Yakima Valley towns create friendly places to grow business

YAKIMA -- For Milt Geffen and Charlie Card, it made sense to locate their new businesses in small towns.

Geffen, who started Milt's Original Gourmet BBQ Pellets last year, said Grandview was ground zero for the byproduct of wine grapes and hops that flavor his pellets.

Card, a rancher, wanted his Prosser-based solar hot water system business to help neighboring dairies use less propane to heat water for their operations.

"I think it's better for a person trying to start a new business in an area he knows and understands," he said.

While it was natural for Card and Geffen to start their businesses in small towns, those communities are developing strategies to find, cultivate and grow even more businesses from the ground up.

In the last few months, those efforts in Grandview, Sunnyside, Zillah and Tieton have been driven by the Entrepreneurial Friendly Cities Initiative, a program of New Vision, Yakima County's economic development arm.

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