Warden Development Council talks business

WARDEN - The Warden Development Council welcomed guests from the Small Business Development Center (SBDC) and Grant County Economic Development Council (GCEDC) recently.

Allan Peterson, certified business advisor at the SBDC; Jonathan Smith, executive director of the GCEDC, and Emily Braunwart, of the GCEDC, gave the council advice on attracting businesses to Warden.

While the Grant County Economic Development Council often works to bring large companies to Grant County, such as SGL/BMW, the council is trying to identify ways it can help smaller communities such as Warden or Grand Coulee, said Smith.

Smaller communities like that may not ever get on a larger company's radar because they don't meet certain requirements such as an adequate workforce or proximity to an interstate, he said.

Members of the Warden Development Council brainstormed other barriers that may keep businesses from coming to Warden. They included a lack of adequate housing, no rail, and lack of water.

Water availability is probably the number one issue that would deter businesses from coming to Warden, said Smith.

"For instance, the projects we get, if they have a waste water requirement that's significant, the capacity just isn't here," he said. "The issue is how do we get that infrastructure in place if those are the kinds of businesses you're looking to attract to the area."

There are opportunities for existing Warden businesses to expand by exporting, said Peterson. He noted that Washington has jumped on board with the Obama administration's plan to double exports in the next five years. Ninety-five percent of market opportunities are outside the United States and 97 percent of U.S. exports are from small- to medium-sized businesses, not giants like Boeing and Microsoft, he said.

While the GCEDC will continue to work on large projects, those kinds of projects aren't necessarily repeatable in other rural areas, said Smith.

"There's a real specific, real narrow set of things that have happened" leading to large businesses coming to Grant County, he said. "It's a unique combination, I think, that isn't easily replicable in a lot of rural areas like Grand Coulee or Mattawa or Ritzville or anyplace like that."

Instead, the GCEDC and SBDC should focus on helping those kinds of communities at a grassroots level, he said.