W. Berry Fowler didnt leave the franchising world for long.Two years ago, the Spokane entrepreneur, who earlier had founded such franchising giants as Sylvan Learning Centers and Little Gym International Inc., set out to build a corporate of A

Many Spokane-area employers who had hoped for some respite this year from double-digit percentage increases in their health-care plan premiums likely are finding themselves mightily disappointed.Representatives for several of the Inland larger 7

Hecla Mining Co., of Coeur dAlene, boosted its gold production by a third last year and significantly lowered its cash costs of producing both gold and silver. The company, which has operating mines in the U.S., Mexico, and Venezuela, also it

WAM Enterprises Inc., of Spokane, plans to build a retail strip center in the northeast corner of the parking lot at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.s new outlet in Post Falls. WAM bought a little more than an acre of Wal-Marts 20-acre Post Falls site,

A Spokane events business has leased part of the shuttered Bayou Brewing Co. premises, and two other businesses, an Airway Heights microbrewery and a Spokane Thai restaurant, expect to sign leases there soon and move their respective operations the

A Kmart store in the Spokane Valley is one of two in Washington state that are on a leaked list of more than 200 Kmart stores reportedly slated for closure, the Puget Sound Business Journal, of Seattle, says.Kmart Corp., the struggling Troy, for

A group of Coeur dAlene doctors has signed an agreement with a Chicago company to open a surgical hospital in Post Falls, a move that Kootenai Medical CenterCoeur dAlenes only hospitalestimates will cost it $6 million to $7 million a year

Rahco International Inc., the longtime Spokane industrial manufacturer, says it has landed a contract to supply two more of its salt harvesters to a Chinese maker of potash for fertilizers. The contract is worth roughly $10 million. Meanwhile, ,

I will never be in the flower business. Thats the vow Tom Lavagetto made to his father when he left high school, after spending a good deal of his childhood helping out in the family-owned greenhouse business here. Yet, Lavagetto, 56, a

Iron Bridge LLC, the Spokane company that plans to develop an office complex, valued at as much as $60 million, along the Spokane River east of Hamilton Street, expects to ask the city of Spokane to form a tax-increment financing district there to