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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nAll across the American West, buildings are shuttered as rural economies struggle and box stores challenge downtown businesses. An entrepreneurial EOU alumnus and his friends found a way for one Pacific Northwest town to come back to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From the time he was a teenager Ed Marquand, \u201973, was drawn to rural life. The back-to-the-land movement of the late \u201960s and early \u201970s prompted him to seek a small, remote college. In 1970 he packed up his VW bus and drove to La Grande to study art<\/a>. He said he appreciated the small class sizes and approachability of the professors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNot only were they great instructors, but great friends,\u201d Marquand said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An art career took him back to Los Angeles where he worked in graphic art and advertising, taught classes through UCLA\u2019s extension program and studied photography. In 1978 he moved to Seattle to start a graphic design and photography business, and made his home in the city\u2019s downtown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His business specializes in publishing art exhibition catalogs for museums, and it grew to putting out 50 titles a year and employing 10 people, alongside what Marquand called \u201ca small army of freelance editors, designers and production people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the late 1990s Marquand and his partner, Seattle attorney Michael Longyear, decided they needed a weekend getaway and bought land 15 miles from the small town of Tieton in the Yakima Valley. The couple built a rustic 20-by-20-foot cabin from which they could hike or bike to their hearts\u2019 content just 2.5 hours from Seattle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While repairing punctures in his bike tires in the Tieton downtown square one afternoon in 2005, Marquand said he spent the day noticing the town\u2019s empty storefronts and started dreaming about what could be done with so much abandoned real estate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Along with friends from Portland and Seattle, Marquand and Longyear bought eight buildings that had been empty for at least 10 years. The first building remodeled was an old fruit transit warehouse. One of their key collaborators is Kerry Quint, \u201970, who Marquand met in his first class, on his first day at EOU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the fruit industry is exploding in the Yakima Valley, Marquand said the old warehouses in Tieton were replaced by larger, state-of-the-art facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are many many successful orchards in the area, but that does not translate into success for the little town itself,\u201d Marquand said. \u201cThe money is not supporting the town, it Marquand\u2019s approach and business model were different: refurbish existing buildings and put people to work binding and printing handmade art books. The high level work done in the Tieton publishing studio produces limited edition books published for the likes of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
goes to the investors and money managers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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