfort Inn in 1997. Additional hotels proposed for the area include a Hampton Inn in East Wenatchee by Gill Diamond Hospitality, and a riverfront hotel on the Morse Steel property by the owner of the Chrysalis in Bellingham, Wash. Thus far, there has been no building permits issued for either site.

The Springhill Suites held its grand opening celebration on May 20. Additional photos from the event are located on the Wenatchee Business Journal’s Facebook page.

At the Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce’s Jan. 27 Business After Hours event held at the Comfort Suites at the Park, participants said the new hotels would add enough rooms to the Valley inventory to allow bigger shows, conventions and sporting events to come to the area, increasing tourism flow and sales tax dollars. For more information, see the video below.

The North Central (NCW) Washington Hispanic Chamber of Commerce held its 2010 Annual Scholarship and Awards Banquet May 18, to the tune of clinking glasses, lively conversation, and live mariachi music. This year marked the 11th year for the education-focused fund raising event, and garnered the support of nearly 200 community members, city officials, and businesses.

“One of the things that we want to emphasize through the hispanic chamber is to provide opportunities for higher education for families that have less resources available, simply because of their economic situation,” said NCW Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Secretary Patricia Wachtel. “We don’t want that to be a hindrance when (students) have so much potential and they’ve worked so hard to get better grades and to pursue a better life and better careers, and so we hope that our small contribution can kind of get them on that path.”

Before handing out nearly $10,000 in college scholarship money to local graduating high school seniors, Wachtel spoke of the close working relationship that had been present between the United States and Mexico since before the times of Abraham Lincoln and Mexican President Benito Juarez. Both presidents, she said, came from poor backgrounds and achieved great things working together.

“I wanted to highlight that relationship between both our countries and the fact that we have the same goals, the same struggles, and that both countries can come to the same achievements,” She said.

This year, the NCW Hispanic Chamber of Commerce awarded $9,200 in college scholarship funds to 10 local graduating high school seniors. In a short greeting at the beginning of the ceremony, Wenatchee City Mayor Dennis Johnson said he remembered 10 years ago when that number was just under a thousand dollars.

“I can’t tell you the importance that all of us play to the local economy and the children to help them aspire to higher education,” Johnson said.

In addition to the scholarships, the event included live music by local mariachi groups Mariachi Huenachi and Mariachi Estrella de Mexico, award announcements for some of the best Latino businesses in the area, and a silent auction which garnered $1,900 in bids from the audience.

Among the items being auctioned off were paintings and prints from famed Walla Walla artist Daniel DeSiga, who was in attendance to sign prints. DeSiga’s work has been featured in art museums around the country including the National Museum of American Art/Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

Mayor Johnson was especially smitten with one of the prints entitled “Cultivating Knowledge,” which featured farm workers harvesting crops within the bindings of a large book.

“I guess what struck me (about that painting) was the struggle that people have had forever, for so long, of working themselves through tasks, such as farm work, and obtaining knowledge so they can improve themselves and their families,” Johnson said. “I think that is a picture of how Wenatchee was formed.”

Moments after proclaiming that he intended to buy that painting and hang it in City Hall, NCW Hispanic Chamber of Commerce President Claudia de Robles presented Johnson and the city of Wenatchee with a framed print of the painting in acknowledgement for their support for their support.

The Keynote speaker of the evening was former 2004 scholarship recipient Nelson Robles, who said as a child he would have to cross the border daily to attend high school in San Diego. He is now working as an aerospace engineer for General Electric.

“Work hard, it truly pays off in the end,” he said to this year’s scholarship recipients.

$1000 Scholarships awarded by NCW Hispanic Chamber:

• Jose Daniel Gonzalez of Eastmont High School. Hopes to attend the University of Washington to pursue a degree in engineering and computer engineering
• Marion Romero of Eastmont High School. Hopes to attend the University of Washingon to pursue a degree in Aeronautic Engineering.
• Brenda Rios of Pateros High School. Hopes to attend Gonzaga University to pursue a degree in business administration and management information systems.
• Eva Escoto of Manson Secondary. Hopes to attend Washington State University to pursue a degree in pre-medicine, nursing and education.

$1000 Scholarship awarded by Wenatchee Valley College:

• Linda Plascencia of Wenatchee High School. Plans to attend Wenatchee Valley College to pursue a degree in nursing.
• Samantha Reynoso of Eastmont High School. Plans to attend Wenatchee Valley College to pursue a degree in sociology and psychology.

$1000 Scholarship awarded by Asuris Insurance Group:

• Zoraida Arias of Chelan High School. Hopes to attend Washington State University to pursue a degree in psychology and a minor in mathematics.
• Antonio Galvan of Chelan High School. Hopes to attend Washington State University to pursue a degree in civil engineering.

$700 North Central Washington Community and Business Scholarship:

• Cristina Mendoza of Wenatchee High School. Hopes to attend Washington State University to pursue her bachelor’s degree.

$500 Lottery scholarship sponsored by Cashmere Valley Bank:

• Victor Hernandez of Bridgeport High School. Plans to attend Spokane Falls Community College to pursue an education in DigiPen – Character Design.

2010 Best of the Best Award Recipients:

• Best Latino Restaurant, Doña Juana’s Tamales
• Best Radio DJ, Jose Luis High, La Nueva, Columbia River Media Group
• Best Customer Service, Wilber Zaldivar, Premier Properties
• Best Latino Business, CYMA Services, LLC
• Best Taco Place, El Tapatio

Richard Clarke, a former WhiteHouse cyber-security adviser and the author of a new book, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It argues that the United States is nowhere near ready to defend itself against cyberattack.

Rick Burgos, owner of the new East Wenatchee business, Digital Movie Company, said most businesses aren’t either, but they should be thinking about cyber threats if they aren’t already. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune, and the latest in high-tech gadgets is not required, he said. In many cases, simple can actually be better, and just having a procedure in place is half the battle.

A company needs to have rules and operating procedures in place to keep its information secure, Burgos said. Typically, a retail store owner or typical business owner needs to start with limiting access to the system or network, he said. That can be done with a password, with biometrics, with system configuration, or with hardware.

First and foremost, he said, don’t delegate responsibility for maintaining the system to anybody else. Ideally, the owner should be able to lockout even the person that set up the system, Burgos said.

“I’ve seen situations where the business owner allowed off-site access by a third party. That’s a security risk most people should avoid,” Burgos said.

High- and low-tech passwords

After limiting access, additional steps can be taken to keep computer data and networks safe. Some of them are high-tech, some of them aren’t.

Passwords are a low-tech option but a password on a laptop, program or workstation can keep data at arm’s length for most, Burgos said.

“Set up the password in your computer. It takes time to enter passwords and most people consider it a hassle, but passwords stop the majority of people who know enough to be dangerous,” Burgos said.

Passwords can be high-tech too. The quickly evolving field of biometrics can offer the owner nearly fool-proof methods of verifying identity, such as devices that scan a person’s hands for vein pattern verification. The question, Burgos said, then becomes how secure is the employee’s information.

“The reason biometrics are so attractive is that a thumbprint stays the same. It never changes and it’s very hard to mess up that file. It’s not like a password that you can lose, change, or forget. But where are the identity records kept and how secure is the information? Most employers don’t consider that.”

Regular changeable passwords should be used to secure programs as well, Burgos said. Consider the following scenario: an employee attaches a thumb drive, copies the Quickbooks® program from the administrator’s desktop, and walks away with the program and all the business’s data. If the program is set with a password, they’ll have to enter it in order to open the program. Owners and administrators can go one step further than that though.

“Disable the USB ports in the utilities settings. There’s no reason an employee should have access to plug in a thumb drive. That’s one way to prevent people from obtaining data – and literally walking out the door with it – since most files on a small business are easily accessible in ‘My Documents’ or kept on the desktop,” Burgos said.

Access Control

Individual workstations used by employees can be specifically assigned a password and user profile that restricts employee access to only the areas needed to do their job, instead of having a computer wide open to anybody.

“In a small business it really helps to know who has access to what files and when they have access to it,” Burgos said. “Which files are available to whom is the question for the business owner.”

But even passwords may not be enough to stop a hacker from without the system. Most computers hooked up to a network that’s always on can be hacked, even if the computer is turned off, he said. Wireless networks are especially vulnerable, Burgos said.

“The safest environment is to have is no wireless. Wireless can be broken into relatively easy even for someone with encryption.”

For those with wireless networks, a managed switch – about $300 from Cisco Systems – can control information flow and which computers can connect with each other, preventing unauthorized access. Without it, all the information traveling over the network is available to anyone who wishes to view it, he said.

Another rule of thumb from Burgos to keep data safe: lock the utility room door that allows access to phone systems, network hubs, and power supply.

“No employees should need to access it. Keep a log of who goes in to service the systems, what time they arrive and when they leave. A really good technician can pinpoint when a change occurred in the system, and you’ll know exactly who was on site during that time.”

Of course, not every security measure will work all the time. Burgos cautioned that a really good hacker is difficult to deter. In that case, have a recovery plan as well.

When the Wenatchee Business Journal last wrote about the Rock Island Golf Course in October 2007, the plan was to have nine more holes open by the fall of 2009. Well, actually, course owner Don Barth said, if he could have, he would have put them in the day he purchased the course back in 1988. Right now the plan is to have a soft opening for the course around August 15, let players try it out for 30 to 45 days, then close it down for the winter and hold a grand opening in the spring of 2010.

Expansion has always been his intention, it’s just taken him a while to get there. Now, he said the new addition is under way and will be open in 2010. Also, Barth said he will continue to move forward with the development of 92 residential lots when he obtains the plat approval on the property in the next 45 days or so.

In between 1988 and now, Barth said his plans for the Rock Island Golf Course have been waylaid by the permitting process but it’s always been on his mind. In the meantime, he has worked on other projects. Barth built the 18-hole Alta Lake Golf Resort that opened in 1993, and then built the 18-hole Bear Mountain Ranch Golf Course between 2003 and 2007. He sold his interest in that course a couple of years ago, but still owns Alta Lake. Now, he’s fully focused on what’s happening at Rock Island.

