Spokane-Montana Corridor Shows High-Tech Potential

Gary Mahn recalls that when he started a small entrepreneurial technology firm in Boise nearly 20 years ago, he didn’t have much company.

“There were only about eight tech businesses there when I started,” said Mahn, who is in his second year as director of Idaho’s Department of Commerce.

Now Boise and the Treasure Valley have some 400 technology firms that employ more than 30,000, Mahn said.

He envisions the possibilities of a similar high-tech corridor in the Spokane-Coeur d’Alene area.

Mahn, a Spokane native, was keynote speaker last Wednesday at the annual meeting of Jobs Plus, the Coeur d’Alene jobs recruitment organization.

He told the dinner crowd of more than 100 that “Spokane to Montana forms a unique corridor — and it’s important to make sure that every community in the corridor is strong.”

Mahn said the key areas of opportunity are tourism, international trade and technology.

“While we respect the traditional industries that got us here, such as mining and timber, we must move on,” Mahn said.

Of tourism, he said the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City will have a $150 million impact in Idaho and events commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition are expected to bring four million tourists to the state.

Mahn said one-third of Idaho’s agricultural products are exported, and the potential is huge for increased foreign trade. He said small businesses as well as large can benefit, citing a Southern Idaho company with just 13 employees that has opened trade ties with China.

But it is technology, Mahn said, “that weaves its thread through every one of our businesses.”

Access is a major issue, he said, urging development of a telecommunications system that “provides the same access in Bonners Ferry as in Boise or Pocatello.”

After his talk, Mahn said growth of a high-tech corridor should not be limited by state borders.

“There’s a lot of potential for cooperation,” he said. “Hardly any issue doesn’t have an economic aspect to it, from gaming to salmon to highway improvements to high tech,” he added. “We’re all in this together.”

Nor, he said, will significant high-tech growth require a “home run” recruitment of a large high-tech firm relocating or expanding to the area.

“I don’t think you need a `home run,”’ Mahn said. “Heck, Micron Technology started in the basement of a dental building.” The Boise-based semiconductor company now has about 16,000 employees.

In 1995 Micron was rumored to be considering sites near Post Falls for a plant, but plans did not materialize.

Mahn also said progress has been made in closing the skills gap needed to provide high-tech industry workers.

He praised the efforts of North Idaho College’s work force training program and the University of Idaho Research Park.

Mahn said community college programs can provide workers with computer skills, but Washington State University and the University of Idaho can help “take it to the next level,” producing computer scientists.

Cooperation was a common theme at the convivial Jobs Plus gathering.

Bob Potter, in his 13th year as Jobs Plus president, said he is in contact “almost weekly” with Spokane recruitment officials. Indeed, Potter graciously introduced Spokane Economic Development Commission President Mark Turner and Vice President Ken Olson at the banquet.

Jobs Plus director Charlie Nipp, of Parkwood Business Properties, recalled that when Jobs Plus was organized in March 1987, “there was no Silver Lake Mall, no senior center, no Templin’s, no outlet mall, no River Bend Center, no Coeur d’Alene Plaza, no Highlands development and golf course, and no sewers in several areas.

“The Coeur d’Alene Resort Golf Course was a mill site and the John Stone property (near North Idaho College) was a mill site,” he added.

Nipp noted the area’s continuing dramatic transition from the timber and mining-based economy to a diversified economy.

Given the rapid growth of Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene in the 1990s, it is interesting to imagine the possibilities when Jobs Plus holds its Silver Anniversary annual meeting a dozen years from now.

Perhaps Potter - the only president the organization has ever had - will still preside. He will be eighty-something then, still singing the praises of scenic North Idaho, still creating a family-friendly business environment, and recalling a time of little traffic and open spaces along I-90, back before the area’s technology boom really began.