Amica Mutual Insurance Co., a Lincoln, R.I.-based insurer with offices nationwide, has gained a foothold in the Spokane market by buying the Thomas S. Porter Inc. insurance agency, which has represented Safeco insurance here for five years and is a

The company that owns Dishman Dodge here plans to build an estimated $2 million new showroom and sales facility at the southeast corner of Sprague Avenue and Park Road, and to remodel and expand its current new-car sales area for other Hollenback,

Dakotah Direct II LLC, the big Spokane-based telemarketing company, says it plans to hire 440 more employees here by the end of the year.Sandy Taylor-Spring, Dakotah Directs chief operating officer, says most of the new hires will join the in

When Ray Hare was a kid living on Spokanes North Side, he tacked to his bedroom walls some of the Gonzaga University football game programs from his fathers playing days in the late 1930s.Many program collectors, as Hare has become, might

Agilent Technologies, which owns Hewlett-Packard Co.s former operations here, is looking to hire more than 100 people in Spokane immediately.Liz Cox, an Agilent spokeswoman here, says the bulk of the new hires are needed to fill entry-level in

Itron Inc. appears to have regained its confidence, but not its profitabilityyet.The Spokane-based maker of meter-reading equipment for the utility industry has suffered financial losses, layoffs, and unmet expectations over the last couple

KELLOGGThe biggest auto dealership in the Inland Northwest is getting bigger. Dave Smith Motors, both marveled at by admirers and despised by rivals for the high volume of sales it conducts from this old mining town, says it soon will begin in

Lon Gibby Productions Inc., a 17-year-old Spokane video production company, says its working to secure additional capital to take advantage of potential growth opportunities in the Internet world.Company President Lon Gibby says Gibby is with

Parrott Mechanical Inc. will move its headquarters and a service division to Spokane from Coeur dAlene this summer and consolidate its operations in a new, $10 million business park, says the companys general manager, Howard Rude. Parrott, a

Deaconess Medical Center has applied to the Washington state Department of Health for a certificate of need to open an eight-station kidney dialysis center in its main hospital building this summer.Deaconess Chief Operating Officer Tom Zellers a