If SIRTI were the petri-dish subject of a microscopic examination, it would be quite a sightmolecules darting about, gathering in new clusters, and transforming before your eyes. Perhaps the only constant these days at the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute is change.


The agencys interim executive director, Kim Zentz, has been at the helm for less than a year. A completely revamped senior management team is being assembled, with interviews for three new top-level positions taking place next month. The state-funded organization also is reshaping its board of directorswith an eye toward having it reflect the technology sector it serves.


Meanwhile, SIRTIs new Technology Center is now complete and is starting to land tenants, while the incubator space in SIRTIs main building, managed since last fall by longtime technology entrepreneur John Overby, is essentially full.


Zentz, former president and COO of former SIRTI client Avista Labs (now called ReliOn) and most recently the trouble-shooting CEO of the Spokane Transit Authority, says her goal is to push SIRTI to become more focused on its clients and less on itself.


What I heard from clients is that (before), it was all about SIRTI. I want to put the clients first, she says, adding that she hopes future news from SIRTI will be about its clients, not the organization.


Though Zentz and SIRTIs board are quick to point out the organizations successeshelping startups that eventually attracted $130 million in capital and itself bringing $25 million in mostly federal grants to townSIRTI has had its critics, something thats not lost on Zentz.


Weve been mending some relationships, she says.


Eight incubator clients


Currently, SIRTI has eight companies housed in the incubator space of its main building at 665 N. Riverpoint Blvd., and assists about 10 clients elsewhere. Incubator tenant Pondera Engineers LLC, a spinoff from Spokane Valley-based Itron Inc., is moving out of its incubator space this week and into SIRTIs recently completed Technology Center a few blocks away.


Among its other incubator tenants are: Matrical Inc., the maker of lab equipment for drug researchers; Aegis Biosciences LLC, a small company that is developing a wound-dressing product; and Translation Technologies, which makes software associated with computer-aided design.


SIRTIs newest incubator tenants are a data transmissions technology company called Interactive Dynamic Technologies Inc., or IDynaTECH, and a computer support concern called Innovation Computing, says Zentz.


SIRTIs new strategic plan focuses on helping develop technology companies, either startups or high-growth companies that have operational challenges.


In a process that began before Zentz arrival, SIRTI is deep into a management reorganization.


In the past, SIRTI employed a director of commercialization services, a director of technology, a director of administration and finance, and a director of external affairs. SIRTI dropped the director of technology position last spring and added a technology incubation manager in August, hiring Overby, who had co-founded two Inland Northwest tech companies.


When SIRTIs reorganization is complete this spring, it will have three senior managers under Zentz: a director of client services, a director of administration and finance, and a director of market development and communications.


In November, SIRTI began advertising for those positions, and attracted about 140 applications, before trimming that number to 80. Its now in the process of selecting finalists, with the hope of interviewing them next month.


The field is very strong and deep, says Zentz, adding that shes specifically searching for people with experience in a technology startup.


The new posts will pay between $80,000 and in the low $100,000s a year, she says.


Zentz says Peter Mowery, currently director of commercialization services, and Overby both have applied for the new post of director of client services. The former director of operations and finance, Scott Simmons, left SIRTI to take a post at Avista Advantage, and Patrick Jones, who had been the part-time director of external affairs, left recently to work full time at his other job, as executive director of Eastern Washington Universitys Institute for Public Policy and Economic Analysis.


SIRTI currently employs 13 people and has an annual budget of $1.4 million.


Meanwhile, there also has been change on SIRTIs board, whose members are appointed by the governor.


Last year, the board welcomed several new members, including Renee LaRocca, director of tele-health at Inland Northwest Health Services; Michael Le Roy and Kyle Usrey, who share a seat and represent Whitworth College; and Lee Cheatham, of the Washington Technology Center; Will Terpening and Rosanna Peterson, of Gonzaga University; and Harm-Jan Steenhuis, of Eastern Washington University.


Soon, the board will send two names to Gov. Christine Gregoire for consideration to fill the seat vacated late last year by Jon Eliassen, president and CEO of the Spokane Area Economic Development Council. Two other seats are expiring, those held by Rich Hadley, president of the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce, and Spokane consultant Janet Gilpatrick, but Zentz says both have asked to stay on, and their names also will be submitted to the governor.


Zentz says some of the changes on the board are in line with a strategic goal by the organization to have the board reflect the technology sector and entrepreneurship.


Eliassen, who had been on the SIRTI board for five years, says he resigned to free up some time for him to focus on his other responsibilities, and also to send the message that the board needs fresh blood for the organization to continue to reinvent itself.


Finding tech tenants


The new Technology Center, which was built by SIRTIs foundation, has about 29,000 square feet of leasable office, manufacturing, and wet-lab space.


Pondera Engineers, the first company to agree to lease space in the center, will occupy 1,000 square feet initially, SIRTI says. Last week, a small software company agreed to take about 750 square feet, though Zentz says she cant disclose its name yet, and another possible tenant and SIRTI client, called Global Compusearch LLC, is considering taking about 1,200 square feet. Another organization is mulling taking about 1,000 square feet.


She says shes highly confident that the center will pick up another tenant this spring that would take some of the buildings wet-lab space, and adds there are other prospects as well, including one that the EDC is recruiting and the possibility that Washington State University could locate some research operations there.


So far, there have been no takers for the centers 12,000 square feet of wet-lab space, demand for which was a rallying cry for the buildings proponents.


Zentz acknowledges that, saying the biotech industry has cooled somewhat since the building was first proposed. Also, some local potential lab tenants that had expressed interest in the SIRTI center later chose not to locate there, she says.


Still, Zentz says shes confident the wet-lab space will fill up, and adds that one large potential tenant would require at least some of that space.


The phones are ringing more frequently these days, she says.


SIRTI will charge market rates for the space, she says, which amount to about $1.30 per square foot per month in the new center, and about $2 a foot in the wet lab. It charges about $1 a square foot in the incubator in the main building.


Incubator space in the main building is in short supply, and that has prompted SIRTIs staff to revisit its criteria for how long a young startup should stay there.


Im sitting down with all the tenants and talking about graduation policies, Zentz says. One trigger doesnt fit every tech company the same way.


She says that if you look back over the past 10 years, however, the average tenure of an incubator tenant is less than three years.