So far Barth, who is doing much of the work himself, has moved 400,000 to 600,000 yards of dirt and has seven people working on the expansion. He estimates he will have a total of 14 to 20 people employed at the course when it’s finally open. He said the new hires will be needed to handle a significant jump in business.

“Right now the course sees about 18,000 rounds of golf per year, and most of it is local golfers. But when we go to 18 holes, I predict that number will be closer to 40,000 rounds per year,” Barth said. “When completed, Rock Island will be the largest and most diversified course in the metropolitan Wenatchee area.”

He also predicts the golfer demographics will change, with the course seeing upwards of 30 to 40 percent tourists, rather than the 10 percent he gets now. Barth said he was glad to see two new Wenatchee area hotels, Springhill Suites and Comfort Suites, open in the last 12 months. Those will help meet demand for rooms as more golfers come into the area, he said.

Other plans when the new nine holes are done include a new website, and Barth also wants to build a “fairly large” maintenance shop for maintenance vehicles, such as lawn mowers.

“There will be construction going on here for another year or so. More beautifying, landscaping, etc. too. It never really ends actually,” Barth explained.

Cost-wise, he figures the project will take $600,000 to $1.8 million to complete. That’s on par with Alta Lake, which cost around $1 million to build, and less than Bear Mountain Ranch, which cost $4 million. Barth, who is a self-taught course designer, estimated that it typically costs between $6 million and $8 million to build brand new course.

On the back burner during the course work are 92 residential lots waiting to be developed on the 135-acre course, with condominiums and more single family residences to follow on three more adjacent parcels he purchased over the years. Barth has a total of 200 acres at his disposal. He is very close to receiving the plat approval for the first 92 lots. He is hoping to have the sewer in by mid-2011 and the first housing completed shortly after that. He will do the lot development in phases, 30 lots at a time, and sell them off as he goes. The 8,000- to 30,000-square-foot lots will be priced at $80,000 and up, with the average lot size at 12,000 square feet. Barth said he expects most of these homes will be primary residences.

“Up at Alta Lake, it’s about 50/50 second homes, but in Wenatchee, I think we will see mainly first-home buyers. After all, who wouldn’t want to live on a golf course? It’s beautiful out here,” he said.

REVV Auto Specialists
Owners: Steve and Dean Windsor
Address: 603 N. Mission St.
Square footage: 8,720 square feet
Phone: 509-888-0266
Web: www.revvauto.com

On a typical Wenatchee afternoon, Steve and Dean Windsor sit on the side of the road at their new business located at 603 N. Mission St. and watch a promising sign drive by.

Within 15 minutes, Dean counts 125 japanese-made automobiles and the dollar signs roll to life in Steve’s eyes. Then, the brothers get back up and return to the work of renovating what they hope will be Wenatchee’s newest and truest automotive service station: REVV Auto Specialists, which will host its grand opening on May 31.

“We’re tired of working for the man,” Dean jokes.

Tall and square, Dean has the build of a mechanic but the easy smile and rapport of a barber. As a child he tore apart his mother’s washing machine to see how it worked – much to her dismay – and has been working on machines ever since.

“You know, Steve and I had this grand vision about 14, 15 years ago that we needed to start our own business. It just took us a while to get to the same spot at the same time,” Dean said.

For the past 15 years, while Dean was busy running a neighborhood-oriented automotive shop in Seattle, Steve was in California’s Silicon Valley creating startup companies. While Dean was fixing engines and memorizing customer names, Steve was licensing LLCs and learning ways to market new ideas.

Then in February, their paths finally converged. Steve had just been bought out from a startup company in the Bay Area, and Dean had just sold his house and moved his family to Wenatchee. With the funds from those two sales and a little extra capital help from their parents, the two were able to go about setting up shop with approximately $100,000 in startup capital. By March 4, Steve was in Olympia obtaining an LLC for their business.

“It’s been a real good match,” Steve said.

With a keen eye and an easy humor, Steve will run the general management, marketing and finance side of the business while Dean will be in charge of the operations and customer service.

“Yah, and I pretend to know his business, and he better stay out of the shop,” Dean laughs.

That’s just fine with Steve who knows that everything starts with his brother.

“What Dean had a lot of success with with his partners in Seattle was they created a very neighborhood-feel shop,” Steve said. “When you came in, you knew who the people were, and they knew who you were, and they knew your car, what had been done to it, and where it was in its life cycle. It was a much more personal service and that’s what we want to bring to car service.”

While customer service is priority one, Steve is leaving nothing to chance when it comes to differentiating REVV from the rest. With the new baby blue paint on the side of the walls barely dry, Steve has already set about branding the company name and logo: “REVV” like the sound of a car, and a flying mermaid. Why? Because it is eye-catching, he said.

In addition, the company will have a fully functioning website with a Car Talk-like blog offering automotive advice. And unlike the greasy garages people are used to, the brothers said REVV will have an almost clinical cleanliness to it, from the pits to the restrooms. All part, they said, of attracting what they hope will be their greatest customer base: women.

“(Women) have had a different experience going to automotive shops and we want to change some of that preconceived notion.” Steve said.

To help create that woman-friendly and mother-friendly atmosphere, the two have built a kids room complete with toys and have taken special care to remodel the restrooms with tile floors and vanities with marble countertops. The brothers are also currently discussing hosting free weekly classes on basic car maintenance. A sort of Car 101 for women.

With the grand opening fast approaching, Steve and Dean  have been busily scrambling to get the place ready. Steve said that while they have invested approximately $10,000 in renovation costs, he estimates they have saved nearly $20,000 by doing all the labor themselves. The two have a 5-year renewable lease, and said the landlord has invested approximately $20,000 in updating the building’s electrical and HVAC systems.

And so 15 years down the road from its original conception, two brothers’ dreams to go into business for themselves is finally coming together.

“Working on cars has been my sole life passion, I just love it,” Dean said. “It’s just a sense of fixing a problem … I fix it and they go away happy. And that makes me happy.”

Liquor is recession proof and it’s profitable, said artisan distiller Colin Levi. Those are two of the reasons he chose to open the new craft distillery, It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere, in Cashmere. He also hopes to get in on the ground floor, ride the craft distillery growth wave, and beat the competition to the top. So far, he’s achieved some success, but when dealing with such a highly regulated industry, it takes time and perseverance to get things done, he said.

Washington state passed a bill in 2008 creating the artisan distillery license, which allows a craft distillery to produce up to 20,000 gallons of its own spirits per year. The distillery may sell its product directly to customers at the licensed premises (for off-premises consumption), and provide samples. In addition, the craft distillery must ensure that at least 50 percent of all raw materials are produced in Washington state. So far, only fourteen distilleries have sprung up statewide. Levi said he looked hard at the numbers before choosing liquor over the comparably easier product of wine.

“There’s about 600 wineries here, and only 14 craft distilleries. It’s probably easier to make wine, but there’s too much competition,” Levi said. “I really felt like I had to choose the right thing in this economy or it would be disastrous.”

He said more distillery competition will probably follow, but he doesn’t foresee the same amount of competitors as there are in the wine industry.

“I’m sure a lot of people will jump on the band wagon, but I don’t see 600 craft distilleries springing up. There are only 300 distillers in America. It’s a totally different process from wine and many don’t want to deal with the tighter regulations,” Levi said.

Rules and regulations

In the distilling industry, regulations are everywhere, beginning with the licensing. Regulations dictated that he purchase all his equipment first, then apply for licenses. He applied to the Washington State Liquor Control Board (WSLCB) for a craft distillery license, and to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) for a federal license in May 2009.

Then, Levi had to wait for both license approvals before he could learn to make liquor. When he obtained his licenses in December, he hired Berle “Rusty” Figgins Jr., the winemaker and distiller who taught a recent artisan distilling class at Big Bend Community College, to teach him the trade.

Since then, he’s crafted a Chilean-style brandy made from grapes, is experimenting with a pear brandy, and plans to make moonshine – an unaged corn whiskey – and a couple of other styles of grain-based whiskey.

He currently has an 8,000 square-foot production facility in Cashmere that houses one 250-gallon still, 1,400 gallons of fermenting pears, 200 gallons of unaged brandy, 800 gallons of maturing brandy, and untold cases of wine. He plans to add three more stills soon, bringing capacity up to 50 usable gallons per still per day, and a mash tun – a vessel used to convert the starches in crushed grains into sugars for fermentation. Timing on the expansion will depend on sales volume, just like with any other new product, he said.

But no matter what product he makes, regulations will govern where he can sell it.

Levi applied to the WSLCB for approval to sell the Chilean-style brandy in liquor stores statewide on April 8. The board agreed to put his brandy on the special order list, which means that restaurants and individuals can order it, but it won’t be on the store shelves. Because the board controls where and how he sells his products within Washington, Levi said distillers have a lot fewer marketing options than winemakers.

“Wine is pretty easy to sell – you get a distributor and boom, off it goes, or you can go the grocery store and ask them to carry your product. But here in Washington state, you have only one outlet for liquor and that’s the liquor stores,” Levi said.

The Federal TTB license does allow him to sell in other states though, and internationally. He said he may try Mexico, Oregon and California next as possible markets for the Chilean-style brandy.

Regulations also govern pricing. The WSLCB sets all the retail prices for his products. If his raw material costs change, he has to go back to the board and have it redo the pricing.

“There’s a process to do that. There’s a process to everything you do in this industry,” Levi said.

Even his purchases of raw materials are documented and constantly inventoried.

“To buy wine as a distiller, you need a license to purchase it, move it, and then log it in. If you buy fruit or grain you report that too. They maintain an inventory of everything: sugars, molasses, wines. You report it all,” Levi said.

Still, he said he isn’t bothered by the regulations and paperwork load and said despite the restrictions, he will continue to distill for the foreseeable future.

“You just have to get into a routine with everything,” he said. “Regulation is regulation and if you aren’t up to working within a regulated arena then don’t even think about it.”

