Rich Hadley has led the Inland Northwest’s largest chamber of commerce, Greater Spokane Incorporated, since the early 1990s, having come to the Lilac City after leading chambers in Kalispell, Mont., Boulder, Colo., and St. Paul, Minn.

Hadley, 66, steps down May 9 after nearly 21 years in Spokane, and we sat down with him for an exit interview of sorts.

Give me your assessment of the state of the organization at this time. 

Rich Hadley: This is something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about because it’s important for the leadership at GSI to get a good view, more comprehensively than they get normally. 

Generally speaking, I think we’re in really good shape. Membership, which was hurt during the recession, is back up. Overall income from when I came is up about $2 million. We had one bad year, in 2009, and since then, we’ve rebuilt the reserve fund to twice what it had ever been. We have a great group of board members and a finance committee that are committed and keep us committed. 

Then, if you look at in terms of the support our members give us, we have about 900 members who are volunteers and on committees and task forces. We have about 14,000 people who come to our events every year. We get rated one of the best event organizations by one of the other publications in town. And we have an exceptionally influential board. Those are indicators of, is it worth spending your time someplace? 

I think I can say it best the way Michael Senske (president and CEO of Pearson Packaging Systems and chairman of the GSI board) says it. This is the accountability piece. We get things done. Whenever we set a priority, our board and our membership can be confident that we’re going to get it done, whether that was setting our sights on getting the North Spokane Corridor started—not just planned but started as it was in 2002. And that project is going to get done, to the interstate. It’s just not going to happen before May 9.

 The medical school. We set that as a priority. Now we have a medical school. No one would have thought that was possible 10 years ago.

In the last 12 months, we have had three organizations come to us to integrate with us. The international trade function came back in to the organization last June. The Spokane STEM Network, which had been located here programmatically in partnership with Washington STEM, decided to integrate with GSI and our education and training and workforce. And then just recently, Connect Northwest decided to integrate. That’s a good indication that we’re credible and that we are well managed and that people know that their missions will be accomplished here. 

What are the biggest challenges for the organization currently? 

RH: Organizationally, we’re going through a transition. Libby Barnes just retired as head vice president of membership and marketing. I’m leaving. The organization wants to keep continuity, but they also want to innovate. That’s a time of expectation, but it is a challenge.

In the business community, there is tremendous uncertainty about the health care law. It isn’t that they’re opposing it as much as they’re grappling with the rules and regulations and what’s expected if you have 50 employees or more. That is a big part of the uncertainty. 

I think we have an interesting time of trying to make sure we still have unity in local governments. We had such success when we had one vision, one team, one voice going to Olympia or Washington, D.C., and there are always nuances when people get elected or when projects cause friction. I’m concerned about that. I know we’ve accomplished the most when we’ve been the most united. 

I think we should always be alert to Fairchild Air Force Base. We’re going into a very uncertain period of time with the budget control act and sequestration, possible authority for service executives, such as the secretary of the Air Force, to make decisions on reallocations and realignments without Congress. Members of Congress may not like that and may not allow it, but that’s being discussed for the first time in 20 years. There will be a base closure and realignment probably in 2017. 

We have to be competitive, and that ties into getting that next round of tankers. We have a good team working on that. We have Forward Fairchild, and I’m happy that the state is starting to step up with the Washington Military Alliance. 

You know, organizationally, we have concerns about the casino on the West Plains, and I’ll just leave it at that.

By and large, though, I think the community is going in the right direction. The economy is improving. We’re giving more relevance to emerging and startup companies in a more unified fashion. 

How has the mission for the organization changed during your tenure?

RH: Dramatically. When I came in ’93, the role of the chamber in the community was constrained. Many of the functions the chamber had since World War II, like starting economic development, starting the convention and visitors bureau, starting a sports commission, starting a lilac festival, those kinds of things, they were all part of the chamber’s history, and they were all gone. Most significantly, Momentum (an economic development effort) had started in 1988, and even though the chamber had a role in saying it was necessary, it was pretty much outside of the chamber.

When I interviewed, Ric Odegard, who was with Seafirst Bank at the time, was search committee chairman. At the end of my first day here and after interviewing and meeting everybody, he said, ‘What do you think?’ And I said, ‘I have one question for you. What does the chamber do?’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, everybody I’ve talk to has talked about something we used to do. So, what is it we do?’ 

We brought in a consultant on the New Century Plan and that helped the chamber to move on to its next phase. Then Focus 21, which was the last phase of Momentum, was actually managed by us. So we regained some of our role. 

Then of course, this building (the Spokane Regional Business Center at 801 W. Riverside), bringing all of the leading business organizations together under one roof. 

In 2007, we consolidated the chamber and the EDC, and that was the biggest change of all. 

We pretty much house what a community might have in numerous organizations. We are, as we say, regional, unified, and focused. 

