Essentials - Folks

Anthony 'Tony' Bonanzino

-Tony Bonanzino, right, operates Century Archives Northwest LLC with his son, Anthony.
- Josh Smith Photo.

Hometown: Newhaven, Connecticut
Place of Residence: Spokane
Occupation: Co-owner of Century Archives Northwest LLC and CEO of the Institute for Systems Medicine

In January 1990, Tony Bonanzino's first weekend living in Spokane, he went for a morning walk downtown. The sidewalk was empty, except for a lone pedestrian walking toward him. When the stranger drew near, the man put out his hand and said hello, stopping Bonanzino in his tracks.

"Are you talking to me?" he said. "What do you want?"

"I don't want anything," the stranger answered. "I'm just saying, ‘Hi.'"

Being from the East Coast, Bonanzino was unaccustomed to such openness.

"You are more likely to meet people out west who demonstrate their compassion outwardly, where you don't see that as often as in the east," he says.

At the time, Bonanzino worked for Bayer Corp., which operated a pharmaceutical plant here, and he commuted between Spokane and Connecticut for a year before the family moved permanently in 1991. The transition was a difficult one for him, his wife, Mary Lou, and his two children, Stephanie and Anthony. To them, Spokane seemed too much like a big small town.

"We came out here and we didn't know a soul," he says. "It was incumbent on us to reach out and grow ourselves … and meet people … and we did."

Bonanzino focused on his work and the couple began volunteering their time.

"Wherever we've lived or worked we've always been pretty active in the community. We began to get involved in a lot of things," Bonanzino says.

What impressed him the most was people's attitudes about work here.

"I found the work ethic of people here was extraordinary," he says. "If they believed in what you were doing, they would do anything to secure success."
When Bayer decided to leave the market in 1998, Bonanzino and several partners took over the operation the following year and renamed it Hollister-Stier Laboratories Inc. He led the company for 18 years, until it was sold to Jubilant Organosys Ltd. in 2007. A year later, he joined his son, Anthony, in a new venture, Century Archives Northwest.

The quality of life in the Spokane area is hard to resist. "There's a certain way of life here that does resonate among people who live here that they don't simply want to pass up. As a business owner, you have to make the decision that this is the place you really want to operate your company. For us, it's a very enjoyable environment and that's why we've stayed."

In addition to his professional work, Bonanzino is chairman of the boards of Deaconess Medical Center and Inland Northwest Bank. He also serves on several other boards and teaches at Gonzaga University. With all that, he manages to work in a few rounds of golf. Mary Lou is a board member of the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Spokane, for whom the Bonanzinos organize a charitable golf tournament at the Spokane Country Club.

Over the past 20 years, Bonanzino has seen positive changes in Spokane.

"You look at the transformation of the downtown core with River Park Square. … Spokane couldn't have been as successful has it has without that," he says. "There's been an influx of funding for the University District, really growing that part."

There also continues to be a core group of people who are committed to the success of the city, he asserts, and major projects proposed, especially in the University District where there is a new health sciences building, nursing school building, and planned medical education expansion.

"Good things are going to happen for the city," he says.