Levi is currently pushing to get the message about his products out. He’s already talked to several local restaurants such as Applebee’s, Mojo’s in Cashmere, and the Applewood Grill, about ordering his product, and said the interest is building.

To his advantage, he faces few competitors right now. His is the only distillery in the area. The next closest ones are located in Moses Lake and Ellensburg.

“This is really the beginning of something. If you get in at the start, you could one day be on the top,” Levi said.

His plan is to be the first one there.

Not everyone is feeling depressed about the home market these days. In fact, three local businessmen felt optimistic enough to buy into the industry this spring.

Two of them, Jace Miller and Steve Schindele, purchased Taylor Mortgage Loans from Roger Taylor. The other, Tom LaVigne of Tom LaVigne Properties, purchased the Wenatchee Coldwell Banker franchise from Bob Seltzer. Now that all sales are final, the three discuss the reasons behind their purchases and what they hope to gain in the future from their investments.

Miller, Schindele buy Taylor Mortgage Loans

Former loan officers now turned owners, Miller and Schindele purchased Taylor Mortgage Loans effective March 5 for an undisclosed amount. The sale did not include the building at 338 Highline Drive in East Wenatchee, they said, but they have kept the same staff. The office currently has five loan officers and one loan processor.

Their reasons behind the purchase include brand name recognition, longevity of the business, and a desire to keep things “business as usual.”

Miller, a former orchard manager who has logged seven years with the company, said the partners will keep the name Taylor Mortgage Loans, have a signed a new lease, and will keep the office in the same location for the foreseeable future.

“There’s value in keeping the same people here, and in keeping the name. Taylor Mortgage Loans has been in business for 18 years and has a great reputation,” Miller said.

Miller added that he and Schindele began talking with Roger Taylor about the purchase two years ago and it was their intent to purchase all along.

Schindele has been with the business since 2006. He is originally from Wenatchee, but spent 29 years in San Diego as a fruit manager for an independent grocery chain. He admits the mortgage industry has seen a lot of changes since he started four years ago, but he isn’t disheartened by them.

“The last two years have been a struggle to keep up with all the changes, and not all the changes have been positive,” Schindele said. “But some of the new regulations were very necessary.”

In addition to an increase in mortgage broker regulations, the industry has seen stricter underwriting guidelines, which Schindele said should have been in place all along.

“Basically, the people with good credit will get the good programs and good rates. Conventional 15- and 30-year loans which make up the bulk of our business, will continue to have strict guidelines for the right reasons,” he explained.

But that doesn’t mean loans can’t get done, Schindele said. After a rough 2008, loan volume increased in 2009 and was up again in the first quarter of 2010. He expects to see “slow, steady growth,” going forward as the real estate industry recovers.

Locally, the mortgage market has experienced other changes in the last 12 months. Wayne Loranger, owner of Premiere One Properties, closed his 25-year-old mortgage loan office, Hearth and Home Mortgage, at the beginning of the year.

Similarly, Jay Bean, former owner of Wenatchee John L. Scott Real Estate, closed Response Mortgage last year, and Everett, Wash.-based Mortgage Advisory Group opened an office here in February. Miller and Schindele said they are not worried about the changing lending landscape.

“We currently obtain about 90 percent of our business from referrals, and that’s good. We feel we have the right tools to help people that come our way,” Schindele said.

In addition to 15- and 30-year fixed mortgages, the office also offers Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Veterans Administration (VA), U.S. Department of Agriculture 100 percent financing loans, reverse mortgages, and a niche product for self-employed borrowers, Schindele said.

Seller Roger Taylor was contacted for this story, but had no comment.

LaVigne purchases Coldwell Banker Davenport

Bob Seltzer (left) and Tom LaVigne have someting in common. Both identify with the Coldwell Banker brand and corporate style. The two will work closely together now that LaVigne has purchased the local franchise. YVETTE DAVIS/WBJ

Tom LaVigne closed the deal for the Wenatchee Coldwell Banker (CB) franchise on April 1. Now the owner of two local real estate offices – Tom LaVigne Properties and Coldwell Banker – LaVigne has some decisions to make about the future, but he’s already 100 percent sure he made the right choice in buying from Seltzer.

LaVigne, who opened his independent real estate office in 2006, said at the time that he wanted to go it alone and not have any rules imposed on his business decisions. He still feels that way, but a back surgery earlier this year made him stop and think about the sole-proprietor business model.

“I was laid up for weeks and realized that, should anything happen to me, my business, which bears my name, would likely close,” he said. “I had no exit strategy.”

He also doubted whether he would ever be able to sell the office, since he wasn’t willing to part with the name. Those thoughts stirred the embers of a conversation he’d had last year with Bob Seltzer, owner of Coldwell Banker Davenport, and spurred him into researching the corporate office model.

LaVigne said he looked at most of the other major players before deciding on Coldwell Banker. He said he liked the company’s corporate structure better, because it allowed him to remain as independent as possible. The official name of the new office is Coldwell Banker LaVigne.

“I did fight to try to keep my blue and yellow colors, but in the end, I had to give up the identity that I’ve worked so hard to build, and I’m okay with that. I still own the business, my name’s still on it, and I can be flexible but also have access to Coldwell Banker’s tools, assistance and referrals,” LaVigne said.

Isolation, he said, is the biggest downside to being an independent office.

“You’re cut off from educational opportunities and from help when you need it. You can’t pick up the phone and call your competitor for sales advice,” he explained. “But now, with Coldwell Banker, I can call someone and my agents get access to amazing producer education programs, and they’re free.”

He didn’t get many Internet referrals as an independent, he said. Coldwell Banker, on the other hand, gets a “substantial” number of them through its website . He said overall, the Internet tools now available to his agents are outstanding, and keyed into the future.

“We are seeing more and more viral networking and marketing being done by Realtors on social networks, on YouTube and on blogs. Coldwell Banker has actually designed a YouTube program that allows shoppers to view house videos easily and efficiently. That’s a big plus,” LaVigne said.

In addition to referrals, agent tools, the ability to some day sell the office, and more support, LaVigne was pleased to announce that Seltzer has agreed to stay on for two more years as an agent. He has the utmost respect for Seltzer, who he said mentored him and has always been a sounding board for him. LaVigne said he’ll look to Seltzer for guidance as he traverses the still murky waters of the future.

He sees several decisions coming up that he’ll have to make. For starters, learning to lead more and list or sell property less, he said. He’s always been a working agent, he said, and this will be new territory for him. But he feels he owes it to his 25 or so agents to be focused on supporting them through the change.

In addition, he’s currently got two leases for two separate locations. His Tom LaVigne Properties office is located in the CrossRhodes building owned by Kathy Lingo at 1114 N. Mission St., Suite A. The Coldwell Banker office is at 1 S. Chelan Ave. Whether or not to move, combine, or relocate one or both won’t be settled right away, he said. He’s still exploring his options. But there is one decision he’s absolutely sure about: Coldwell Banker.

LaVigne, a former minister, put it this way. “I’ve found the denomination I want to be a part of. I fit here.”

On April 23, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire signed into law the new tax package presented to her by the Legislature on the last day of the 2010 special session.

The bill includes $780 million in new or increased taxes created to avoid deeper statewide cuts in human services, health care and education caused by the current $2.8 billion budget deficit. Consumers will now pay more for beer and cigarettes, and effective June 1, bottled water, candy, and gum will become subject to state sales tax.

In addition, a new tax on carbonated beverages is set to take effect July 1. The state is expecting to bring in $33.5 million from the new beverage tax for the 2009-2011 biennium.

But the governor’s office has already begun to hear complaints from the carbonated beverage industry about the new tax. One of the most vocal opponents to the tax is local distributor Pat Weinstein, owner of Weinstein Beverage Company in Wenatchee, the Pepsi franchisee for north central Washington.

Weinstein said the proposed soda tax of 2 cents per 12 ounces has the potential to unfairly hurt his business. If the tax is due when he takes the product into his warehouse – before he’s even sold it – the extra 2 cents per can or 48 cents per 24-pack will mean a 10 percent jump in cost of goods for his business, equal to a net loss of $1.3 million, according to Weinstein. Not many businesses could take that kind of hit in one year and survive, he said.

“Effectively, it takes away my operating profit and if that goes, so does my corporate giving and my event sponsorships, and that’s a big thing for this community,” Weinstein said. “The bigger bottlers can absorb this cost, but not the smaller independent bottlers like me, because we can’t afford to raise prices.”

Mike Gowrylow, spokesman and communications director for the state Department of Revenue, said the 2 cents per 12-ounce can will be paid by the bottlers producing the carbonated beverages, and not by the distributors. Each bottler will have an exemption on the first $10 million worth of product. Anything beyond that will be taxed, he said.

Gowrylow said there has been some confusion in the industry as to the definition of bottler versus distributor and how the tax will be applied. Many beverage distributors call themselves “bottlers” but don’t actually bottle any product.

Weinstein, who said he does both, said it’s unclear to him whether he, as a “bottler” will pay the tax, or whether his distributing company will pay it. He said in all the state boasts a total of four bottling plants: Coca Cola’s facility in Bellevue; the Pepsi co-op in Tumwater; the Safeway facility in Bellevue; and the Noel Corporation’s production plant in Yakima. Weinstein owns a share in a Tukwila Pepsi production facility. Weinstein Beverage Company is the distributor or franchisee of the product.

“The tax is due where the bottling actually takes place, not at the distributors,” said Gowrylow. “It’s not clear how many bottlers will be paying the tax, some bottlers have a much larger share of the market.”

However, owners or partners of bottling plants – like Weinstein – could also pay a portion of the tax after the first $10 million exemption, he said. From there, the costs would get passed down to the distributors, flow through the retail channel, and ultimately be paid by the consumer.

“Every tax ultimately gets paid by the consumer somewhere along the line,” Gowrylow said. “It does have an impact on business, but the total impact to the consumer is about $5 per year, based on the average consumption rate of 345 12-ounce cans per year. For $5 a year, how much will it really cut back on people’s consumption?”

