If there were a magical way to gauge the most interesting businesses and non-profits per capita in the entire country, there’s no doubt Port Townsend and Jefferson County would score well. 

As a tourist town, we’re known for our coffee houses and breweries, bars and restaurants, studios and galleries, theaters and bookstores, bed and breakfasts and hotels.

And lots of quirky, quality retail, from specialty clothing shops and thrift stores, antique shops and furniture distributors, classic cars to antique bottles.

We haven't written enough about our quality mainstay businesses, from grocery stores to the thriving Food Co-op, banks and credit unions, professional services like financial advisors, insurance companies, realtors, and legal and accounting firms.

It’s all fodder for our magazines, "Working Waterfront" and "Lifestyle," along with a dedicated space in the paper called “Commerce, Dollars & Sense,” which first launched last summer and has  continued to grow. It's an umbrella wide enough to include our non and not-for-profit organizations, which also engage mightily in the exchange of goods and services. 

I'm happy to announce that beginning on May 28, Commerce will become a regular, once-a-month section of The Leader. 

We’ll continue to bring you features about our local businesses — look for a piece about the 75th anniversary of Homer Smith Insurance — along with more broad features. We’ll try to bring in depth analysis of larger trends when they affect the local community. There may be times when we can look at groups of businesses, like financial institutions, or builders, or nurse practitioners.

More typical will be focus on mom and pop shops. We plan a robust collection of business briefs, but we'll need you for that. Send us your new hires or promotions, news of shifts to your business, moves or expansions, anniversaries and story ideas. Put BUSINESS in uppercase in the subject header.

Reach Meredith Jordan at editor@ptleader.com.