While commercial property sales, leasing, and development have gone through a recession-related slump, professional property management has seen growth, say members of Building Owners & Managers Association Spokane.

BOMA Spokane is one of the oldest members of BOMA International, a federation of 107 building-management and ownership advocacy groups throughout the U.S. and 13 other countries, and it touts itself as one of the most active.

"The recession highlighted the value of what professional property management brings to a building," asserts Colin Conway, current BOMA Spokane president and a commercial broker at Spokane-based Kiemle & Hagood Co.

Outside of commercial real estate circles, BOMA tends to fly under the radar, because building management isn't a sexy part of owning and developing commercial buildings, Conway says. But its mission to build success in the commercial real estate industry through advocacy, knowledge, and relationships only became more vital during the economic downturn, when tenants were looking to reduce costs or vacate space, he says.

"During the recession, we've seen growth as people have looked to professional, third-party management to help maximize returns through controlling expenses, increasing efficiencies, and improving rents," Conway says. "That's where BOMA comes in."

The association here is known as the only BOMA group that meets weekly, Conway claims.

"BOMA Spokane members connect with other property, asset, and facility managers on a weekly basis to compare and discover what's working and what's not working," he says.

Conway says BOMA Spokane's mission today is the same as it was when it formed 100 years ago.

"The first thing BOMA Spokane talked about was sharing operating costs, and that's still what we talk about today," he says.

BOMA International originally formed in 1907 in Chicago under the name National Association of Building Owners & Managers.

Larry Soehren, past president of both BOMA Spokane and BOMA International, says he suspects that Chicago, which was tied by railroad to Spokane, had strong influences on Spokane's growth in the early 20th century, as well as that of Seattle, leading both cities to form local associations in 1912.

Even some Spokane buildings are examples of Chicago-style architecture, such as the 16-story U.S. Bank Building, formerly the Old National Bank Building, at 422 W. Riverside. It was completed in 1911, says Soehren, who also is vice president and chief operating officer of Kiemle & Hagood.

Each local affiliate, such as BOMA Spokane, is an independent association rather than a chapter of BOMA International, Conway says.

"We have to live up to them, and they have to live up to us," Conway says of the relationship between the local and international BOMAs.

BOMA Spokane has 102 members, including commercial, corporate, and government real estate owners, developers, and managers. The membership also includes vendors that serve the real estate industry.

Conway says BOMA Spokane's highest value is in promoting efficiencies to help minimize costs.

Commercial buildings, for example, are some of the biggest consumers of electricity in the world, Conway says.

If a building owner improves a building's performance through best-management practices that BOMA espouses and saves $30,000 a year on operating costs, that adds $300,000 to the value of the building during a period of 10 years, he says.

"It keeps it marketable," Conway says. "All of that is just good management and saving money."

Ronald White, BOMA Spokane vice president, is no stranger to improving building performance. White is the property manager at the Bank of America Financial Center downtown, which is owned by Seattle-based real estate investment and management company Unico Properties LLC.

The 20-story Class A office building at 601 W. Riverside recently attained BOMA International's 360 Performance designation, the first such designation in Spokane and one of about 350 worldwide, White says.

The BOMA performance program evaluates building operations and management, life safety and security, training and education, energy, environment and sustainability, and tenant relations and community involvement.

White says achieving the designation pays dividends in ongoing operational savings and tenant retention.

On the way to earning the designation, Spokane-based Avista Corp. has assisted with several incentive programs since Unico bought the building in 2007. Energy-efficiency improvements included retrofitting all lights and fixtures.

"Avista, which also is a BOMA member, gave over $500,000 in rebates over the last dozen or so years," White says. Also, when Unico achieved Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for building operations and maintenance, Avista awarded Unico with a check for $179,000, he says.

The efficiency improvements have reduced the building's annual energy consumption by 17 percent and its annual water consumption by 1.5 million gallons, he says.

Kiemle & Hagood is a tenant in the Chase Financial Center, at 601 W. Riverside, which the company also manages. Soehren says efficiency improvements there have saved clients more than $4 million since 1999.

"From a BOMA perspective, these changes to make our buildings operate more efficiently are made voluntarily because they make sense for the building owners," he says.

In most cases, such improvements weren't mandated by building codes or legislation.

"We would rather be incented than mandated," Soehren says. "Give us an incentive to do it. Don't just tell us we have to."

Soehren says BOMA Spokane is active in legislative issues ranging from taxes to ongoing building code issues.

Recently, BOMA Spokane joined a successful effort to block a state proposal to require commercial building owners to install lights on stairwells to illuminate individual steps to make them more visible in times of emergency.

"It would have cost $30,000 for our building," Soehren says. "We already have emergency lighting. Why add that level of cost?"

At the city level, BOMA Spokane successfully opposed a proposal that was "essentially a tax on parking that would have been devastating to downtown businesses," he says.

BOMA International works closely with the International Building Code Council to ensure building codes are crafted reasonably and aren't burdensome to building owners and developers, he says. The organization also had a hand in shaping workable regulations resulting from the Americans with Disabilities Act.

"BOMA's interest was in making it doable and addressing the need for access without making the act onerous for building owners and managers," he says.

When Soehren was president of BOMA International in 2002, terrorism insurance topped the association's agenda.

"Nobody disagreed with the concept," he says, adding, however, that, "Nobody knew how to deal with it post 9/11."

The effort contributed to the Terrorism Insurance Act of 2002, which created a federally backed program that provides stability to the insurance market by providing reinsurance to insurance companies.

Without it, insurance companies were considering exclusions for acts of terrorism, which also would have jeopardized financing for projects that could be considered potential terrorism targets.

"I don't think it was a big issue in Spokane, but who knew then?" Soehren says.