Weinstein, who said he watches every nickel and dime of his production costs, said it would have been better for consumers to do a straight sales tax at the register. For example, Weinstein said if he raises his price $1.30, it takes a $4 item and makes it a $5.30 item. On top of that, the retailer he delivers it to must raise its rates as well to cover costs. So, he takes the $5.30 item and adds another margin, and suddenly a $4 item is now $6.75. The total effect is a 30 to 40 percent increase to the consumer.

“I’m not arguing the money. The state needs the money. I’d never say we shouldn’t pay taxes, I just want it to be fair. If I have a 10 percent reduction in business because of this and I have 120 employees, do the math. That’s a lot of people,” he said.

The soda tax is set to expire in 2013, but the increased taxes on beer, cigarettes and cigars are not, nor are the new sales taxes on bottled water, candy and gum.

Rep. Mike Armstrong, R-Wenatchee, said he doesn’t hold out a lot of hope for the soda tax going forward beyond 2013. Armstrong said the new tax reminds him of a high-end cigar tax the state imposed about five years ago, then had to drop when cigar sales took a nose dive.

“They doubled the tax and the revenues for the next year were cut in half. People either went across the state line to buy them, or bought them off the Internet. In the next legislative session we dropped the tax back down to where it was, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that happened again,” Armstrong said. “It’s a lousy tax.”

The tax he does hear rumors of having the best chance of remaining permanent is the bottled water tax. Armstrong said the state needs the funds to pay for bonds issued to pay for “green” school renovation projects as a result of HB 2561. But over all, Armstrong was against the new taxes from the beginning.

“What bothers me is that they never even looked at restructuring government during this session, they just went right after the small business people.”

From the second story of the Town Toyota Center, the sound of hockey sticks thwacking loudly on ice echoes into the office of the arena’s General Manager Mark Miller.

“It’s either cold or noisy,” he chuckles about his close working proximity to a fully functioning ice-hockey rink.

Newly relocated from Dallas, Miller has the subtle, confident drawl of a Southern gent and a hitch in his step that bespeaks of former glory days on the basketball court.

“Besides the offices, everything is fine,” he jokes lightheartedly of the present state-of-affairs at the Town Toyota Center.

Since arriving in Wenatchee, Miller has successfully balanced a once wayward operating budget, but questions still abound as to how the Town Toyota Center should continue to not only survive, but also thrive.

A quick recap.

Six months ago, a special transition committee for the Town Toyota Center drafted Miller to captain the return of what had, up until recently, been a sinking ship. In May  2009, a presentation to the City of Wenatchee by the city’s Finance Director Mark Calhoun showed that rather than netting the projected profit of approximately $840,000 its first year, the $53 million center would instead lose $148,313 —a huge upset.

After the meeting, the Public Facilities District (PFD) – the entity which owns the arena and is comprised of Chelan and Douglas counties, Wenatchee, East Wenatchee, Chelan, Cashmere, Entiat, Rock Island and Waterville – promptly fired the existing management company Global Entertainment and began searching for a more economic way to run the Toyota Town Center. Enter Mark Miller stage right.

“My direction from the PFD board has been to break us even operationally if at all humanly possible, and we’re on track to do that right now,” Miller said.

During a presentation April 15, Miller had some timid but positive news to share with the city. A financial snapshot through February 2010 showed that the Town Toyota Center had earned a net gain of $61,536, and was on track to pay its $300,000 share of a $1.095 million debt service payment in June. Miller went on to say that, to date, the arena had hosted 26 events, and  attendance was up 25 percent from 48,763 people last year to 61,396 this year.

“It’s early, and there’s no guarantees, and this is an expensive operation to run,” Miller said. “But at this point we’re running in the black.”

It must pay to play

Miller said his success thus far has been made possible by a simple philosophy: A show playing at the Town Toyota Center has to make economic sense.

While Global brought in a number of big acts with big price points, those prices didn’t match the local demographic. Miller said that the present team is making a concentrated effort to work with promoters who are already experts on potential performers, and who are intimately familiar with the markets where they sell.

“It limits the risk of the building, and it limits some of the upside profit also, but it brings in people that are associated with an act and have marketed that act in other areas. So we get on their coattails,” Miller said.

One example of this, Miller said, was the Monster Truck show that came to town last March. While the show did well in other towns, it did not do well in Wenatchee, netting only 2,910 attendants total for both days of the event. Miller explained that without a promoter the arena could have lost approximately $50,000, but since the show was sold through a promoter, they actually made $5,000.

The other half of Miller’s philosophy has involved surveying audiences and contacts to find out what people want to see.

“It looks like Classic Rock is top of the list,” Miller said, adding country and family shows to the desired lineup.  On April 29, the arena hosted country singer Merle Haggard. This month it will also see a mixed martial arts tournament and the circus coming to town.

This, in conjunction with taking special care of the arena’s two anchor tenants the Wild and the Venom, is the straight-forward and so far effective business philosophy Miller hopes will continue to balance the books.

‘When the rubber meets the road’

But balancing the books and making them pay are two different things, said Wenatchee City Council Member Tony Veeder. As the lead city of the PFD, Wenatchee is responsible for covering the remaining $795,000 of the $1.095 million June debt service payment not covered by the sales tax rebate.

“We barely squeezed by this budget for putting in the bond payment for the Town Toyota Center, and we don’t know what next year’s going to bring,” Veeder said.

Veeder said that in about three years the city will need to refinance the $41 million in bonds used to pay for the arena in order to pay off its lenders. Those bonds were sold to investors by the PFD’s underwriter Piper Jaffray. Currently the city makes interest-only payments. Once they refinance, however, the city will be on the hook for the principal payments as well, which will bring those payments to anywhere from $1.5 million to possibly $2 million, Veeder said.

“When the rubber meets the road for having to pay the principal and the interest we have to ante up a bit about how we’re going to collect that, and I think it’s going to be through having to rethink about our riverfront,” Veeder said.

For Veeder, that means developing the Pybus Market and working to make Wenatchee a regional and statewide destination, not unlike Leavenworth. Veeder, who was originally opposed to the arena construction, said that people need to view the Town Toyota Center as a destination at the riverfront, not a destination in and of itself.

Currently, Veeder said he is just one of only two city council members that is for the riverfront project. The remaining five are still on the fence but it appears both city and county officials will have some extra time to mull it over.

A decision would have been  pressing come this May 11 when the $40,000 earnest money deposit paid by the Port of Chelan to purchase the $1.32 million property became nonrefundable, but that deadline has been extended an additional 30 days, said Port of Chelan Executive Director Mark Urdahl. The request for the extension came from property owner Bob Morse due to complications with contractual obligations to remove railroad ties that run into the former Morse Steel building, Urdahl said.

Let’s Just Barter
Owners: George Lak and Dave Winters
Startup date: February 1
Phone: (509) 433-7414
Web: Letsjustbarter.com

No money is no problem at one local business, where bartering is king. Anyone with an Internet connection can sign up, pull some equipment out of their garage or offer services in exchange for something else they want, but don’t have.

At least that’s what two local businessmen are hoping will happen on a large scale at their new website, LetsJustBarter.com.

Long-time friends Dave Winters and George Lak came up with the idea for a bartering site about three years ago, but said the timing wasn’t right. They started seeing signs the time was right when the economy crashed in late 2008.

“The eBay site has a bartering section, and in the first three months of 2009, traffic increased 150 percent,” Lak said.

He said he knew then it was time to act.

“With the economy the way it is and people out of work, I figure it’s the right time for something like this because you don’t have to use cash. It’s cashless commerce,” Lak said.

Lak called Mike Siemion, a Senior Core of Retired Executives (SCORE) volunteer with a background in e-commerce. They met in Leavenworth at Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort and Lak pitched Siemion the idea.

“He didn’t hate it, which surprised us. He thought it had legs,” Lak said. “And Mike is the kind of guy who’ll tell you if it won’t work.”

Siemion said there actually aren’t a lot of bartering sites on the net right now.“It’s an idea that goes after the hidden economy. It takes that idea and puts it on the net so lots of people can access it,” Siemion said.

Armed with his encouragement, Lak and Winters bartered part ownership in the company for website design. The site has been up for four months now, and is in beta testing.

The partners said they looked at different bartering models already on the Internet, but ultimately rejected them. Some cater only to specific categories of trading, such as vacation homes. Others are closed systems that issue “bartering bucks” for trades within that network, but they found too many problems with that system.

“For one thing, there’s a tax issue,” Lak said. “The people running the board have to keep track of all the trades since bartering is a taxable event. We didn’t want to do that and didn’t want to know what people are trading for. We wanted to do it like Craigslist – a bartering classified bulletin board where all the trading is done between two parties.”

They see their role more as facilitators, Winters said. And their category possibilities are endless, as long as it is clean.

“And we will police that,” Lak said. “We want everybody to be able to go on it and be safe.”

The site does not allow pornography and if someone misbehaves they will remove them from the site, Winters added. The site includes a flagging system and a built-in rating system as well. In addition, the user agreement includes “buyer beware” language, and states Lak and Winters can not be held liable for trades gone bad.

So far, it is free to place ads on the site, but they say they will eventually need to charge a fee of somewhere between $3 to $5 per trade in order to make money.

“You have to get people on the board to start with though,” Winters said. “It’s hard to start with zero and charge for that. We want to get it populated, and then once people see the value they will want to use it down the road even if there is a small charge for the service.”

They also plan on making money through advertising on the site as well.

At this time the duo have about $1,000 in cash invested in the business – the rest they bartered for -  but know they will have to shell out more money to get noticed. They currently are using what Winters calls “guerilla marketing” – Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo.com and Twitter – to get the word out, while working on search engine optimization.

Of course, they plan on bartering for advertising if they can.

“We practice what we preach,” said Lak. “And why not? Bartering has been around since day one. A lot of people barter and they don’t even know it.”

“We just want them to think of our site when they do it,” Winters added. “We want to be the No. 1  place to barter on the net.”

Lak is currently a Link Transit driver and Winters manages the Leavenworth FestHalle and works in marketing.

