SelectUSA Seattle Spinoff — Snohomish County Day

The SelectUSA Seattle Spinoff is a regional program convened by Greater Seattle Partners (GSP) that brings a delegation of international investors through Pierce, Snohomish, and King counties immediately preceding the federal SelectUSA Investment Summit in Washington, D.C. The Spinoff is structured so each county hosts a dedicated day showcasing its industry strengths, infrastructure, and partnership ecosystem to qualified international companies actively evaluating U.S. market entry. 

Snohomish County Day was Thursday, April 30. This was EASC’s fourth time hosting a Spinoff day in the county, building on an established working relationship with GSP on FDI delegations and recruitment activity.

The main goals of the tour are foreign direct investment recruitment, visibility with qualified site-selecting prospects, and reinforcement of EASC’s role as the front door for international companies considering Snohomish County. Secondary goals included strengthening the GSP partnership as a sustainable FDI pipeline, demonstrating partnership capacity to municipal and tribal partners, and giving prospects a concrete mental map of where in our county they could plug in — from maritime clean energy to aerospace.
Aerospace and advanced manufacturing companies in our supply chain stand to benefit most directly from new international entrants and capital. Maritime clean energy, port logistics, and workforce training partners (including Edmonds College’s AMSC and WATR Center) gain visibility with international firms. Municipal partners — the City of Everett, the Port of Everett, and Snohomish County PUD — benefit from being positioned as accessible, sophisticated counterparts. And Snohomish County itself gains from being introduced as a destination distinct from, but connected to, the Greater Seattle market.

Snohomish County offers international investors a rare combination: a globally significant industrial base anchored by Boeing, a working deepwater port, abundant clean power through Snohomish County PUD, and a partnership ecosystem that actually moves at the speed of business — all within reach of the Seattle market without the Seattle cost structure. Our message throughout the day centered on the Five Ps of site selection (People, Places, Power, Permitting, Partnerships), with Snohomish County positioned as the place where all five line up.

The day was deliberately structured as a narrative arc — Echandia Marine for Scandinavian maritime clean energy, the Port of Everett for working waterfront infrastructure with Mayor Cassie Franklin and Commissioner Bachman, the Five Ps panel at Angel of the Winds Arena for the partnership ecosystem itself, then Boeing as the anchor employer, closing with an evening reception. Each stop answered a question international investors were already asking themselves: who else is here, can the infrastructure carry me, who do I work with, and what does scale look like? Delivered in a single afternoon, the sequence gave delegates a concrete mental map of where they could plug in — far more persuasive than any individual brochure or slide deck.

Three takeaways shape program direction. First, the GSP–EASC partnership works as a repeatable FDI pipeline: GSP brings qualified international delegations to the region, and EASC is positioned to convert interest into Snohomish County projects. We should be planning the next cycle now, not reacting to the next invitation.
Second, the maritime clean energy stop at Echandia Marine validates that Snohomish County has a credible story to tell beyond aerospace — one that resonates with European investors specifically. We should be developing similar narrative anchor companies in other sectors. 

Third, the day’s success depended entirely on municipal, port, tribal, and utility partners showing up at full strength. Continued investment in those relationships is not soft work; it is the recruitment infrastructure.

Mayor Cassie Franklin (City of Everett) and Commissioner Bachman (Port of Everett) anchored the waterfront tour and reinforced municipal–port alignment in front of an international audience. Echandia Marine leadership hosted the morning facility tour and surfaced clear interest in continued engagement on the Scandinavian maritime corridor. Panelists Matt Poischbeg (Edmonds College AMSC and WATR Center), Dan Eernissee (City of Everett), Doug O’Donnell (Snohomish County PUD), and Jack Callaghan (Plug and Play Seattle) each handed off warm contacts from the delegation. Greater Seattle Partners leadership confirmed appetite for a structured annual cadence going forward. Delegation follow-ups are being tracked individually; several have already requested next-step site visits and incentive briefings.

The panel did something the agenda didn’t script: panelists picked up each other’s threads. A question intended for the PUD pulled in workforce training; a question on partnerships looped through permitting; the WATR Center came up in the same breath as Boeing’s pre-employment pipeline. That cross-talk is impossible to manufacture, and the delegation noticed. Several delegates remarked afterward that they had expected a more transactional pitch and found instead a working ecosystem. The Boeing factory tour landed differently than expected as well — for several European delegates it was the first time the scale of the regional aerospace cluster registered viscerally, not just as a statistic on a slide.

EASC would like to encourage regional partners are encouraged to follow Greater Seattle Partners’ FDI programming and engage early when delegations are forming. Internally, the call to action is to formalize the GSP–EASC FDI cadence on an annual basis and to begin curating the next cycle of anchor company tours that can carry the same sequencing logic in subsequent years.

International companies evaluating U.S. expansion should reach out to EASC directly to begin a confidential site selection conversation. Contact Daniel Tappana at DanielT@economicalliancesc.org.
 

-Daniel Tappana is EASC's Director for Economic Development.
Image: Yuliia Pustovit/GSP