When the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute breaks ground this summer on its planned technology building near the rail lines just east of downtown, it will be breathing new life into a long-neglected area seen as having vast potential.


The $6 million technology center, which will include wet-lab and manufacturing space for biotech and biomedical startups and university researchers, will be the first new structure to rise south of Trent Avenue in the Riverpoint Higher Education Park. SIRTI officials hope the project will serve as a catalyst for the development of other structures in that largely vacant areaespecially buildings that would be used for technology transfer.


Meanwhile, the city of Spokane is seeking $6 million in federal funding to extend Riverside Avenue by about a half mile, east from Division Street, by the technology center, and sweeping north to connect with Trent. That tree-lined boulevard, say city officials, would help open up the south-of-Trent district to development and pull traffic off of the section of Trent that passes through the education park, allowing it to be a pedestrian-friendly street. The city eventually wants to extend the boulevard all the way east to about Perry, along the south bank of the Spokane River.


Those moves, says SIRTI Executive Director Patrick Tam, will open peoples eyes to the opportunity.


Adds Rom Markin, interim chancellor of Washington State University at Spokane, This is such a frothy, yeasty, kind of thing. There is a lot of excitement surrounding it.


The Riverpoint campus comprises more than 60 acres of land that stretches north and east to the river, south to the rail lines, and west along a jagged perimeter that reaches Division at Riverside.


So far, almost all of the development at the Riverpoint campus, which now is overseen by WSU-Spokane, has occurred north of Trent. There, the first building to go in was SIRTIs main structure, which is located near the Spokane River at the campuss northeast end, and houses mostly incubator space and biotech clean rooms.


In 1996, Washington State University at Spokane opened the 119,600-square foot Phase One Classroom Building just to the southwest of the SIRTI building, followed by the 145,000-square-foot Health Sciences Building farther west. WSU recently received legislative funding approval for a 93,000-square-foot Academic Center, which will be constructed near the center of the parks northern section. After that, WSU hopes to secure funding for a nursing education center, which would be built along Trent just south of the Health Sciences Building, and would house the Intercollegiate College of Nursing.


Though WSU has developed some parking south of Trent and has renovated the former F.O. Berg building there, no new structures have been built in that section of the overall park thus far.


The WSU foundation, which controls some of the land in the park, is selling to the SIRTI foundation the 82,000-square-foot parcel upon which the new technology center will be built.


SIRTIs technology building will be located along the southern border of the park, north across the proposed extension of Riverside from the rail lines that bisect the citys core.


The building will have 35,000 square feet of space on two levels, including 12,000 square feet of wet-lab space, about 10,000 square feet of office space, 8,000 square feet of manufacturing space, and common space.


Tam believes SIRTI, a state agency charged with technology commercialization, will have commitments for more than half the buildings space by the time the structure opens in May 2005. The business plan SIRTI developed for the center calls for it to have positive cash flow by the end of its second year and to be fully occupied by the end of its third year.


It wont be a traditional incubator, where just businesses are there, says Tam. Instead, he says, space in the technology center will be leased to both university and nonprofit research groups and private companies. It will show how technology transfer takes place in real time, Tam says.


Among the university and nonprofit tenants, he says, could be Washington State University, which is the fiscal agent for the education park, and the Heart Institute of Spokane, which does cardiovascular research.


The building will include common areas designed to make it attractive for researchers and entrepreneurs to take a break and visit, perhaps sharing ideas on white boards hung near comfortable hallway chairs.


The SIRTI foundation bought enough land for its new technology center to accommodate a second such center.


That second building could be dedicated to a specific genre of science, such as agricultural technology or clinical research in medicine, Tam says. Possible federal funding could play a role in determining the second centers area of focus, he adds.


He says SIRTI has proven that it can react quickly to develop such a center. It took just eight months, Tam says, to put together the funding for the technology center that will start this summer.


Commercialization has gotten a lot of buzz recently, says Patrick Jones, SIRTIs director of business development. Theres a growing attitude that theres a lot of research out there, but not enough commercialization coming out of it.