For High Mountain Hunting Supply Owner Kelsey Hilderbrand, the business of hunting and the business of marketing are not so different.

“If you listen to your people, they’ll tell you what you’re looking for,” Hilderbrand said of finding untapped markets. “It’s just like hunting, you listen to the wind, you understand what the habitat is, what are they looking for for food. You apply those same philosophies to marketing.”

It’s a grass-roots philosophy that seems to be working. This August, High Mountain Hunting Supply will expand its shop at 223 N. Mission St. for the third straight year in a row. The estimated $40,000 expansion and remodel project will add dedicated fishing and archery departments, a weapons machinery where they will manufacture AR-15 rifles, and classrooms for hunting education classes, Hilderbrand said.

In a time where many businesses are cutting back, Hilderbrand said they are expanding because they ask their customers what they need and then specialize in providing it. Hilderbrand said one example of an untapped market they are beginning to push is the lady’s gun market.

“There were a lot of ladies we found that were timid about coming into a gun store because of the way they were treated in the past,” Hilderbrand said.

In addition to offering guns that are fitted to ladies’ hands, ladies’ hunting clothes, and purses with holsters, Hilderbrand said they will also be offering ladies-only hunting classes.

“Having ladies to instruct the class has created a whole new market for us,” he said.

Last year High Mountain Hunting Supply did $3 million in sales. This year, Hilderbrand said they were on track to hit $4 million, and 8 percent to 10 percent of that would go toward advertising.

Hilderbrand said that when they meet customers from out of town, they ask them what they are looking for and then target a radio advertisement to that geographic area offering the same goods.

For example, Hilderbrand said that they found that people in Seattle were having trouble locating reloading components such as gun powder and bullets.

So they ran an ad in Seattle saying they had reloading components for sale.

“Before we knew it we had a whole stream of folks coming over on the weekends,” Hilderbrand said.

Sometimes, even when a business starts with a sound idea, other factors such as a slower economy come along and require owners to rethink their offerings. One strategy is to diversify the business’s product  lines, maybe by bring a sideline or hobby to the forefront. Josh Potter is doing just that at Cascade Powder Coating, and finding success with his so-called “headache racks,” which protect a truck’s rear-window from damage by lumber and other stuff it hauls.

When he and his wife Loudora Potter purchased the business in May 2005 from James Elsberg, they hit the ground running. Soon they had a contract with Genie Industries in Moses Lake and were working  a crew of 12 running 24-hour days to keep up with demand. Then the economy slowed down, and orders for Genie’s man-lifts, booms and other work platforms declined to the point where the industry giant all but shut down, taking about 50 percent of Potter’s total sales with them. Then business from local fabricators that make metal railing for houses slowed down too, thanks to tighter credit and a stalled housing market.

Potter looked at his uneven sales and knew he had to do something. He had already cut costs, and cut his crew down to three, but he knew he needed to do more to stay viable. Potter had made a black powder-coated headache rack for his own truck and for a few other trucks in town during the past two years. He decided expanding that operation was the way to go.

“We were already making them, so we decided to just market them and see what happened,” Potter said.

One major benefit of the decision is that he didn’t have to buy any new equipment to do the work. He made the items using what he already had which saved money. He also started out marketing them on a shoe-string budget.

Potter immediately got into low-cost Internet marketing. By September 2009, the name Spyder Industries LLC – chosen for the spider-like legs on the headache racks – had a presence on Facebook and Blogger, and its own website where people could buy the products directly. Potter also had a video made by Preston Herick of Aperture Studios, for YouTube to showcase his work.

“We started doing some pay-per-click advertising with Yahoo! and Facebook, focusing on people searching for the words headache rack or people on Facebook who own or talk about trucks. We have about 300 fans on Facebook right now and our video has been viewed 250 to 300 times without us doing much paid advertising on YouTube.”

In December 2009 the company did its first print advertising in Diesel Power magazine.

“We’d never marketed anything nationally before,” Potter said. “This is a lot different than where I thought I’d be.”

So far he has picked up sales, website hits, and five dealers from the exposure. He now has two dealers in Wenatchee, Linex and All Seasons; plus Linex and Basin Feed and Supply in Moses Lake; and one in Alaska called Alaska LED Concepts. His Alaska dealer mainly sells lighting to police departments, and teamed up with Potter to provide racks with light-ready mounts.

He designs all the products himself. The “Black Widow” spider web headache rack has proven to be his most popular. It outsells the others ten to one, he said. But more new designs are on the way. He had a horse design ready to go on his desk and a mock-up on the back of his truck.

He has also added cab racks, utility racks, bolt-on exhaust tips and rear hoops to the product mix.

“I have another design for a bull bar that goes on the front of the truck that holds lights as well. Everything we’ve done is unique. You don’t see a lot of this in our industry. We just keep applying what we already have to a new use,” Potter said.

All his work is manufactured and powder-coated at 327 E. Penny Road, Building 2A. Potter leases space from the Chelan County Port District, and is located next to the North Central Technical Skill Center.

His products fit Nissan, Ford, Chevrolet, Dodge and Toyota trucks from the mid to late 1980s and newer.

To see more of his products or to see the video, visit www.spyderindustries.com.

Cascade Powder Coating continues to do work on industrial, automotive, marine, and home and garden materials.

Dr. Eric Haeger’s business is sleep, or more specifically, the lack of it. He sees patients from young to old with every type of sleep disorder imaginable.

From sleep apnea to narcolepsy, the list of reasons why people don’t sleep well runs the gamut, and the number of people needing a better night’s sleep is growing fast as people become more aware of sleep medicine. For Haeger, that means business expansion and a second sleep lab in Moses Lake.

Haeger started the Central Washington Sleep Diagnostic Center at 410 Washington St., Suite B, in February 2008. The center was open two nights a week and had four employees. Now the center is open six nights a week due to increased demand, and has eight employees on the payroll to handle the additional load.

He currently consults with an average of 10 patients a week and the clinic generally performs 12 sleep studies per week using two beds. In 2009, the beds were 97 percent occupied, with few cancellations on the schedule. But his capacity is about to double.

Haeger has signed a lease for a second location to open in June at 2323 W. Broadway Unit 4 in Moses Lake. The new 1,260-square-foot location will hold two sleep study labs and allow his clients in the basin area access to a sleep study facility without driving to Wenatchee or Spokane.

Kelly Kane, marketing coordinator for the sleep diagnostic center, said there is currently no other sleep lab in the Moses Lake area.

“We want to be the first to bring this kind of patient care to the basin,” Kane said.

Haeger said the growth in his business is evidence that the practice of sleep medicine itself is finally gaining awareness in the larger community.

“Sleep medicine got started in the early 1980s so it is still a fairly young field. But it is becoming more forefront in people’s minds and that’s good, because there’s a lot of people out there who are still tired and sleeping during the day,” Haeger said.

By sleeping during the day he means not only taking naps, but other sleeping habits, some of them dangerous.

“We’ve seen patients who fall asleep at red lights while driving, and only wake up when the person behind them honks. Others fall asleep in our waiting room,” he said. “When people are tired it’s easy to fall asleep. Once they are treated, they stay awake.”

About 10 percent of his clients are self-referred, hearing about him from ads or referrals from friends or neighbors. The other 90 percent of his patients come from doctor referrals, mainly from internal medicine and family practitioners, nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants.

Haeger, previously a family practitioner, also runs the sleep study center at the Okanogan-Douglas District Hospital in Brewster. To better serve his patients, he can monitor the sleep diagnostics from anywhere by computer as is available during the night shift from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. for questions.

He became certified in Sleep Medicine with the American Board of Family Medicine in November 2009.

Sunrise Dental
Address: 645 Valley Mall Parkway, Suite 100, East Wenatchee
Web site: www.sunrisedental.com
Phone: 886-0500
Startup date: Feb. 5

The Tooth Fairy for working adults has come to town in the guise of Sunrise Dental.

Dentist Damon Anderson and his three assistants offer low rates and weekend appointments to fit most working adults’ schedule, and they see union workers and their families as well. The office is No. 27 in the state-wide Sunrise Dental network founded by Issaquah dentist Abraham Ghorbanian in 2001.

Ghorbanian said he came from an illiterate family and worked hard to become a dentist in 1998. Along the way, he learned a few life lessons that have shaped his practice today.

“I understand the side of working people really well. All they want is what everybody else wants, and that is to be treated with respect and get the same good service. We want to be known as being here for the working class,” said Ghorbanian.

Ghorbanian said the concept of Sunrise Dental started nine years ago when a grocery store worker came to his practice in Issaquah and asked for a discount.

“I told him, ‘Sure, why not?’ The next thing you now the whole QFC staff was in my office. So I worked something out with the union leader to give them a discount. They told other people about my office and before I knew it, my office had turned into a discount practice.”

After that, Ghorbanian found his practice busier and busier with more union workers coming for service and he decided to focus his attention on that demographic. Two years later, Dr. Edward Im joined him, applying the same principles to his practice, and Sunrise Dental PLLC was born.

To join the company, the dentists must pass muster with Ghorbanian, often in the form of practicing together so he can see how they work. If Ghorbanian approves, the dentist signs an agreement that makes Ghorbanian a 25 percent partner in their office. But the dentists don’t pay a fee to join, remain independent, and if they don’t make a profit, don’t pay Ghorbanian any additional dividends.

The money Ghorbanian collects from the contract goes to marketing for the group. Ghorbanian hired two professional full-time marketers for the group, which in the end saves them money since the marketing costs for all 27 offices is pooled.

“Dentists are not always good marketers,” he said.

Costs for dental supplies are lower too. Sunrise Dental, because of its size, is able to purchase at a group rate, and that makes a big difference on how much they have to charge for procedures.

“The typical overhead of dentistry is about 60 percent. Ours is much lower. We are not making any less money because we are in a group. Our business model has proven that we are making more money,” Ghorbanian explained.

Anderson said the business model is so different that he didn’t understand it until he saw it in action. Anderson has been a dentist for 12 years and previously practiced in Boise, Idaho, where he said competition amongst dentists is intense. He moved to Washington a year and a half ago and worked for a Sunrise Dental office. He made the switch to joining last July, and said that group networks like Sunrise Dental are the wave of the future.

