City of Spokane
Mayor's Your City Business Centers Visits & Filming
Project Statement
The City of Spokane’s “Your City with the Mayor” community business center visits
initiative allows the mayor and senior staff the opportunity to regularly listen and react to
business successes and challenges, and it helps promote the revitalization efforts and our
traditional commercial districts. Every other month, our Mayor, senior staff, NBC staff
and business association leaders go door-to-door speaking with the business
owners/operators about their business and the district’s successes and challenges.
Following the visits we film the mayor’s “Your City with the Mayor” television program
with business district leaders.
Project Summary
Two years ago, the City of Spokane’s Neighborhood Business Centers (NBC) program
with the collaboration of the mayor’s office and City Cable Channel 5 television, began
filming the “Your City with the Mayor” program on location in two of Spokane’s
strategic business/commercial districts.
Here the city assists the grassroots revitalization efforts of these business centers. The
first year, the city filmed the program on location in two business districts with several
business center representatives participating in the filming. Due to the program’s success,
in 2007 we expanded the program to include a two-hour walking tour/visit, where the
Mayor and senior staff walk door-to-door and meet with business owners/operators in the
featured district. They discuss the business and district’s successes and challenges.
In 2008, our newly elected Mayor Mary Verner decided that the program would continue
and this year she will visit and film in six of the city’s business centers. The first program
aired on Channel 5 in March.
Neighborhood Business Centers (NBC) Position:
The City of Spokane’s Neighborhood Business Centers Program (NBC) is working with
neighborhood councils and their business associations to revitalize Spokane’s historic
pedestrian oriented commercial districts by implementing the Comprehensive Plan in the
“Centers and Corridors” which are identified for focused infill growth.
These neighborhood centers add strength and diversity to Spokane's economy. There are
19 centers (Employment, Neighborhood and Corridor Centers) identified throughout the
City. NBC fosters community well-being, local character, a sense of place, and prosperity
by supporting small businesses, community interests, safety, tourism, and local events
within vibrant family-oriented neighborhood business centers.
Objective:
To provide an opportunity every other month for the mayor and senior staff to visit
Spokane’s important Neighborhood Business Centers to listen to each business
neighborhood’s vision and concerns.
Key Features:
• Mayor and senior staff members walk the business district and visit as many businesses
as possible within a two-hour period.
• Mayor and business center leaders film the “Your City with the Mayor” City Cable 5
television that airs several times each month.
• Visit with proprietors and listen to them about their business and district successes and
challenges.
• Seek opportunities for the city to facilitate their success or mitigate challenges.
Staff Involvement:
These business center visits are coordinated by the City’s Neighborhood Business
Centers (NBC) program with the assistance of the mayor’s office and City Cable Channel
5. The mayor and senior staff, NBC staff and district leaders spend approximately two
hours, walking the area meeting and visiting with business owners, and filming. The
filming is done by the City’s Cable Channel 5 film crew on location in the business
center being featured.
Advance work by NBC staff is critical to ensure success. This includes, but is not limited
to, a report that would include the following information:
• Identification of business leaders to participate in the filming of the Your City with the
Mayor program; include contact information.
• Personal planning meetings with those participating in the filming of “Your City with
the mayor” to brainstorm a list of what is good about living, working and playing in the
center.
• Locate an appropriate location for filming the “Your City with the Mayor.”
• Provide the Mayor’s office with the business center’s brainstormed list of “live, work
and play” issues to remember.
• Coordinate with City Cable Channel 5.
• Coordinate with the Mayor’s schedule.
• Locate these businesses by name on map.
• Note any recent (last 6-12 months) areas in which the city has helped the business
center, or current plans to help, and areas where the city has failed to meet the needs of
the business center.
• Identify issues/events other than business-related concerns or successes important to the
neighborhood area with which city leadership should be familiar.
• Notify public about each visit/tour before it occurs.
Follow-up work by staff would include the following:
• Issue resolution
• Sharing the airing schedule of the “Your City” program with interested groups and
posting the program on the web site as a marking tool encouraging others to visit, shop,
open a business or to live in the center.
• Track results and report back to Mayor and Executive Team once a month at a monthly
Executive Team meeting.
Outcome and/or Result:
• Business owners and employees who have been earnestly heard.
• Senior leadership informed about business concerns in the neighborhood business
centers.
• Senior leadership understanding the efforts, grassroots economic development, and
visions of the business centers and a process put in place to assist them.
• Marketing pieces for the business centers that attract visitors, new home owners, and
new business into the centers.
• Business associations and business owners who are actively promoting their business
centers as a great place to live, work and play.
• Minor issues resolved.
• Longer-term issues identified and a process is put in place to address them.
Sharing: It is unknown if Spokane’s “Your City” initiative is a one-of- a-kind program or
not, but any city can adopt the program and Spokane would gladly provide details to help
them. Cities who do not have the ability to film a program with the business owners can
still adopt the visit portion of the program – its success is what has carried it through two
administrations.
Costs: This program has cost the City of Spokane the equivalent of staff time and
materials and resources, such as City Cable Channel 5, already available. However, time
spent learning about our small businesses, business associations, resolving issues and
creating multiple marketing pieces for the centers has proven invaluable and very
rewarding as it provide the city information it needs to help these businesses and the
economy of Spokane continue to grow.
Contact
Teri Stripes
NBC Program Manager
509-625-6597