WENATCHEE — Yes, Mike and JoAnn Walker are highly successful business folks with a nationwide trucking empire based right here in the Wenatchee Valley.

And, yes, they’ve staked nearly $3 million of their own money to make sure the new Pybus Market, the soon-to-bustle commercial hub at the foot of Orondo Avenue, gets done and gets done right.

And, yes, more than anything they wish the media spotlight would keep away from their personal lives and community contributions to focus solely on the Pybus project’s history, design and eclectic mix of retailers, restaurants, craftspeople and farmers’ bounty.

“I’m not a guy who likes a lot of notoriety,” confessed Mike, 68, in an interview earlier this week. “I prefer to work quietly in the background and let others — the really hard workers — get most of the credit.”

Too bad. Business leaders here say Mike and JoAnn’s latest brainchild — the 25,000-square-foot Pybus Market — could be one of the most ambitious and innovative commercial projects ever for North Central Washington. The 16-vendor retail hub, set to open this spring, is already attracting media attention from around the Northwest and should put Wenatchee’s budding riverfront development on the tourism map.

On Thursday, the Walkers received the Legacy Award for their four decades of business and civic contributions, capped by the Pybus project. The lifetime-achievement honor, sponsored by Wenatchee Valley Business World and the Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce, was presented at the Chamber’s annual banquet.

“There was overwhelming support for the Walkers when it came time to pick this year’s Legacy Award winner,” said Cal FitzSimmons, managing editor of Business World and The Wenatchee World.

“They obviously have been very visible lately with the Pybus Market project,” he said, “but everyone mostly talked about their outstanding personal contributions to local business and our community as a whole over many years.”

What contributions? Here’s a sampling:

A $20,000 check in 1990 to help build the new Wenatchee Valley Senior Activity Center, 1312 Maple St. It was one of the first big contributions the Walkers made to a community project.

An annual donation of toys valued from $5,000 to $10,000 to the local Salvation Army Christmas Distribution. For 25 years, the Walkers’ kids and grandkids have helped choose the gifts for the nearly 1,000 families that benefit from the program.

A 2006 donation of materials and employee labor by the Walkers’ company, Eagle Group, to build a house for Wenatchee Habitat for Humanity.

A major gift in 2008 — along with the Icicle Fund in Leavenworth — to help finance the design and installation of a new $250,000 acoustic shell for the state at the Wenatchee Performing Arts Center.

Regular donations to local shelters and transitional housing facilities, including the Bruce Hotel, Hospitality House and the Women’s Resource Center of NCW. Leftover food from Eagle Group functions is often donated to local shelters.

“Our strict Irish mothers taught us to work hard and never forget that what goes ’round comes ’round,” said JoAnn, 66, who’s served on boards and project teams for a long list of local nonprofits and civic organizations. “We were taught that those who have should learn to give.”

On top of that, the Walkers own the Eagle Group, a collection of five transport companies — trucks, container shipping, storage, moving vans, ambulances and more — that operate in more than 40 distribution hubs down the West Coast, the Eastern Seaboard and across the nation’s northern tier. “Wherever shipping terminals are concentrated,” said Mike.

Of course, the Walkers’ business success and philanthropy didn’t happen overnight.

Born in Wenatchee, Mike and his family moved away when he was about 3 years old to Mossy Rock, where he graduated from high school and met JoAnn. “I was returning from a hunting trip with a buddy and saw JoAnn on her front lawn. ‘Who is that girl?’ I wondered, and set my sights to find out.”

They were married in 1965 and, soon after, Mike brought his new bride back to Wenatchee. “I never wanted to be anywhere else in my life.” He tried a few semesters at Wenatchee Valley College, “but I couldn’t learn that way. I needed more direct, hands-on ways of learning what the world had to teach me.” He’s been soaking up knowledge ever since, said his wife.

In 1968 at age 23, while making deliveries for local trucking company, Mike casually asked Larry Erickson, then owner of the small local trucking company Eagle Transfer, if his company might be for sale. It was and, with a partner, Mike came up with a $13,000 downpayment to buy the transport company that had only four employees and seven trucks, including a flatbed and a pickup.

“I heard the call,” he said. “I was driven to be in business for myself.”

Today, Eagle Group has more than 600 trucks and 1,200 employees who drive millions of miles a year to haul freight, move household goods and, through Wenatchee-based Lifeline Ambulance, save lives.

Eagle is a business success, Mike and JoAnn agreed, that has allowed them to give back to the community they love — most recently with the Pybus Market project.

“We’d leave from our workouts at Gold’s Gym, right across the street from Pybus, and I’d say, ‘Man, there’s got to be something great we can do with that building,’” said Mike. “The project evolved from there.”

A year ago, Mike and JoAnn joined with the Port of Chelan County to rehab the steel-frame building — formerly a metal fabricating plant — “into something that would benefit our community for years to come, something that’d be beautiful and fun, something we could all be proud of.”

What emerged is the Pybus Market, a modern shopping and dining complex inside a 70-year-old exterior shell that once housed industry and history dating back to pre-World War II. Pybus will provide a permanent home for the Wenatchee Valley Farmers Market, spaces for restaurants and shops and public areas for music, theater and other community events.

The Walkers put up $2 million to help design and build a contemporary interior that will attract some of the Wenatchee Valley’s top chefs and entrepreneurs. They also contributed another $700,000 to buy property linking the new market with the waterfront and renovating existing buildings on that parcel.

“We’re committed to make (Pybus) work,” said Mike. “We’re determined that this be a long-term gift to our community.”

He laughed. “It’d better work. We’ve got a 50-year lease on the place, so you can see we’re optimistic about leaving something good, something beneficial for the Wenatchee Valley far into the future.”

Mike Irwin: 665-1179

irwin@wenatcheeworld.com