“Most dentists practice all alone and are struggling right now like a lot of other small businesses in this economy. The supply companies really take advantage of the mom-and-pop practices. In the future, dentists will pool their resources because they have to,” Anderson said. “I’m a great dentist but I’m not a great businessman.”

But both Anderson and Ghorbanian were quick to point out that lower cost doesn’t mean less care though.

“One of nice things about being in a group is constant education. We get together once a month and talked about procedures and continuing education. If I have a question, I can just pick up the phone and call a person I know who has expertise in that area. Most dentists can’t do that, and our patients benefit from that added knowledge,” Ghorbanian said.

“Our customers get what they need for what they can afford,” Anderson summed up.

Ghorbanian now practices on Sundays only in Issaquah and spends the rest of his days fielding calls from prospective new dentists. He projects the network will go to 40 offices in the next year or so, and then to every town in the state.

Anderson’s office is currently open Wednesdays through  Saturdays, though his plan is to eventually be open seven days a week. He graduated in 1998 from Loma Linda University and purchased the former office of Dr. Merle Loudin when he moved to Wenatchee.

The 17-year-old Desert Canyon Golf Resort is back to where it was before the bank took it over, said golf course manager Coron Polley.

When General Electric Credit Equities, Inc. took it over from original designer Jack Frei in 2005, the course was in bankruptcy and funds were short. Then in December 2007 when Homestead Northwest purchased the course for $3.7 million, it brought Polley and a dedicated team in to turn the property around. So far, that strategy is working. This year will be Homestead’s third golf season at Desert Canyon.

“The course is in great shape,” Polley said. “We’ve done a good job the last couple of years. Our service levels are far superior to where they were, and everybody that has come is having a good experience and is wanting to come back and do it again.”

He hopes that in 2010, the course will at last break the 25,000 rounds mark. Polley estimates 18,000 rounds were played in 2007, and 23,000 rounds in 2008. Warm weather and an early opening should help him keep edging that number a little higher, he said.

The golf course officially opened on March 5 this year, and although some early morning frost delayed the 200 or so players that day from hitting the green until around 9 a.m., it was still a busy day for Polley and his crew. It takes an average of four-and-a-half to five hours to play the 18-hole course.

When Homestead purchased the course from General Electric Credit Equities, Inc., it had plans for more residential development on the 400-acre site, but those plans are now sidelined as the company waits out a slow housing market.

“When the real estate market picks up over the next few years, that’s when Desert Canyon will really take off,” Polley said.

The company originally planned an additional 132 residential units, but since 2008, the company has built only another eight condominium units. It sold all of them, and is finishing four more. Plans for a family water park and fitness are all on hold until more real estate is sold. Homestead Northwest also recently confirmed the pending sale of its Homestead Farms Golf Course in Lynden, Wash., to Bill and Deja Robins, former owners of Lynden’s Raspberry Ridge golf course. Details of the sale will not be available until the deal closes in May of this year.

The Great Links Lodge, which neighbors the course, has also gone through some changes. Once time-share condominiums, those have all been converted to standard condominium units, and are for sale. Travelers may still rent them, though, and the course has several overnight packages available.

On the restaurant side of the business, the company has made some planned changes as well.

“The pro shop was moved into what used to be the restaurant. We did that in 2008 when we took over. We also divided the restaurant up two years ago and split off the bar. It keeps the rowdier golfers and the kids separate, making it more family friendly,” Polley said.

CJ’s Oasis restaurant is open five days a week until mid-April, when it will be open daily. CJ’s serves steaks and seafood, and southwest style food, and offers a kids’ menu.

The former pro shop area was converted into a banquet room that seats 200, and the resort has recently hired chef Donna Rhodes to oversee the facility. Rhodes formerly worked for Harbour Point Golf Course in Mukilteo. Most recently the banquet room welcomed the Douglas County Republican Party.

Other changes included implementing the Global Positioning System (GPS)-enabled golf carts in 2008.

For now, Polley said no other major changes are planned. He wants to run the resort efficiently and make it the best course in the area, though he said he does not discourage new competition.

“We could still use more golf courses in the area. In 2002 when Highlander Golf Club opened, the overall number of rounds played in the Valley increased. When Bear Mountain Ranch opened in 2005, the overall number of rounds played increased again. My hope is that the Valley becomes a golf destination much like Bend, Ore.”

Eric Granstrom, director of the Wenatchee Valley Sports Council, said he, too, would like the area to model itself after Bend. Granstrom, whose work at the Sports Council focuses on events, provided some numbers showing the economic impact of two local golf tournaments held here in 2009.

The Washington Junior Golf Association Districts at Highlander Golf Club last July and the American Junior Golf Association (AJG) Wenatchee Golf Tournament, held at the Wenatchee Golf and Country Club in August, brought in brought a total of 329 visitors to the area and generated an estimated $95,238 in revenue.

This year, Granstrom expects a slightly higher tourism impact from the Big Nine District Golf Tournament to be held at Three Lakes Golf Club and Highlander Golf Club in May, and the AJG Wenatchee Golf Tournament, held again at the Wenatchee Golf and Country Club in August. The events should bring in 471 visitors, and bring $112,514 in additional revenue.

Polley added that it is important for the area to provide variety for visitors as well. More golf courses mean more golf choices for visitors, and more draw. When he goes on a golf vacation, he likes to go to an area and play more than one course. So do visitors to our area, he said.

“Give them more golf, and everybody’s happy,” he said.

Ginny Kerstetter, owner of local Christian bookstore Encouraging Words, has purchased Gene Anderson’s former River City Coffee, Tea and Fudge from the Stennes family and will expand her business to include a coffee shop. The new addition will open April 19.

Kerstetter said the expansion is a sign of the times in the Christian bookstore business. These days, an independent Christian bookstore has to change with the industry to stay viable, she said. It can’t just offer bibles anymore.

“Anyone can go online and order a book, but it’s harder to go online and buy a gift,” she said. “In this industry, you have to think outside the bookstore box.”

Since she purchased Encouraging Words at 29 South Wenatchee Avenue in 2003, she’s added more gift and artwork selection as well as clothes and music on-demand. Now, she’ll add a place for kids and adults to just come in and hang out.

The expansion will add seating and a children’s play area inside Encouraging Words where moms can sit and have coffee and watch their kids play, she said. Outdoor seating will also be available.

Kerstetter said the cafe will be community oriented, rather than focusing exclusively on Christian bookstore clientele.

“It’s an extension of Encouraging Words but we are trying to make it as much of a community venue as possible. The cafe will have a separate entrance from Wenatchee Avenue, so that people don’t have to go through the bookstore to get there unless they want to,” Kersetter said.

In addition to coffee, tea, pastries, fudge and ice cream, the location will have free wireless Internet.

Kerstetter said she’d been planning this addition for the past couple of years. Customers have asked her for coffee, and a place to read, so she created a space to sit up at the front of the store by removing a display area and thought she’d offer some drip coffee. She hadn’t planned on a major remodel but things just fell in her lap she said.

She was contacted last year by the daughter of the Stennes family who purchased Gene Anderson’s River City Spice, Tea and Coffee, and River City Fudge Factory businesses  in February 2008. Kevin Stennes moved the fudge-making business to Pateros, making it part of their Homestead business in a newly remodeled 6,000-square-foot former North Cascades National Bank building that they purchased in 2007 for $350,000.

In addition to the fudge, the family offered a family-style pizza restaurant, coffee bar, homemade ice cream shop and fresh produce market and homemade gifts. The tea and coffee portion of the business stayed downtown in the Knitabilitea knitting store run by Amanda Thomas and Kara Meloy. But the knitting business closed after just one year, and the Homestead closed a few months ago, leaving Anderson’s former businesses without a home.

Kerstetter said she looked at the opportunity presented and decided to take the coffee bar concept full-bore. She emptied a storage room at the end of January to make way for the new addition, and purchased the inventory and equipment from the Stenneses to get set up.

“There’s a lot of other coffee shops in town but we decided we needed something that would set us apart and the fudge was it. We decided to keep the name River City Coffee and Fudge because people are familiar with that. Since we’ve put the news on Facebook and Twitter, the response has been phenomenal,” Kerstetter said. “Everybody loves fudge.”

She envisions expanding the fudge business to include fundraising and online sales through a separate River City Coffee and Fudge Web site. The cafe will serve Dillanos brand coffee from Sumner, Wash. and her crew has already received training from the company on how to run the equipment. Kerstetter has hired one additional person to help with increased business, but her priority has always been to have all crew members cross-trained on every aspect of the business, she said.

The remodeling work began in February. The Castle Builders is the contractor. The new addition should be open April 19, just a few days before the Washington State Apple Blossom Festival starts on April 22. Kerstetter said she hasn’t totaled up the cost of this business expansion yet, but said she recently renewed her long-term lease with landlord Eric Stepper of J Russell Creative Marketing, and hopes the upgrades to the space will pay off in the long run.

Kerstetter said the coffee shop is just the latest change she’s made to Encouraging Words in the last seven years. One of her most recent additions is a My Media CD burn bar, where patrons can burn a song they’ve heard on the radio onto a CD instead of having to buy the album, or have it record instrumentals only for accompaniment purposes.

Encouraging Words is one of six independent Christian bookstores in the Pacific Northwest region.

It’s hard for a city to increase revenue and only certain ways a city can do it. The city of East Wenatchee hopes its newest moneymaking idea is a winner.

The city has tried several different methods to shore up budget shortfalls since the economic downturn. The city first implemented a 6 percent utility tax in 2008 that is still in force, and raised the property tax 1 percent for 2009. The utility tax provides an additional $750,000 in revenue per year.

In 2008 it considered increasing the card game tax from 8 percent to 10 percent and then in 2009, adding an overload permit fee. Both were shot down by public opposition. Then came a new idea – an event called Sprint Boat Racing. The city has committed itself to hosting two Sprint Boat races in 2010. The dates are set for July 3 and September 4.

