Paula Davenport

A North Idaho aircraft maintenance company has landed a yearlong contract to modify and upgrade 31 Horizon Air-owned Q400 turboprop airplanes. Work will be completed within the former Air National Guard Hangar at Spokane International Airport, Horizon officials said.

Though their beloved Seattle Seahawks failed to make it to this year's Super Bowl, Inland Northwest football fans tried new and true ways to celebrate this year's big game, broadcast from Miami. In Spokane Valley, 200 people packed into a dimmed gym at the Church of the Nazarene, where Super Bowl XLI action filled a movie screen. They noshed on German sausages with sauerkraut, hot dogs, carrots and soft drinks.

It's bigger, it promises to be better and it's got a brand new trademark-protected name: Greater Spokane Incorporated. That's the name adopted by the newly wedded Spokane Area Economic Development Council and the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce, which tied the knot at a reception in the INB Performing Arts Center Wednesday afternoon.

Chalk up another first for Spokane. Starting today, it's the focus of a slick, month-long special section in the in-flight magazines of both Horizon Air and Alaska Airlines. "To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time Alaska Airlines Magazine/Horizon Air Magazine have done a special section of this nature, with a focus on business and recreation in a specific city or county," said Michele Andrus Dill, editor of Horizon Air Magazine, associate editor of Alaska Airlines Magazine and editor of the section on Spokane. She's been with the Seattle-based magazine company for nine years.

Monday was particularly quiet in Spokane. Gone were tens of thousands of athletes, officials and fans of the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, who headed home after Sunday's close of the eight-day event. The question business owners were pondering: Did the national competition fuel the economic bonanza they'd hoped for?

So far, skating fans seem to be sticking close to the ice action, spending freely at the restaurants closest to the pair of Spokane rinks hosting the 2007 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, in town through Sunday.

Countless television viewers could get a glimpse of Ariahnna McCall-Smith's handiwork this week and she's on pins and needles about it. She's among 10 women who've been working overtime at the local Kimmel Athletic Supply Co. For weeks, they've been running computerized sewing machines, stitching logos on official apparel for figure skaters, officials, television journalists, attending physicians and fans of the 2007 State Farm U.S. Figure Skating Championships, in town through Jan. 28.

The crazy chances he was forced to take growing cherries groomed John Pariseau to manage a young, high-risk investment corporation based in Spokane. The venture, WIN Partners LLC, began in 2003 making equity investments in promising start-up companies in Eastern Washington and North Idaho. WIN Partners receives preferred stock in exchange and its members generally sit on the companies' boards of directors.

When it comes to job creation, Spokane is hard at work. The county outpaced every other community in the state in job growth during the 12-month period that began in October 2005, according to state statistics.