I hope you are doing well and are ready for the holidays.

As the end of 2025 nears, I want to take this opportunity to thank all our members who support GGHI and help us make a positive difference in the economy of Grays Harbor County. To all our partners both private and public, thank you, we could not do what we do without your support, and look forward to serving you in 2026.

To our staff here at GGHI thank you for all you do, to our Board of Directors, thank you for your support and guidance in helping to make GGHI a great place to work, and thank you to the GGHI Ambassadors for all you do for us. We could not accomplish our mission without any of you.

What we have been up to:

On Dec. 4, I had the opportunity to attend and speak at the Regional Economic Expo at the Great Wolf Lodge. I would like to thank Quinault Corporate Enterprises for sponsoring us for this event where together with Thurston EDC, Pacific County EDC, EDC of Mason County, and Economic Alliance of Lewis County held several sessions on different economic development issues both current and future that we are and will be facing.

Grays Harbor County was well represented during presentations, with District 1 County Commissioner Georgia Miller, District 2 County Commissioner Rick Hole, County Administrator Sam Kim, and new County Fairgrounds Manager Nikki Brown at the event.

We were honored to have David Martin, CEO of Quinault Corporate Enterprises, and Lynn Latandresse, Power & Energy Services Director at Grays Harbor PUD both featured as speakers, and Alissa Shay, Deputy Director of the Port of Grays Harbor who presented the Nancy Payne Memorial Award.

December Business After Hours:

On Dec. 9, we held our final Business After Hours and Ribbon Cutting event of 2025 at Five Star Ford/Harbor Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram at 711 E Wishkah St. in Aberdeen. Their brand new showroom and service center at this location are amazing, with a great inventory of new and used vehicles. If you have not had the opportunity to stop by and check it out, please do so as it is very impressive.

On behalf of Greater Grays Harbor, Inc., thank you to Rich Hartman, Damon Gleason and Allen Erickson for your continued investment and betterment of Grays Harbor.

GGHI statistics:

For the last few months, I have been including economic data for Grays Harbor and Western Washington. This month I am including data from the GGHI website. These statistics run from Jan. 1 through Dec. 15th and are an indicator of the reach we have with the great marketing that is being done by our Marketing Director Kelsey Norvell-Williams.

The data detailed how 66,181 users visited the GGHI website this year. With hundreds of pages on our website including our Events Calendar and the 250-plus individual event pages, new GGHI member articles, hundreds of Business Directory listings, tourism blogs, business resources and plenty more valuable webpages, our website has an incredibly far reach.

Upcoming events:

On Jan. 9, we will be holding our annual Coastal Caucus Legislative Send-Off presented by Rayonier at the Rotary Log Pavilion in Aberdeen. This event runs from 11 to 11:30 a.m. for networking and the program will run from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. We will have a great catered lunch from Kit’s Catering. This event is almost sold out, so do not wait to get your tickets through the GGHI website, or contact our office directly.

Additionally, we’re excited to kick off 2026 with Business After Hours hosted by longtime GGHI Member, Westport Winery. As many of you have heard, the Roberts family, who have owned the Winery since 2008, have recently sold their business. We congratulate them on their sale, retirement and thank them for their many years of support as they built their incredible business from the ground up.

We hope you’ll join us at their Business After Hours on Jan. 13 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. where we will wish the Roberts family all the best on their next chapter, meet the new owners, and explore the Winery’s brand new Speakeasy Event Center. As always, Business After Hours are free for all business community members to attend.