It sounds like when you came in they were in the business of spinning organizations off and now it’s reversed. Is that accurate?

RH: It is. Spinning other organizations off might be generous. I think other organizations left. That’s partly because my predecessor felt a chamber shouldn’t take any public funding, and all of those organizations either were about to or had taken public funding. There are car-rental fees for the sports commission and lodging tax for the CVB at that time. That rule, among other things, drove things away. 

Now, I think, we’re just a more modern organization, and the leadership in the community has changed. In the ’80s and ’90s, there was a lot more of an effort to form special-interest groups and in getting things done by being independent of a chamber or other organizations. Now, business is wanting to see things unified, and there’s concern about organizations that spend most of their money on one executive and not much  on program. 

In terms of leading chambers of commerce, how much of your time was here? 

RH: Little over half. I have 38 years.

When you look back at your 20 years here, what do you see as your greatest accomplishment?

RH: There’s an external and an internal answer to that question. Organizationally, I am very proud of doing this and creating Greater Spokane Incorporated with the board that we have and the staff that we have. I think we are an extremely effective organization, so that’s internally.

If we start externally, (pause) I’d say probably the first thing is that you have to be careful you aren’t drinking your own Kool-Aid. 

I was just at a meeting at AWB (Association of Washington Businesses) and a lobbyist from the West Side said in that meeting that it was nice to have Spokane here, because Greater Spokane Incorporated is the most effective organization in Olympia in terms of representing a community. We have a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. We have a lobbyist in Olympia. We take 100 people to Olympia. We take 40 or 50 to Washington, D.C. It’s just what we do, but the credibility we’ve built not just for GSI, but for the community, helps us on everything we do. So, there’s that. We are a public-policy engine. 

And because of that, we have a medical school. The thing that I’m proudest of that I worked the hardest on for the longest time is that. And there are a lot of partners on that, but I know who the two people were on that in the beginning: John Coombs and Rich Hadley. He was the external affairs guy for UW and I was who I was, and it all started there. Without a doubt, it’s that. 

When I was in Kalispell, we led the campaign to get a new airport because the county commissioners wouldn’t do it. The chamber did it. When I was in Boulder, Colo., in a town that was only slightly? less liberal than Petaluma, Calif., we started an economic development program and a cultural affairs program in the face of it and helped to recruit companies in a no-growth community. Organizations like us can do a lot. This organization was very influential in the old days of getting Grand Coulee Dam built. One of my predecessors was in Washington, D.C., for a year and a half on that project. 

Do you leave the position wishing you would have accomplished more on any front?

RH: I had hoped we’d be the first base to get the tankers, and that we’d be in that process right now that McConnell (Air Force Base) is going through. And I really hoped we’d have passed a transportation package in this session or last session (of the state legislature) so we’d have confirmed the $750 million to the North Side Corridor to the freeway. It would have been so satisfying to walk out having gotten the medical school, gotten the tankers, and gotten the North Spokane Corridor. Those things will happen. We will get the tankers, I think, and we will get the North Spokane Corridor. I’ll live here and see it from a distance.

What attributes are most important for your successor to possess?

RH: The first thing I thought of is that he or she be innovative, because it’s going to be important to carve a path that’s not a 180-degree turn, but makes a mark. To do that, you have to have experience that helps you innovate. 

It goes without saying that being honest and trustworthy and holding confidences are really important in this position. You deal with a lot of information that can’t be shared. You meet a lot of people who tell you things.

The magic of this job is our ability to connect things. In order to do that, the person is going to need to be out in the field a lot in the beginning, and then stay that way. People sometimes observe that we are trying to do too many things. 

That’s a criticism you hear?

RH: It’s a common observation. Are you doing all of those things well? To which I’d say to the Journal of Business if they asked me that, for example, are you doing all the things you do incredibly well? We all do things that are central, and we do things at the margin, and it’s often the things at the margin that bring you the relationships you need for the center. 

In my experience, working with the Northeast Community Center, working with the United Way, working with nonprofit organizations at one end of the spectrum and then talking to your enemies at the other end of the spectrum, it’s really important toward being effective. Being connected to the community broadly is how you create new wins. If someone comes in with an idea, and you know where to refer them because you know the community well, that’s our role. It’s a convener role in terms of bringing organizations together. 

One thing I’ve always wondered about with the organization. You’re heavily engaged with politicians, but the organizations itself isn’t political. Is that...

RH: Intentional. It’s intentional.

Does it have to be that way?

RH: No, it doesn’t have to be, because there are other organizations that have political action committees that endorse candidates and those sorts of things. It’s just not what we chose to do. I think we have good relationships in Olympia and in Washington, D.C., and with the staffs of Congress people because we’re nonpartisan. 

We don’t take sides. People expect us to. On average, people would categorize us as conservative, but that’s because we’re a business organization. 

That could change. A new person could be hired and that could change, but I think we’ve been pretty effective this way.