Tam and Jones envision the south-of-Trent areaespecially the portion closest to downtownas a potential home for a cluster of that kind of activity.


Jones cites as an example, the University of Wisconsin-Madisons University Research Park, a 104-acre technology park that contains a collection of public and private tenants involved in research and manufacturing, and 117,000 square feet of incubator space. That park now is home to more than 100 companies that employ about 4,000 people, its Web site says.


This (Riverpoint) could serve as the commercialization entity for all of the state or region, says Tam, who points out that developing a downtown technology park in any other major Northwest city would be difficult because undeveloped land is hard to come by near a city core.


He says that if the two envisioned SIRTI tech buildings are successful, they will prove the concept that a tech park will work at the Riverpoint campus.


We (SIRTI) will help companies through the incubation phase and then look to locate them next door, Tam says.


Markin says there are no specific plans yet for the land south of Trent, and that all possibilities will be considered.


Tam and Jones say they dont think the campus would compete with private developers of manufacturing parks because the envisioned tech park at Riverpoint wont be big enough to accommodate large-scale manufacturing. When companies reach the stage when they need more manufacturing space, theyll be turning to privately developed parks for space. In other words, the Riverpoint park, they believe, will produce customers for larger parks.


Multiphase street project


In March, City Council President Dennis Hession, Councilwoman Cherie Rodgers, and the citys director of legislative affairs, Susan Ashe, hand-carried to Washington, D.C., a federal funding request to the states congressional delegation, in conjunction with a national conference of cities.


The request includes a host of potential transportation and public-safety initiatives, but the highest-priority items involve the proposed University District area.


Specifically, the city is requesting $560,000 to study and design the extension of Riverside, for which it would throw in another $100,000; $5.4 million for the project itself, including right-of-way purchases and construction; $1.6 million to enhance Division Street from the Interstate 90 interchange to Spokane Falls Boulevard; and another $1.6 million to design and build a pedestrian bridge that would span the rail lines on the campuss southern border and connect the campus with the East Sprague business district in the vicinity of Grant Street.


Dick Raymond, a city project engineer for capital programs, says the proposed extension of Riverside would be about a half-mile long and would run next to the rail lines from Division nearly to where Sherman Street would be. It then would bend north to connect with Trent near the campus eastern edge.


Raymond says its still unclear how many lanes the street would have because designs could end up including space in the street for the eventual development of light rail. Its likely, however, that the extension, at least initially, would have four lanes. The city already has some of the right of way it needs for the project, about where Sherman would be, but would need to acquire about six acres of land from WSU interests. Located on part of that land is the decrepit structure at the southeast corner of Division and Riverside that once housed a public market and most recently has been used to store HoopFest backboards.


Ashe says the federal funding request includes descriptions for two more phases of work related to the Riverside extension. One would continue the boulevard east where its planned turn toward Trent would be, extending the street another three quarters of a mile along the south bank of the river, beneath the Keefe Bridge and connecting with Trent at about Perry Street.


That proposed extension would eliminate the need for the arterial to cross the river, and would reduce congestion and air-quality problems at the busy Trent-Hamilton Street intersection at the northern end of the Keefe Bridge, the city says. The project, says the city in its funding request, would allow for the complete operational downgrading of Trent Avenue from Hamilton Street all the way west through the University District, which will result in a more cohesive campus setting and direct ties with Gonzaga University on the north side of the river. The city plans late this year to change the name of that portion of Trent to Spokane Falls Boulevard, the same as it is to the west of Division.


The final phase would connect that extension to Sprague Avenue east of the Keefe Bridge overpass. The connection would follow Erie Street south and would pass beneath the rail lines there before breaking into two legs that would connect with the westbound and eastbound legs of Sprague at different points.


No cost estimates for either of those two latter phases were included in the request, which said that the city would be seeking both federal and state funding for the projects.


Ashe says the extension of Riverside and the development of a U District east of downtown should pay big dividends in creating commerce and jobs in the city, and thats what her boss is after.


Weve been pretty clear that economic development is one of Mayor Wests top priorities, she says.