Frank Bartel

Skipper's has closed half of its six seafood restaurants in Spokane. One is on West Third Avenue in an almost solid strip of extraordinarily busy and successful eateries stretching block after block. Until now, "Restaurant Row," as the halfmile stretch of fast-food joints and fullservice restaurants is often referred to, has been invincible. Nobody has ever pulled the plug.

When friends and acquaintances return from a weekend in Seattle or Portland, typically it's not the big new hotels or plastic shopping malls about which they rave. It's some little neighborhood business enclave with a mix of different and unusual shopping and dining nooks and crannies. Such pint-size shopping and dining experiences are sprinkled throughout Portland, Seattle, Tacoma and population centers across the country.

The dismantling of Washington's landmark health care reform act by Republicans puts number crunchers for insurance companies back in charge of life and death decisions again. The reform act of 1993 treated everyone alike, and the goal was coverage for all. But the new law says insurance companies can discriminate against people in terms of where they live, their family size, their wellness activities and their age.

An apparently minor oil leak that the state attributes to the Davenport Hotel is no cause for public panic or stress, counsels utility executive Judy Cole. The Spokane area manager for Washington Water Power Co. is seeking to allay concern over the future of the grand old hotel which may be raised by the latest state Ecology Department finding. It says contamination directly beneath the long-mothballed grand hotel could represent a possible health or environmental hazard.

LOWRY SIGNS HEALTH REFORM LAW, A MAJOR VICTORY FOR AWB MEMBERS, exulted the banner headline in the May 12 newsletter of the Association of Washington Business. Crowed the act's chief architect, State Rep. Phil Dyer, R-Issaquah, in a Spokesman-Review article published at about that same time, "We have found health care reform that works." Yeah, but for whom?

Who's in charge here? Who's responsible if the community doesn't run the way it should? The mayor? A figurehead.

Spokane stands to lose a good portion of its identity as one community on Tuesday of next week. That is the day on which residents of the proposed municipality of Spokane Valley will vote on incorporation as a separate city. Incorporation could easily pass, which, from my point of view, is a disturbing prospect.

Hundreds of Washington doctors are pouring millions of dollars into starting their own health insurance company. But organizers say it will bear little resemblance to the typical for-profit insurance firm whose executives and shareholders care only about maximizing return on investment. Instead of making money, founders of United Physicians of Washington (UPW) pledge to do the following:

My apologies to county extension agents. In attacking farm subsidies, it appears I may have created a false impression of the work performed by these public servants. In the interest of fairness and accuracy - and because my wife's favorite columnist and TV talk show personality used to be a county agent, as it turns out - I feel compelled to set things straight.

Red Lobster will start construction in June at its north Coeur d'Alene site on Neider Avenue just south of Kmart. But the seafood chain has yet to find a site in Spokane. This is the lastest from the Orlando, Fla.-based seafood giant's broker in this area.

In downtown Spokane, the powers that be have put together a highly promising response to ever-escalating competition from outlying shopping centers that saps the vitality of the city center. But before the promise can be fulfilled, two key parts of the program must get the city's stamp of approval.

The backroads Montana hamlet of Ismay, which changed its moniker to Joe two years ago to capitalize on the popularity of possibly the greatest quarterback who ever lived, is losing its namesake to retirement. But officials of the upstart cow-town on the edge of nowhere are selling Joe Montana souvenirs like hotcakes since last Wednesday's announcement that the grid great is giving up the game. "We've gotten quite a flood of calls for T-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers and a variety of smaller momentos," reports town clerk Wayne Rieger.

Few complain that doctors make too much money. Virtually everyone recognizes that given the huge investment of time, money, energy, and intellect that goes into acquiring a medical diploma and the prerequisite experience to practice medicine, doctors earn their pay. Theirs is an extremely grueling and harrowing call to duty that not many of us are willing to accept. And so down through the years, doctors have earned our esteem and admiration.

Public dignitaries, government officials, representatives of social services agencies, bankers and developers gathered by the dozens recently at the old Commercial Hotel in downtown Spokane. The occasion was the dedication of a $2-million project to house half a hundred homeless persons at a recycled old Skid Road rooming house in the 1100 of West First Avenue. What a bang-up turnout. The list of figureheads was as long as your arm.

Why should taxpayers subsidize farmers when they do not subsidize small businesses? A fair question? Or is it cold and unfeeling toward those who till the land sunup to sundown to ensure an ample and cheap supply of food for cityfolks' tables? Hmm. Odd that we keep hearing about massive farm surpluses.

The new transit center nearing completion in the middle of downtown Spokane doesn't in the least resemble what I had in mind. For me, the original description of an open, airy, atrium evoked images of an intricate, almost delicate, gridwork of geometric shapes crafted from metal and glass.

' Most Americans want to help minorities and women succeed, but reject any programs that seem to give them an unfair advantage in school and the workplace." - USA Today

Until a few years ago, there was no public marketplace in Spokane. Soon there may be two: One outdoors in Riverfront Park, on the south span of the Howard Street Bridge.

From a business perspective, the state budget proposed last week in Olympia by House Republicans makes good sense on the whole. It gives state employees raises that taxpayers can afford - $100 a month. At the same time, it requires state employees to start picking up about 10 percent of the $330-a-month their health care insurance costs taxpayers.

'This community has a very strong affinity to the unique character and quality of downtown," observes William Stacey Cowles, chairman of the Downtown Action Committee. "Just about everywhere we turn," says the chair of the broad-based task force charged with rejuvenating the city center, "people are concerned with what's going on downtown. "And they want to see it come out right."

A physician/ gentleman rancher thins trees along his stream to control flooding, then is stalked and harassed by regulators who deem his actions "might lead to sunburned fish." Sunburned fish? A focus group of Seattle city-dwellers brought together to talk about property rights simply can't relate to the concept. Say what? Property rights?

Norman Thorpe is bowing out of the Spokane business news scene. The Spokane Journal of Business, of which he was editor and principal owner, is being acquired by an affiliate of The SpokesmanReview. Thorpe says he will take time out to write a book. After that, who knows?

' 'What's the difference," inquires the first sentence of a handwritten letter from a reader, "between a wheat farmer and a little puppy?" Then comes the punch line, delivered in a labored scrawl, "When a little puppy grows up, it quits whining." Cold. Brrrr!

In recent months, this column has served as a sounding board on farm subsidies. To what extent subsidies survive will be decided in the coming months, as Congress crafts a new fiveyear farm program. The first hearings are next week. Wrenching revisions appear inescapable, given the sea change in national politics, downsizing of government, and impetus for a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget.