Connect: Newcomer finds niche in Spokane
What should you do if you find yourself trapped in L.A. for a decade or two?
How about this: move your family and your business to Spokane, buy a house, and then buy a historic hotel and rent it out as cheap office space.
That’s what Steve Salvatori, partner in Salvatori-Scott Inc., did this past summer.
“We moved up here in June. I guess my wife and I had been looking for a place to end up for the last couple of years,” says Salvatori. “We looked at Madison, at Boulder, Bend, Portland, all these places.”
On his list of requirements: a smaller city with its future ahead of it.
On his wife, Sami’s, list: a college town with a city feel. She did not want to live in the wilderness.
“And we both agreed we wanted a four-season climate – that was mandatory,” Salvatori says.
A friend from L.A. was visiting Spokane last year and called the couple.
“We looked Spokane up on the Internet and got on a plane up here,” Salvatori says.
They toured Coeur d’Alene, but nothing clicked.
On the second day a real estate agent took them on a tour of Spokane, and by 4 p.m. they’d put an offer on a house – still under construction – near Spokane Community College.
“We did kind of look at each other and ask ourselves if we were rushing things,” Salvatori says of that day in October 2006. But by June 2007 the family was on their way here.
“Our son was in high school and he wanted to finish that,” says Salvatori. “He graduated on June 8. On June 10, the moving van showed up.”
Whitney Salvatori – the oldest of the couple’s three children – landed a job at Eastern Washington University in the English department. Hillary is attending college at Chico State. And the youngest, David, is making plans for his future.
Sami Salvatori has found a job with the Institute for Extended Learning as an adjunct counselor.
“They were all pretty excited about the move,” says Salvatori.
Salvatori-Scott Inc., the national company he started in 1987, is a wholesaler of consumer products for grocery and drug stores, so whether his office was in California or in Washington didn’t make much difference.
“We used to have a lot of customers in Southern California, but we don’t anymore,” says Salvatori.
In May, Salvatori bought the 100-year-old Lorraine Hotel, 308 W. First, out of foreclosure. He paid about $870,000 for the 10,000-square-foot building, according to past news accounts.”I read about the Lorraine in the Journal of Business,” says Salvatori.
“I guess I bought it on gut instinct. I don’t do that very often because usually my gut is not talking.”
The Lorraine now holds 21 offices, a meeting room, broadband Internet access and free parking for tenants. Rent is as low as $250 a month, no deposit or contract required.
“I’m a small-business man and I came from a small-business family,” says Salvatori.
Salvatori says he’s not getting rich on this venture, but he’s breaking even. Of course, he owns the building, so “appreciation will help make me whole, too.”
Tenant Bill Kalivas, regional sales director for Force10 Networks, was working out of his home this summer.
“I have two small kids and it’s really hard to do that,” says Kalivas. “I really needed an office downtown, and the terms here were just unbelievable.”
Not only does he like the central location, he likes the idea behind Spokane Entrepreneurial Center.
“I think this is a model that if replicated downtown could work really well, even if you just do one floor in a building that’s sitting vacant,” Kalivas says. “This is an entrepreneur-friendly environment. I really like that. People come and go and pop into my office, so we talk a lot and network a lot.”
Gary Mallon, technology and industry manager for Greater Spokane Incorporated (formerly the chamber of commerce), says, “It sure is a welcome addition to the community, and I like that it’s for all types of businesses.”
And Salvatori couldn’t be happier. The building is full with seven or eight on the waiting list.
“And personally, it’s just been a fantastic move to get here to Spokane.”