But, like a tax, the city faces opposition to the new event as well. Neighbors have concerns over noise levels, traffic congestion, water usage during a low run-off year, the risk of fire, and waterfowl. About 30 people showed up to voice their opinions at the March 23 East Wenatchee City Council meeting.

Denise Briggs was one of them. One of her main concerns was holding the event during the middle of cherry harvest, which is normally July 3 and 4. With an additional 200 to 300 cars parked near the area, and tractors hauling cherries, access to the surrounding rural roads could be choked off, making it impossible for emergency vehicles to get in and out if a fire occurred. Her other complaint is that nobody told the neighbors about it.

“We saw it in the newspaper and didn’t even know what Sprint Boat racing was,” she said.

The city of East Wenatchee issued a fact sheet explaining the races, and stated it has identified a more preferred access pathway to the property off of Grant Road and Urban Industrial Way. In addition to that change, the city will have to outline mitigation plans for all the other items such as noise and water as well in its event application to Douglas County.

The application must contain information on how the city will deal with sanitation, emergency services, traffic control, and any environmental impact arising from the event. According to Douglas County code, the board has 15 days to approve or deny an application once it is submitted.

In an attempt to mitigate fears and dispel misconceptions about the project, Mayor Steve Lacy scheduled an informational public meeting on March 30.

For Lacy, the issue comes down to one of ideology. In his 20 years in government, he said, his philosophy has always been to raise taxes only as a last resort. He believes the Sprint Boat races will make money – maybe not the first year, but perhaps in the years after that – and help support the tourism economy of East Wenatchee, providing a boost in sales tax revenue.

“These events generate both private and public income as all good tourism events do. My goal is to keep taxes at a minimum, develop self-sustaining events and keep enhancing the overall economic health of the community, which generally translates into better support for the public budgets,” Lacy said.

The city also holds four other events, Wings & Wheels, Classy Chassis, the Easter Egg Hunt and the Christmas program. This year, it will also hold a 75th birthday party on July 4, and nobody has stepped forward to complain against those events, said Events Coordinator Dawn Collings.

“I don’t remember any opposition with Wings & Wheels, and there has been none so far on the city’s 75th birthday celebration coming up July 4,” Collings said.

The other complaint voiced by Briggs and others is that the Sprint Boat project uses taxpayer dollars to set up the track and promote it. But the city’s other events use taxpayer money too – funds from the city’s Hotel-Motel Tax – to fund and promote them. And the city may do little better than break even on them, making the Sprint Boat cost look like less of a risky undertaking and more like the normal cost of doing business for the city.

Nick Gerde, the city’s finance director, said he cannot put an exact dollar figure on the revenue generated by the city’s existing events. But he suspects the city makes money on the Wings & Wheels and Classy Chassis events, while it loses a little on the Easter Egg Hunt and the Christmas event. Whether the city will make money on the Sprint Boat Racing is too soon to call, Gerde said.

“For the first couple of years, the city may be making an investment in it. The same thing happened with Wings & Wheels initially. But preliminary numbers show that these events could generate up to $200,000 in additional sales tax revenue,” Gerde said.

If the engines get started, and don’t peter out too soon that is. Getting the event up and running may not be the city’s main problem. Lack of ticket sales could be a larger worry.

In Clarkston, Wash. the Sprint Boat events lost momentum, or rather, just ran out of gas.

Park Ranger Ron Gosselin with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Clarkston, said the races in Clarkston took place on the Snake River, and the Corps. issued the event permits for them. He said the races did cause community noise complaints, so they required racers to add noise controllers to the boats to lessen the impact. However, an accident also occurred.

“One of the sprint boats making a corner during the race lost traction and flipped up onto the bank and hit one of the workers helping with the race and broke her leg,” Gosselin said.

Four or five races were held after that, but then the racers quit asking to renew their permit, he said.

“There was plenty of interest for the races, but I think they just found a better place to have them,” Gosselin said.

Whether or not that better place is the city of East Wenatchee remains to be seen.

When the big guys stumble, the little guy further down the line often feels the effect.

Such was the case when General Motors Company (GM) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2009, and then decided to pare down the number of its U.S. Cadillac dealerships.

Steve Baldock, owner of Cascade Auto Center, was one of the dealers who received a “wind-down” agreement from GM. He wasn’t the only one though.

“They had about 1,400 Cadillac dealerships nationwide and wanted 400. Not many of them survived,” Baldock said.

Just a few months earlier, Chrysler Corp. had also declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sent wind-down notices to many of its Jeep dealers. In all more than 2,000 dealerships were affected by these cuts.

Knowing he was just one of many dealerships facing this problem didn’t make Baldock feel any better. In fact, he didn’t agree with the company’s decision to remove the brand from Wenatchee at all.

“They were taking away a choice from Wenatchee area consumers. That was wrong in my mind,” he said.

So he fought it. He sent a letter to GM corporate explaining to the car maker that telling customers who wanted to buy a Cadillac or get one serviced to go to Bellevue, Pasco, or Spokane was the same as telling them to drive from Detroit to Cleveland.

“Who’s going to do that?” he asked. “Nobody.”

He even got a letter from another local dealership that said even though the dealerships competed, at times “fiercely” against each other for sales, it wasn’t right to take away the choice. Baldock said that the loss of Cadillac would have affected the sales of every dealer in town as well, since people who drove to Seattle or Spokane to buy wouldn’t just look at Cadillacs —  they’d check out other brands too. In the end, GM would end up losing business, he argued.

But the big fish didn’t bite. GM turned down his appeal that summer, leaving the little guy dangling from the line.

Then in December 2009, the U.S. Congress stepped in with a little piece of legislation that granted GM and Chrysler dealerships the right to demand binding arbitration with the companies in an attempt to restore those lines removed from the dealerships.  Of the 2,400 dealerships that received the arbitration agreements, 1,100 arbitrated.

Baldock went into full swing as soon as the bill was signed. He gathered 40-plus  written appeals from customers, from Washington State Senators, from charities the Baldocks support, from other businesses and from friends. Most of them said that they wanted to do business with someone they know and trust, and not have to drive 155 miles over the pass to get their car serviced. Many said it would influence their next car purchase if Cadillac were to leave Wenatchee.

Armed with those, he hired a lawyer and prepared to spend $30,000 to $40,000 to fight.

“It was going to cost me, but I considered it a good deal,” he said. “I believed whole-heartedly in what I was doing.”

Then on March 5, he was standing in line at SeaTac Airport bound for Phoenix, Ariz. for his 60th birthday when the phone rang. It was GM calling to say they were reinstating his Cadillac dealership. No arbitration necessary.

“I was astounded. It is a big win for Wenatchee,” Baldock said. “It has to do with the letters from customers and our perseverance and the strength of our argument.”

Out of the 1,100 GM and Chrysler dealerships that filed for arbitration, 661 had their brands reinstated. And on that day, the little guys took a stand against the big guy and won big.

The growth of the Internet has had an effect on almost all types of media. For newspapers, radio and television, the lure of the Internet creates both problems and opportunities.

As they seek new ways to stay viable, ingenuity has given rise to new ideas.

The Wenatchee Business Journal spoke to three different local media companies to see how they are updating their product and technology to keep customers coming back for more.

Newspaper: El Mundo gets creative with advertising campaign

Gustavo Montoya, owner of El Mundo Spanish newspaper poses with three of the Jose Marti awards the newspaper won and the 2010 World Cup jerseys on the wall behind him. COURTESY PHOTO

Gustavo Montoya, who purchased the weekly Spanish language newspaper, El Mundo, from Jim Tiffany in December 2008, is focused on making his newspaper stand out from the crowd, rather than venturing into online territory. According to his surveys, the printed version is still what his readers desire most. Creating a different experience for them with that newspaper is what Montoya wanted. What he got was national recognition from his peers for a job well done.

Recently, the newspaper began a 2010 World Cup advertising campaign. The aim of the campaign was to find something different for people to do with a printed paper.

“How can we get people to play with it and have more contact with it? How can we do something fun with it? That’s what we were thinking,” Montoya said.

What Montoya and his team came up with was a sort of sports-related origami. The paper began printing two foldable, collectible jerseys of the 32 World Cup teams in each issue on Feb. 18 and has around 10 jerseys left to print. So far, the response to the campaign has been tremendous, Montoya said.

“People are already collecting them. And the advertisers have been very happy with the response as well,” he said.

El Mundo signed Comcast as the sponsor of 16 of the 32 jerseys, and the company will also sponsor the special World Cup edition the paper will run later this year. The first World Cup game, between South Africa and Mexico, will take place on June 11.

Montoya was asked to speak about the jerseys at the National Association of Hispanic Publications convention held between March 10 and March 13, in Albuquerque, N.M. He presented the idea to a panel and received good reviews. The paper won five José Martí Publishing Awards at the conference for work in its 2009 editions.

“I told the panel, ‘You cannot do this online, or on radio, or on the television. It is this kind of creative thinking that will help small newspapers survive,’” Montoya said.

To see how to fold the jerseys, click here to watch the Elmundous video titled, “Aprende cómo armar tu Playera.”

TV & Internet Hybrid?

What do you get if you mix two radio people and a Web site designer/graphic artist and let the mixture simmer for a couple of years? No it’s not the Brady Bunch, it’s an Internet TV station.

When Mark Wheeler, owner of Wheeler Broadcasting, met graphic designer and marketer Carl Polson, owner of the Wenatchee Media Boys, and Kelly Hart, formerly of Cherry Creek Radio, he knew the trio could create something new and different together. That was two years ago.

It took time, improvements in technology, and interest generated by on-demand online TV and movie availability to create a market for the Internet TV station concept. Now, the need is here, said Wheeler.

“Right now, Internet and TV boxes are merging. You can watch Hulu.com and Netflix on your TV and you can watch videos for free with no commercials. Eventually, customers won’t see a difference between TV and Internet video,” Wheeler said.

