► On the Record

“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back the minute it begins to rain.”

-- Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Reporter's Notebook

Paul Leonard can be reached at pleonard@vbjusa.com

A message to the mayor-elect

After the most expensive race in city history, today there is no doubt that Councilman Tim Leavitt will become the 57th mayor of Vancouver. And like anyone else campaigning in a hard-fought election for the past eight months, perhaps he feels like he’s in for a little break.

But if mayor-elect Leavitt is looking for a vacation, he’s in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

The problems our city and region faces are too important to wait for Day One of the Leavitt Administration.

After covering his campaign this summer and fall, it is clear Tim cares deeply about a city he’s called home since childhood. But in regards to certain promises made on the campaign trail to the business community – well, we plan to hold him accountable in the coming months.

First and foremost on that list – jobs. Clark County continues to be one of the hardest-hit in terms of unemployment in the state. Firms just emerging from the longest recession in 60 years are still reluctant to hire. Many other companies, retail outlets and restaurants have shut their doors for good.

When we talk about jobs, other issues seem to diminish in impact. For example, the controversy over proposed CRC bridge tolls would be far less pressing if thousands of Clark County residents did not have to commute to jobs in Oregon everyday.

Mayor Pollard was willing to travel anywhere, anytime if it meant landing a new business for Vancouver. His successor has a golden opportunity to coax across the river Oregon business owners nervous about impending tax hikes, as well as California companies looking to ditch a state notoriously unfriendly to business interests for one ranked in the Forbes Top Ten.

Second, the mayor-elect needs not only to keep his promise to convene a business advisory council, but to carefully select its members. The council should be composed of business leaders from companies of all sizes and all economic sectors, including those who may have supported the incumbent in this year’s election.

So Mr. Mayor-elect, if you’re out there – the time for decisive action not only to help sustain our economy, but to be an integral part of its growth, starts now.

Business Around the Northwest

Cut prices? Raise value? Both play part in strategy plan, South Sound Business Examiner

Encoder maker sees economy as bottoming, Spokane Journal of Business

Report: hiring to improve in November, Portland Business Journal

► On the Record

“We are disappointed in last night's results, but the voters did speak and we will respect their decision.”

-- Marsha Manning, campaign manager for Vancouver Mayor Royce Pollard’s reelection campaign (see VBJ’s story on Election Day here).

Reporter's Notebook

Paul Leonard can be reached at pleonard@vbjusa.com

The opposite of exuberance

In 1996, then Federal Reserve Chief Alan Greenspan famously coined the phrase “irrational exuberance” in regards to imprudent dot-com era investors.

Fast-forward to 2009, with this reporter looking up an antonym for “exuberance” in an attempt to describe the current state of the regional economy.

Apathy? Lethargy, perhaps?

By any name, it seems just as irrational as the overly-speculative dot-com boom or the debt-filled housing bubble of the last decade.

My awakening came as I reported the closure of Princeton Athletic Club last week. Researching past articles on the business, I discovered a quote from PAC owner David Lawson, talking about downtown Vancouver’s economic prospects in the fall of 2007.

It was like reading a note from my third grade self buried next to the jungle gym in a time capsule – distant, yet strangely familiar.

“I like the area, and it has obvious advantages with the new construction coming in and the growth,” PAC’s owner said in the Oct. 5, 2007 edition of the VBJ.

Instead of reveling in the fruits of a downtown boom, today David is unemployed and his business bank-owned, with a last-ditch effort to modify his loan shot down because his lender “didn’t see growth potential in the area,” he told me this week.

Here’s my reply to David’s lender regarding the apparent lack of growth in Vancouver, Washington:

My hometown of Albany, New York – the capital of the fourth-largest state in the Union – has been stuck at around 95,000 inhabitants for decades. By contrast, Vancouver today has 162,400 people, up from 143,560 in 2000 and 32,464 in 1960.

And let’s not forget nearly $1 billion in private waterfront investment set to break ground nearly a stone’s throw away from PAC’s newly-minted “no growth” zone.

In America, there is a trend towards seeing the market as heading upward indefinitely – i.e. the years 2004-7; 1996-9 and 1923-9 – or caught in a never-ending death spiral.

However, denying a business a life raft during one of the longest recessions since WWII because of a lack of growth potential in this still-growing city’s downtown core is what I call “irrational apathy” – or lethargy, if you prefer.

Business Around the Northwest

FBI issues small business alert, South Sound Business Examiner

High Tech poised to lead Washington’s recovery, Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal

Low-turnout election provides few clues on Boise streetcar, Idaho Business Journal

► On the Record

“Owners who are inflexible are sitting with their properties dormant… those who are willing to take risks are succeeding.”

-- Brett Irons, broker at Coldwell Banker Commercial Jenkins-Bernhardt, one of many regional firms riding a wave of lease deals in a volatile commercial real estate sector.