Snoqualmie EDC pauses individual business visits pending strategic‑plan work; schedules outreach to North Bend

Commissioners on the Snoqualmie Economic Development Commission debated how best to restart visits to local businesses and how to turn outreach into concrete results, and they agreed on June 18 to pause the planned one‑on‑one business visits while the city’s strategic‑plan outreach concludes.

Joelle Gibson, chairing the meeting, told commissioners the city provided a revised questionnaire (in the meeting packet) but the group should refine its goals before widely restarting business visits. "We don't want it to become stale," she said about the outreach formats, and staff recommended returning a final draft of questions and a list of businesses the commissioners plan to contact.

Commissioner Nick Pastiglione described the purpose as finding issues the city can fix: "The point of this is to be able to dig up stuff that is easily fixable ... and get it on the city's map," he said, citing a prior example in which business feedback led to a change in allowed downtown color palettes. Several commissioners and staff repeatedly emphasized the need to close the feedback loop — to return to merchants with what the city did in response to their concerns.

Staff reported that some roundtable outreach in prior years produced practical changes but that recent efforts had not been fully collated into a summary the city could act on. City staff and commissioners agreed the strategic plan being prepared for the city is conducting business and merchant focus groups now; commissioners suggested pausing the new one‑on‑one visits until staff can review the consultant’s questions and results to avoid duplicative outreach.

Two implementation directions emerged: staff will (1) check the strategic‑plan focus‑group questions and consolidate overlap, and (2) reach out to the City of North Bend to arrange a joint EDC meeting, tentatively for September. "We did have James Henderson, from the City of North Bend, reach out and ask if our EDC would be interested in meeting with their EDC and having a joint meeting," a staff liaison said; commissioners supported pursuing a joint session.

Other recurring topics during the discussion included signage/wayfinding and a long‑standing vacancy in a grocery‑anchored retail space (the Bartels building) that had generated interest from potential tenants including pharmacies. Staff said a former city resolution authorized certain wayfinding or blade signs and that staff would pull the policy and report back. On the pharmacy vacancy, staff said the building owner’s leasing agreements and a Safeway non‑compete reduce immediate options for a traditional retail pharmacy; staff described discussions with the commercial leasing agent but said a traditional pharmacy tenant was not imminent.

The commission also discussed outreach format. Several members favored topical roundtables (permitting, signage, workforce/housing, permitting turnaround times) because they can draw multiple merchants, surface common themes and produce actionable recommendations for city departments; commissioners cautioned that summer is a poor time to start broad surveys because many small businesses have reduced staffing or are busy with seasonality.

Why it matters: commissioners framed business outreach as an accountability and relationship exercise intended to surface fixable problems (permitting, signage, walk‑in traffic) and escalate systemic issues (workforce housing, regulatory barriers) to the appropriate level of city, county or state action.

Ending: The commission tabled the one‑on‑one business‑visit plan for now, requested that staff review strategic‑plan questions and existing outreach records, and asked staff to contact North Bend about a September joint meeting. No formal motion or vote was recorded; these directions were given as staff assignments and consensus.