Steve Stevens, new CEO of Greater Spokane Incorporated, arrived here on the last day of Hoopfest and ventured out to gain some insight on his new community. 

“I wandered around downtown for a few hours, and I was just amazed,” says Stevens, 53.

The basketball mania made him feel right at home, he says; he had just moved from Kentucky, a state that’s steeped in basketball tradition.

“In Kentucky, we eat, sleep, and breathe basketball,” he says. 

Stevens’ given name is Louis E. Stevens III. He was given the nickname of Steve when he was born, he says, because it was his father’s nickname in the Army. 

“My father was a pretty big man, as far as being very tall, and as a young man he was called ‘Little Louis,’” Stevens says. “When I was born he told my mother that he didn’t want me to have that nickname, so they decided to call me Steve.”

Stevens, who took office on July 1, was hired after a nationwide search to replace former GSI CEO Rich Hadley, who retired on May 9. Stevens formerly was president and CEO of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce in Fort Mitchell, Ky., which is considered part of the metropolitan area for Cincinnati, Ohio.

That chamber had about 24 employees, Stevens says, although it also had a separate entity that managed economic development. At GSI, where those two functions are merged, there currently are about 30 employees. The Northern Kentucky chamber had about 1,800 member businesses, Stevens says, and GSI has about 1,200.  

After his first month on the job, Stevens has identified several initial challenges, he says. A big one is making Spokane more attractive to large companies. 

A marked difference between leading the Spokane chamber and heading up the Northern Kentucky chamber is that his previous community had a much larger population and allocated more resources towards competing with surrounding areas for companies, Stevens says. 

 “The Cincinnati metropolitan area is 2.2 million; this is a smaller community,” Stevens says. “One challenge, to me, is economic development. I’m coming from a state that had a whole lot of tools at its disposal to entice businesses. We were in the middle of seven contiguous states; you always had to be better than your neighbors. In Washington, we don’t have nearly as many arrows in our quiver … we have to be more creative. The hope is that, over time, we can convince folks to do a few more things.”

Furthering economic development here is one goal that Stevens says he’s already identified. 

“We have some competitive disadvantages in economic development,” he says. “I pushed to get a consultant to do a thorough analysis of that, to see where we might be getting beat, where we’re losing, and how to get it.” 

Stevens says another challenge will be helping businesses continue to recover from the economic downturn. 

“This economy is growing—but slowly,” he says. “Businesses will be looking for help, and we’ll have to support them.”

Stevens, like former GSI leader Hadley, has largely been perceived as being more active on the public policy side, he says. 

 “I spent 15 years on the policy side,” he says. “A CEO is never out of public policy. You have to balance both. I have that experience, and that’s why some folks decided to pick me.”

Stevens has begun meeting with local legislators and government officials, he says, so that when the next state legislative session rolls around, GSI will be ready to push for certain projects and funding. 

“Truthfully, when you think about it, our purpose is doing things that businesses can’t do themselves,” he says. “I’m starting to get the feel for the current legislature and elected officials … so when the legislative session comes around, we can be ready for an agenda we need to push.”

Stevens says GSI is in the process of forming the agenda. He expects one of the top priorities will be funding for medical education in Spokane. 

“I feel we’d be out trying to get that funding, for the kinds of physicians we’re deficient in filling slots for,” he says. “I’ve seen it happen. The University of Kentucky (which Stevens attended) is in Lexington, which is the same size as Spokane. The amount of medical research and funding there has made a huge impact on the community.”

Stevens also cites business costs as a potential challenge, including worker’s compensation and unemployment. 

“We need to reduce those business costs,” Stevens says. “I would also love to see funding come to the (North Spokane) Corridor.”

The North Spokane Corridor is just one of several large transportation issues Spokane contending with after the state legislature failed to pass a transportation funding package last session. The next session begins in January. 

“I hope the legislature will pass a transportation funding package,” Stevens says. “Transportation drives jobs.”

Being in the same position he was at the Northern Kentucky chamber, Stevens says he sees some similarities between that community’s challenges and those in Spokane. 

“Many issues transcend all communities in terms of what businesses have to deal with,” he says. “They need support from the government and the freedom to grow the way they want. Transportation issues are constant, and so is trying to create an attractive business climate.”

Stevens also says that coming into a new community and learning it can be difficult. 

