Gazing at the Falls with Gavin Cooley

Gavin Cooley has a particularly good reason to invite you to celebrate the Spokane River at Water to Wine on June 3rd.

He need only remember the truth. It’s the early 1990s and he’s the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for North Coast Life Insurance. While the world around him is wiring up for the Internet revolution, he keeps peering out your window at Spokane Falls. What’s it take, he wondered, to place the Falls back at the center of our community’s identity? The man raised in Spokane knew that love not finance or Internet apps was the answer.

Gavin, who later became the City of Spokane’s CFO and is now the city’s Chief Investment Officer, simply had a heart for the river that would not wane. And he acted on it.  In the mid-1990s he founded Neighbors of Spokane Falls Rapids to protect the river’s view corridor. That group then quickly teamed up with Friends of the Falls to help turn the tide of history.

Said Gavin, “I think we’ll look back on this as a period of time that we really began to move on the vision of reclaiming the river and falls with a post-industrial mind-set. We’re turning back toward the river, allowing people to enjoy its natural wonders, and making huge environmental investments.”

The city’s environmental investments include Gavin taking the lead in the sale of $200 million dollars in “green bonds” to help improve the health of the Spokane River and protect the aquifer. Green bonds are a relatively new and innovative concept designed to attract additional investors who want to direct their money toward environmental projects.

For Gavin it keeps going back to what he saw as he gazed out the window 20 plus years ago. “The river is part of Spokane’s cultural DNA. It’s the one thing we can agree on. We can tap into it for the vision and energy it brings to our conversations. It trumps everything.”

So join Gavin as we celebrate what’s been accomplished and we gaze forward to bright new prospects.