But the price tag difference to those providing the content is huge, he said. To bring a network television station to Wenatchee would cost millions. To start NCWTV.com, the partners’ only investment was their time and energy. Still, they pretty much had to invent that wheel on their own.

“The marketing and figuring out how to do the production took a lot of research. There are not a whole lot of examples in the country for what we are doing right now. We are using all the technology that we can to make it work,” Wheeler said.

Today, the trio have their Internet TV site, NCWTV.com up and running, offering a blend of sports, special event videos, and local news to any viewer with decent bandwidth.

By tracking their hits, they’ve found they have a niche with the high school sports videos. The District Cross Country Meet at Walla Walla Park last fall was their big winner. It garnered the station almost 80,000 page views and 16,000 unique individual viewers, who then stayed on the site and looked around.

Now, what they’d like to do is add more editorial content, and leverage their radio access to promote the site. If they can do that successfully, they can create a hybrid of print-like news, TV and radio in one medium.

“There’s a lot of potential for advertisers and content that we have yet to fully explore,” Wheeler said. “We think we are on the right path to generate enough revenue for the business to sustain enough news and permanent content.”

Wheeler has been in broadcasting 22 years and owns Wheeler Broadcasting. His stations include KEYG 98.1 FM and 98.5 FM, Grand Coulee, and KXA 93.7 FM, Cle Elum.

Hart is the announcer and is also managing KULE AM and FM in Ephrata, and KZML 95.9 owned by Bustos Broadcasting Company.

To learn more about the Internet television station, go to NCWTV.com.

Radio: ‘We will still be here’

Gary Patrick, general manager of Columbia River Media Group, said that though radio is changing these days with more of an online presence, the actual radio portion of his business isn’t going to go away any time soon.

Gary Patrick, Columbia River Media Group manager. COURTESY PHOTO

All of the Columbia River Media Group stations KKRT (ESPN), KKRV (104.7 Country), KWIQ (Country, Moses Lake) and KWLN (LaNueva), have their own Web sites. The content is slightly different for each of them, but all have the same focus – to reach customers where they spend the most time these days – on the Internet.

“To stay in front of your audience you have to say in touch with the mediums that your listeners are using. If people are on computers then that is where we need to be,” Patrick said.

He said Columbia River Media Group will also launch a smart phone application for the iPhone later this year. The company is also considering texting to stay in touch with listeners. It has already created a Facebook page for KKRV and also streams KKRV live on the Web site.

The company also offers Associated Press news on KKRV and KWIQ, and posts videos of current local events. But Patrick said the company doesn’t see itself ever putting all of its focus on the Internet, even as it follows listeners to the next great tech gadget.

“The Web site is a great promotional tool for the radio station. But the station is, and always will be the engine that drives the train. The Web site just enhances that engine,” he said.

Radio will continue to adapt to new technologies, Patrick said, despite what the naysayers say.

“They said radio was dead when TV was invented, and when FM came along, and when the Internet came along,but people still spend more time with radio than anything,” Patrick said. “As long as we provide compelling programming that people want to listen to, radio will be fine. They keep the throwing new mediums at us, but we will still be here.”

When Nancy Tedeschi invented an easy-to-hold screw for repairing eyeglasses in 2007, she had no background in inventions, and had no idea how difficult a task it would be to sell her creation. She tried everything, from beating the pavement to sending videos of her mother repairing her glasses with the product to companies all over the U.S. Little did she know that a optician in New York and her own sleuth work would garner her two contracts and industry-wide recognition, almost over night.

Though she has finally achieved success, she hasn’t forgotten that long hard road, and plans to help others do what she did – the nearly impossible task of inventing a product.

Tedeschi, who has a background in real estate and title insurance,came up with the idea when her mom went over seas to do volunteer work. While there, her mom broke her glasses. Being the practical sort, she took off an earring and poked it through the tiny screw hole to hold her glasses together. Everywhere she went, her beaded earring dangled from her frames like a charm.

“Everybody asked her about it. So she called me and told me I have to invent charms for glasses, so I did,” Tedeschi said.

Then one day, while working on the charm product she got tired of holding the tiny washer and the tiny screw and trying to fit them into the frames at the same time. So she invented a tab that she put on the washer and it helped her hold onto it.

“One day, I asked myself, if I could put a tab on the washer, why not put a tab on the bottom of the screw?”

The optical screw Tedeschi designed has a snap-off tail. The longer length allows customers to repair their eyeglasses more easily than with regular, tiny optical screws. COURTESY PHOTO

She researched the sizes of optical screws, then went to an engineer and showed him her drawings. Heil Screws in Rochester, New York made the Snap-off prototype for her. She filed a provisional patent for the screws in August 2007, and has since filed for patents in 11 countries. From there, she figured, it was only a matter of time before success came her way.

She started taking her product to big retail stores to try and get it on the shelf and met with resistance. She found that most of the stores bought from large suppliers who supplied more than one product. They didn’t want to talk to her about one screw. Still, for about a year, she went door to door, day after day hoping for success.

She also mailed her product along with a video made in 2009 showing her mom repairing her own glasses, to suppliers all over the country. Her queries met with no response.

Finally, she walked into a RiteAid store one day, picked up an eyeglass repair kit and read the label to see who distributed it. It was FGX International, home of the Foster Grant and Magnivision brands. She picked up the phone, called FGX and sent them the sample of the screws and the video. They called her the next day.

Tedeschi went to Rhode Island to meet with them. She was there all of five minutes before the guy told her the product was a “no brainer.” The company liked the charms too, which she had also filed a patent on.

The sale puts her screw product on Foster Grant/Magnivision displays at stores like Target, WalMart, KMart, Fred Meyers, Joanne’s, Staples, Home Depot, Michaels, CVS Pharmacy, and RiteAid.

But the deal gave her only half the optical market.

The other half, the wholesale optical industry, is served by entirely different suppliers. Success there came after she got some press in the industry magazine, Vision Monday, in its new product section. She got a phone call from an optician named Drew Washton in Long Island.

“He said this is the biggest revolution he’s seen in screws in his 30 years in business. He called his salesman at OptiSource and told him, ‘You’ve got to see this screw!’”

OptiSource International supplies opticians and optometrists around the world with parts, lab supplies and eyeglass equipment.

“This company is top of the line,” Tedeschi said.

She went to Long Island to meet with them, and was surprised when they paid her a fee up front to have an exclusive agreement with her. At that point, she had more than $200,000 of her own money invested in the idea, and any kind of income was a welcome relief.

At last count, she’d sold about 80,000 screws through OptiSource.

But she remembers the many long days without sales.

“The hardest part about being an entrepreneur is perseverance and believing in what you have. And it’s the ‘not-giving-up’ part that’s the hardest. The idea is the easy part,” Tedeschi said.

Her goal now is to make enough money so she doesn’t have to work every day at her mortgage buying business, MLV Services, so she can take time to teach kids in inner-city schools to do what she just learned the hard way. She said nobody tells inventors how to do this or how hard it will be.

“You spend so much time having doors slammed in your face that it’s hard. It’s so frustrating. Many simply give up. That’s why I want to help other people do this. I had the good idea and no competition but I still got nowhere for thee years.”

Now things are a little bit easier for her. Her Snap-off screws were up for product of the year at the Vision Expo in New York, and she’s already talking about more products, though she wouldn’t reveal what yet.

For pictures and videos of the Eyeego products, go to the company’s Web site at www.eyeego.com.

Realtors Perrin Cornell and Doug Andrews recently moved from Windermere Real Estate to Century 21 Exclusively on Jan. 1. With the move they gained access to the nationwide real estate market, which put some new wind in their sails.

While the switch energized them, they said they fear that with many of the tax credits from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act running out for home buyers, it will mean a downturn in the overall industry come April 30.

That’s when most of the Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act tax credits will expire. The act gave a tax credit of up to $8,000 for qualified first-time home buyers purchasing a principal residence. It also authorized a tax credit of up to $6,500 for qualified repeat home buyers. That program was funded at the federal level with stimulus funds aimed to boost an ailing economy.

The plan worked pretty well, said Cornell. Nationwide, approximately 50 percent of homes sold last year were purchased by first-time buyers. In the local market, about 47 percent of homes went to first-time buyers. So, on average, about half the buyers who purchased last year in the U.S. were able to take advantage of that $8,000 credit.

This year, buyers have until April 30 to close a deal before the money runs out, unless they are serving in the military overseas. For that group, the tax credit doesn’t end until May 2011.

Neither are sure exactly how much the program’s termination will affect the Wenatchee area sales though. Statistically, the housing market is still holding steady. Prices have declined slightly but have not nose-dived as some markets around the country have, Andrews said.

“We are right now about where 2006 ended price-wise,” Andrews explained.

In Feb. 2010, the Wenatchee area had 530 homes on the market, 85 less than the same time a year before. That’s good, said Andrews. It means the market is not as saturated and that helps stabilize prices for sellers.

The most active area of the local market today is in homes priced $200,000 to $350,000, Cornell said. The price range above $450,000 to $750,000 is slower, he added, but for houses priced $750,000 and above, activity picks up again. For the higher-end buyers, tax credits are normally not the main consideration, Cornell said, so he’s not as concerned about slowing sales in that market. Still, he sees reasons to be optimistic about the overall strength of the local market.

“We’ve got low power rates, the third largest medical community in the state, and terrific recreational opportunities that keep people moving here,” Cornell said.

Both Cornell and Andrews are optimistic about their move to Century 21 Exclusively. The fact it is a locally owned business was important to them, as was the size of the franchise. Windermere operates about 300 offices in 10 states, while Century 21 has around 8,500 around the world. Cornell said he is working with a client from Newport News, Va., and he has a listing from Connecticut.

Cornell became a real estate agent in 2004 after a career in banking, land development, commercial and secondary marketing and loan servicing. Andrews is originally from Bremerton, Wash. and moved to Wenatchee in 2006 from Southern California He has 40 years experience in the real estate industry. Ironically, both Cornell and Andrews are 64 and were artillery officers in the military, stationed at Fort Sill, Okla. They first met about two and a half years ago and have been work partners ever since.