The leadership landscape in Spokane is changing as a handful of pivotal organizations search for new executives to head up their efforts.


Threethe Downtown Spokane Partnership, the Spokane Regional Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Spokane Transit Authorityhave narrowed their respective fields of candidates to a few finalists and expect to be selecting new leaders shortly.


The board of one other organization, Spokane Hoopfest Association, announced earlier this week that it had hired Washington State University associate athletic director Brady Crook to replace Executive Director Rick Steltenpohl, who is leaving to join a Phoenix-based sports-promotions firm.


Meantime, Eastern Washington University is in the beginning stages of the process of replacing President Stephen Jordan, who has announced he will leave to head a school in Colorado. EWU is months away from making that decision.


Rich Hadley, CEO of the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce, says that the missions of the groups that are seeking new leaders are different, but a common thread is that each has a top executive who is deeply involved in the community.


Also, Hadley says, each of the departing leaders generally is credited with making their respective organizations more vibrant and successful than they had been previously.


Well miss each of them, Hadley says. Itll be very interesting to see a year from now how this has changed the community dialogue and that of the organizations.


The Downtown Spokane Partnership, a nonprofit organization that oversees a variety of initiatives in the citys core, appears to be close to naming a replacement for Executive Director Michael Edwards.


Marla Nunberg, the partnerships marketing director, says the organizations executive-search committee interviewed four finaliststhree from the Spokane area and one from out of townlate last week.


The candidate the committee chooses must be approved by the partnerships executive board and the boards that govern two affiliated groups, the Business Improvement District and the Downtown Spokane Ventures Association. An announcement of its new leader could be made as early as this week, Nunberg says.


The partnerships departing executive director, Edwards, will leave the post April 29. In late February, when he announced that he had accepted a job as executive director of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, the Spokane organization said it was confident it would have a new leader in place before he left.


Edwards had led the Downtown Spokane Partnership for six years and has said hes taking the Pittsburgh post for career-advancement reasons and to be closer to family members.


The Spokane CVB, meanwhile, has been operating with an interim president since John Brewer left the bureaus top slot in February to become president of the Billings Area Chamber of Commerce, in Billings, Mont.


Jim Dean, chairman of the Spokane CVBs board and a senior vice president with Bank of America here, says that after conducting two rounds of interviews, the bureaus search committee has narrowed the field of candidates to replace Brewer to four, from 39. This week, its holding day-long, face-to-face interviews with each candidate, three of whom are from outside the Spokane area.


The CVB hopes to extend an offer to one of those candidates by May 6, and could have someone in place by June, Dean says.


To attract candidates, the CVB sent letters to 500 executives at convention bureaus nationwide and advertised the job on convention industry Web sites. Dean says the organization is happy with the quality of candidates it attracted.


Id be comfortable hiring any of the four finalists, he says.


The Spokane Transit Authority has whittled down its search for a new CEO to three people and plans to hold a reception April 28 at which it will introduce those candidates to its board and others, says Dick Denenny, STAs board chairman and a Spokane Valley city councilman.


Denenny says STA hopes to choose a candidate and have that person on the job within a month.


STA stayed local in its search for a new executive to replace Kim Zentz, who left last month to head up the Spokane Intercollegiate Research & Technology Institute, Denenny says. He says the organization wants someone whos familiar with STAs past struggles to get voter approval for its funding request and isnt set on having someone who was born and raised in transit.


Rick Betts, founder and board member of Hoopfest, says that organization advertised its executive director position in Spokane, Seattle, and Portland newspapers and posted the job listing on national trade Web sites. Its strongest applicantsincluding all three people on its three-person short list of candidateshail from Eastern Washington.


The organization wasnt focused on hiring local, but as it turned out, We felt like the best candidates turned out to be more local, Betts says.


Hadley, who has served as the Spokane chambers leader for 11 years and previously headed a chamber in St. Paul, Minn., says there are benefits and drawbacks both to hiring a leader locally and to hiring someone from elsewhere.


A local candidate typically would enter the job with a good understanding of the community and knowledge of its politics and key players, Hadley says. Finding someone locally with job-specific experience, though, can be difficult.


An executive coming into a position from elsewhere might not have that perspective, but often would bring new ideas for an organization and community, Hadley says.


Also, he says, Sometimes people coming in from the outside have more of a clean slate, both in their impressions of the community and the communitys impression of them.


EWU is just starting its presidential search process, and it likely will be more than six months until a short list of candidates is selected, says Brian Levin-Stankevich, EWUs provost and vice president of academic affairs, who will be interim president. Jordan leaves in July to take the top post at Metropolitan State College of Denver, in Denver, Colo.


EWUs board of trustees likely will hire an executive-search firm in the next couple of months to search for Jordans successor and also will form its own search committee, Levin-Stankevich says. Advertisements to fill the vacant position should go out in July or early August.


In the fall, some candidates will be invited to Spokane for what Levin-Stankevich calls airport interviews, for which they will come to Spokane, but will be interviewed off-campus to help maintain confidentiality.


After that, EWU will come up with a short list of three to five candidates who will be brought to campus for two-day interviews, and ideally a new president will be chosen by December or January, he says.


Typically, such a candidate will be working at a university elsewhere and will finish out the school year at his or her current job, just as Jordan is doing at EWU, Levin-Stankevich says. The successful candidate likely wont start at EWU until the summer before the 2006-2007 school year.