While some may lament the loss of another company headquarters in the merger of Umpqua and Sterling banks, the good news is the new bank combines Sterling's solid lineup of strong departments with a bank widely considered an innovator in the financial services area. Saturday's…
Moody’s Investor Services has upgraded the city of Spokane Valley’s bond rating to Aa3. “The upgrade … reflects the city's low debt burden, sizeable tax base which is expected to expand into the medium-term, and healthy financial performance, which is maintained through strong management practices,”…
Most people know that Microsoft shut down product support for individual users of Windows XP. But it still offers custom product support for companies that want to maintain that operating system. ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley summarizes how that works in this article. The article noted…
More ideas for people with new business ideas. There's an entrepreneurial panel on Wednesday April 16 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the ShareSpace Spokane office on the third floor of Steam Plant. It's free. It features Brandon Foote, founder and CEO of OnPoint Imaging;…
Katie Neal and Paige Bernier are getting set to earn their Gonzaga engineering degrees this spring. But they found time last weekend to be one of three winning teams during the Startup Weekend Spokane competition. Thirty three ideas were pitched and 11 teams moved on…
News alert: No one offered to buy the domain Spokane.com in a recent online auction. No bids came in. The owner set starting bids at $125,000, hoping to hit a reserve price of $250,000. That's apparently too high. No one made a single bid, said…
Here's a condensed version of tomorrow's story, about the visit by economist Justin Wolfers to Gonzaga University's econ symposium. Rich people are happier than poor people, not just according to popular opinion. Wolfers has spent the past several years examining studies that support that claim,…
Unless Spokane-based hydrogen fuel cell company ReliOn could land a big investment or find a buyer, its chances of riding out 2014 looked bleak, its former chief executive officer said this week. So to keep the company operating, ReliOn’s investors agreed to sell the company…
The second of two live debates on the topic of an increase to the national minimum wage will start this evening at 7 p.m. at Gonzaga University's Jepson Center. The event is free to the public. Sponsored by the Washington Policy Center, tonight's debate will…
There's a debate this evening on the topic of a national minimum wage. It's presented by the Washington Policy Center and hosted by the University of Washington. You can check it out online through TVW, the state television network. The Washington Policy Center hosts a…
A Boston company later this year will try to launch the largest high-altitude wind turbine in Alaska. Altaeros Energies plans to launch a 1000-foot-high floating wind turbine south of Fairbanks to bring affordable power to a remote community. Altaeros managers explained to The New York…
We'll be asking what the actual headcount reduction will be, following today's announcement that the Umpqua Bank merger with Sterling Bank has cleared all hurdles. The first signs of the deal will be Sterling’s regional signs being replaced by Umpqua Bank signs the weekend of…
Organizers of the next Startup Weekend Spokane are hosting a “how-to-pitch” workshop explaining how to present a one-minute business pitch. The next Startup Weekend will be April 11-13. It’s a three-day competition that involves teams working on a startup business idea. It often draws more…
The heated debate in the north Spokane Logan Neighborhood will continue in a public way today, around 11:30 a.m. Residents in that area oppose plans by the McDonald's Corp. to build a drive-through-only restaurant at the corner of Hamilton and Augusta. They say traffic in…
A week ago we posted the plan by the McDonald's Corp. to build a new restaurant near Gonzaga, on the corner of Hamilton and Augusta. This week, the big noise is coming from that business's neighbors, who strongly oppose the decision to make the restaurant…
The National Retail Federation urged the U.S. Senate on Wednesday to switch the nation from fraud-susceptible credit and debit cards to more protected cards using a personal identification number (PIN). The NRF said credit card-issuers' insistence on cards that use a signature instead of a…
The next Startup Weekend Spokane will begin on April 11. In preparation, let's take a moment to see what's happened to iCPooch, one of the entrants in a 2012 Startup Weekend. Though it didn't win on that occasion, its founders, young Brooke Martin and her…
McDonald’s Corp. will open a new restaurant this summer on property it purchased near Gonzaga University in north Spokane. The Oak Brook, Ill., company bought two lots on the southwest corner of Augusta Avenue and Hamilton Street. It’s taking the corner lot last used by…
Cindy Cohn, legal director and general counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, will discuss “National Security Agency (NSA) Mass Spying, the Constitution, and You” at the Gonzaga University School of Law Judge Justin L. Quackenbush Lecture at noon March 31. The lecture will be at…
Washington state’s unemployment rate stayed stuck at 6.4 percent in February, state officials reported Wednesday. The Employment Security Department also said Spokane’s jobless rate in January pushed up to 7.9 percent, a half percent higher than December. Because the department goes through a revision of…
Leo and Teresa Gonder, who own and operate a construction company in Leavenworth, Wash., will open the Tamarack Public House this summer at 912 W. Sprague Ave., in downtown Spokane. Following renovations, their hope is to have a soft opening around the time of Hoopfest,…
A few years back we did a quick item on the sign that some offices in downtown Spokane could see -- the "think" sign between Riverside and Main. A photo from the old view is in that blog post. This year, back in January, Magner…
In last week's SR story about Crowdswell, a website launched by partners of Spokane creative firm Magner Sanborn, we mentioned two local "swells" -- the name the site uses for worthy projects that people can support through funding or work. The two swells -- both…
Earlier this week we published survey results asking credit unions the financial impact of last fall's URM Stores credit card breach. The story is here. Here's a little infographic provided by the survey creator, the Northwest Credit Union Association, which represents institutions in Washington and…
Radio Shack announced it's going to close something like 1,1000 stores over the next year or so, roughly one of ever five it operates. We don't have any list that details where those closures will be. We'll keep after that, hoping to find out the…
The Spokesman-Review business team follows economic development in Spokane and the Inland Northwest.
