Bert Caldwell

I first worked as a journalist for the Cut Bank Pioneer Press, and my first hard-hitting assignment was covering the community’s sidewalk sales event. Sidewalk sales were – still are – one of the simple promotional devices small-town merchants used to capture what retail dollars they could before folks packed up for, say, Great Falls and a splurge at the JCPenney or Herberger’s. Despite the best efforts of the Cut Bank Café, couples would drive 100 miles for a meal. I recall one run to Lethbridge in the midst of a brutal winter just for a feast of good Chinese food. If a lawyer friend had not known the border guard at Del Bonita – the gate came down at 9 p.m. – we might have spent a longer night in Alberta than we intended.

Architect Glen Cloninger has begun construction on another phase of the Grapetree Village development on East 29th Avenue in Spokane. The 24,000-square-foot expansion is a continuation of the original, slightly smaller structure that opened in 2007, Cloninger said. He said that space is fully leased.

Knudtsen Chevrolet Co. opens for business on Wall Street this week. The dealership, 1500 E. Polston Ave. in Post Falls, will reward customers with 100 shares of General Motors Corp. stock if they buy a vehicle during a five-day sale that begins Wednesday, general sales manager Joe Morris said Monday.

His name is on the stationery, but Ed Schweitzer is now just one of 1,400 owners of the company he founded 25 years ago in Pullman. Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Inc. this month became 100 percent employee-owned.

The 60-odd members of a Spokane delegation that returned a week ago from China were still adjusting to Pacific Daylight Time at midweek. For most, it was an exhaustive trek from Beijing to Suchou to Hangchou to Shanghai that combined stops at many of the usual tourist destinations with factory tours.

Spokane ranks 29th in the new Forbes magazine list of Best Cities for Business and Careers, falling from ninth in the 2008 list. Coeur d'Alene slipped from 21st to 33rd in the ranking of small cities.

Apply2Save Inc. has lost its accreditation by the Spokane Better Business Bureau, which has fielded more than 2,200 inquiries about the Coeur d’Alene mortgage modification company this year. BBB regional president Jan Quintrall said her office has also received 90 complaints against Apply2Save in the last year. Although company officials have responded to every one, the volume and the company’s inability to meet BBB customer service standards resulted in an “F” grade and a decision in February by the organization’s board of directors to revoke accreditation, she said.

Gov. Chris Gregoire’s proposed cap-and-trade plan to limit carbon dioxide emissions was gasping for breath at week’s end, with the House Committee on Ecology & Parks trying to apply oxygen. Despite the governor’s good intentions, this is a measure that should not be resuscitated.

State officials Thursday awarded a $1 million grant to the Port of Ephrata to support a proposed $50 million plant that will make the giant tires used on mining equipment. The Republic Public Development Authority received $280,000 to install water, sewer and electrical service to the Torboy Industrial Park.

Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire Tuesday proposed a surcharge that might enable the state’s four-year campuses to minimize enrollment cutbacks, but that may not help Spokane’s Rick Hensley, who lost his radiology job in January. Hensley asked Gregoire, who was holding a business roundtable at Spokane Community College, to assure funding for a Yakima Valley Community College program that will enable him to upgrade his skills and get back into the profession.

Spokane County saw a net loss of only 30 jobs in February compared with January, as unemployment rose slightly to 9.7 percent. The increase follows a jump in unemployment of more than 2 percentage points from December to January.

Only 30 more Spokane County workers were jobless in February compared with January as unemployment inched up to 9.7 percent, after a jump of more than 2 percentage points from December to January.

Knudtsen Chevrolet Co. opens for business on Wall Street this week. The dealership, 1500 E. Polston Ave. in Post Falls, will reward customers with 100 shares of General Motors Corp. stock if they buy a vehicle during a five-day sale that begins Wednesday, general sales manager Joe Morris said Monday.

The anger of Bernard Madoff’s victims spilled onto Manhattan’s Pearl Street on Thursday, freshly heated by a confession that touched all the requisite legal bases but never touched home. In a plea allocation slightly more than five pages long, the gray-suited, silver-haired villain outlined his preposterous scheme, made all the more absurd by the utter inability of any regulator to unmask what had been unmasked for them. For anyone who would look closely, his financial wizardry was as credible as those old crudely doctored photos that appeared to show a swami levitating.

Old National Bank was folded into U.S. Bank 20 years ago, but its former management team continues to accrue interest. Witness the pending ascension of Phyllis Campbell to the chairmanship of JPMorgan Chase & Co. Pacific Northwest. She becomes the fourth ONB executive now heading a Northwest bank. The others are Pat Fahey, chairman and chief executive officer of Frontier Financial Corp. in Everett; D. Michael Jones, president and CEO of Banner Bank in Walla Walla; and Harold Gilkey, chairman and CEO of Sterling Financial Corp. in Spokane.