“It’s always a big challenge to understand what makes a community tick,” he says. “To me, it’s three things: the people, the places that make the community special, and the culture.”

He already, though, has formed some impressions of Spokane, Stevens says. 

“I think this community is one that really wants to be good,” he says. “When you have an attitude like that, people are going to work hard and maximize their opportunities.”

One area that Stevens says he feels very positive about here is education, he says. 

“So far I’m impressed by this community’s education system,” he says. “The community colleges here are dynamite. I’m just now beginning to learn about the four-year (colleges). But do they need more help? It sounds like they do. I also think it’s really unique that charter schools have an opportunity here.”

Stevens also is aiming to get GSI through the process of being accredited by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, something few chambers achieve. Stevens says he led the Northern Kentucky chamber through two five-star accreditations, which is the highest level of recognition. Chambers are rated as accredited, accredited with three stars, accredited with four stars, or accredited with five stars. 

“I’ve come from an organization that has an accreditation through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,” he says. “Only about 3 percent of chambers of commerce are accredited … GSI was accredited decades ago, but hasn’t been since. I would like to see us go through an accreditation process.”

Stevens says GSI is probably about one to two years away from beginning the accreditation process. To become accredited, chambers have to fill out an application and demonstrate excellence in nine areas: governance, finances, human resources, government affairs, technology, communications, facilities, programs, and benchmarking itself against its peers. 

“It would give us some areas to improve on,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you’re perfect. You get recommendations on how to improve.”

Stevens says he plans to create a few teams within GSI to evaluate its current programs to see if there are areas that are lacking or that may need to be cut back. 

“We’re doing a complete program review and analysis,” he says. “Over time, organizations like us are good at saying, ‘Yes, we’ll do this,’ but bad at saying, ‘We need to get rid of this in order to make room for it.’ ”

Stevens was born and raised in Kentucky, he says. After graduating from the University of Kentucky in 1983 with a degree in business, he went to work for his parents’ mechanical and contracting firm, called The Stevens Co. The family, Stevens says, has been in that business for the better part of five decades. 

“I never had a thought about doing that, prior to it,” Stevens says. “My girlfriend at the time, who’s now my wife, said, ‘We don’t have any other options.’ I ended up staying there six or seven years … it gave me a good foundation.”

About that time, Stevens says he began to get interested in politics and was recruited into his first chamber job at the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce in Frankfurt, Ky. He stayed there three years, he says, before being offered a job in the government affairs division of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. 

“I stayed there 20 years,” Stevens says. “My home was always in Northern Kentucky. I was commuting to Frankfurt before.”

Stevens spent 12 years in government affairs at the chamber before being promoted to president and CEO. He stayed in that position for eight years before deciding to look for a new position.  

“I was deciding, well, I’ve got 15 more years (before retirement), what do I want to do?” he says. 

Stevens hired a consultant to help him investigate other careers outside of chamber work, he says, but in the end he returned to what he knew. 

“I always came back to this being what I want to do,” he says. 

GSI had contracted with Waverly Partners LLC, of Cleveland, to conduct the nationwide search for its new CEO. Stevens says Waverly had contacted him a few times over the years. When the firm contacted him about the GSI position, he says he was familiar with it because of his relationship with Hadley.

“I had known Rich Hadley for seven or eight years,” Stevens says. “Some of his friends are my friends in the business. So I said yes, and the process began. I had never set foot in Washington, never mind Spokane.”

Stevens also is friends with Kris Johnson, who became president of the Association of Washington Business at the beginning of this year, succeeding Don Brunell, who had led the state’s largest and oldest business advocacy group for 28 years. Johnson, and others, encouraged him to take the GSI job, he says. 

“Several people called me to encourage me to take the position,” Stevens says. “The hardest swallow was that I’m going to move 2,400 miles away from my roots. But then I thought, people do this every day.”

Stevens says he’s currently living temporarily in an apartment in Spokane Valley. His wife, Marilyn, will join him here on Aug. 17, he says, and then the couple will begin house hunting. The Stevens’ have two sons, Stewart and Logan. Stewart is in graduate school at the University of Kentucky, in Lexington, and Logan is a junior at Virginia Tech University, in Blacksburg, Va.

Stevens and Marilyn will, however, make a trip back to Lexington later this year to play in the University of Kentucky alumni pep band, Stevens says, something they’ve done for 21 consecutive years.