Tyrus Tenold Spokane Industries Vp Has Enough On His Agenda To Keep Several People Busy

Door handles. Subway car couplings. Rock crushers.

Spokane Industries, it seems, can make almost anything.

Except the one thing Tyrus Tenold needs most: a 30-hour day.

Tenold, 47, who runs the steel foundry with two of his brothers, is a man on the move, a man in dire need of a few more hours he can stuff into a schedule stretched paper-thin.

His time is given to a number of businesses, boards, charities and personal obligations, almost all of which could be full-time pursuits.

Competing for Tenold’s time are:

The foundry at the Spokane Industrial Park, where Tenold is vice president in charge of the metal products division.

A photo lab on the South Hill he owns with his wife, Kathy.

The city’s Sports, Entertainment and Convention Advisory Board (SEACAB), and its Spokane Convention Center Expansion Advisory Committee, which he chairs.

And everything else that jockeys for room in his planner: The Downtown Spokane Plan Steering Committee, fund-raising for Congressman George Nethercutt, the Spokane Children’s Chorus Board of Directors and his son’s Boy Scout Troop.

Even Tenold’s weekends are booked. He’s taking classes at Mount Spokane to become a ski patroller.

“You just get to the point where you’re scheduling yourself, and you try to fit everything in,” he said simply, as if his frantic schedule was how everyone lives.

Others, however, are amazed at Tenold’s pace and how much time he donates to the community.

“I meet with him at 7 in the morning and I know he’s going strong until late in the evening,” said City Councilman Jeff Colliton, who also sits on the convention center committee. “Tyrus is one of the volunteers that works tirelessly on behalf of the community.”

Of all of Tenold’s diverse activities, the most important for Spokane’s future may be his determination to see Convention Center expansion.

The $85 million project is expected to double the number of conventions held in Spokane annually and bring thousands of visitors and millions of new dollars into the city.

It should also make Spokane a better place to live, said Tenold.

“We’ll have better hotels. We’ll have better restaurants,” he said. “Our air service will be improved. Every time we do something like this the community benefits.”

As chairman of the advisory committee, he presides over an unwieldy group with more than 50 members, each with their own perspectives and agendas.

Nevertheless, he’s been able to prod them toward agreement about where the proposed 240,000-square-foot expansion would be located and a better understanding of how it will be funded.

Chairing the committee “is almost like trying to grab a cup of mercury in your hand,” said Mike Kobluk, the director of the Convention Center and Opera House. “Slowly, over the course of time, he’s been able to round up most of those rivulets and bring them back into the fold.”

Even committee members who have had sharp disagreements over the direction of the project have no complaints with Tenold’s leadership.

“I think Tyrus is an honorable man who truly has the best interest of the community at heart,” said Erik Skaggs of Metropolitan Mortgage, which unsuccessfully lobbied the committee to build the convention center on its Summit property on North Monroe.

With no business interests downtown, Tenold has little to gain directly from the convention center expansion. He took on the project because he is the Facilities Committee Chair for SEACAB. “It’s probably something I could have passed on,” he said.

His lack of bias gives him added credibility with the members, said Kobluk.

Tenold said his interest in public service comes from his father, John Tenold, who served as president of the Spokane Symphony and as United Way campaign chairman.

A metallurgist from Minnesota, John Tenold took over the struggling Spokane Steel Foundry in 1952, which later became one of the first tenants of the Industrial Park.

Tyrus, whose name is derived from his grandmother Tyra, joined the family business after attending the University of Washington, but left 11 years later to strike out on his own.

In 1981, Tenold opened a photo studio in River Park Square, and added a second store at Lincoln Heights in 1985. When part of River Park Square closed for remodeling, he consolidated the operation at a new Regal Street location.

After a stint selling securities and insurance, Tenold returned to Spokane Industries in 1996, joining his brothers Bob and Greg in what is now a $20 million a year business with 220 employees.

As he leads a tour of the foundry, Tenold notes with pride that the steel company sends almost all of its parts and components out of town, to customers like Caterpillar in Illinois, Kenworth trucks in Seattle and the New York City subway system.

“It’s all new money coming into Spokane,” he said. “And the Convention Center is about bringing new money into Spokane as well.”