There’s room for everything in the Jensen-Byrd complex, just east of Division on Main. WSU has an offer on the table from the original landlords of Google and PayPal, who not only want to build a startup center, but will also make room for arts-related activities and a public market. They’ve offered $1.3 million over the first five years of a ground lease, almost three times as much as the next-best offer, and are committed to investing millions more to fix up the buildings. They also bring with them a large-scale seed fund and ties to a dozen of the top Silicon Valley venture capital firms with over $26 billion under management. That’s a lot of firepower to bring to Spokane.

In just two years, their similar project in Sunnyvale, CA, called the Plug and Play Tech Center, became home to 150 startups, which raised $450 million in venture funding. Imagine what even a fraction of that success would mean for Spokane! Check out what the New York Times had to say about this: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/technology/14landlord.html

And with that indispensable infrastructure in place, the Amidi Group, creators of Plug and Play, would then build new construction for high-end tenants attracted by this crucible of creativity on the edge of campus. It’s a good bet that, with that infrastructure in place, the Institute for Systems Medicine would be positioned to return to its original plan of building a true research institute with over a hundred scientists on staff, instead of the truncated version that’s now proposed. And a full-fledged ISM would be a true catalyst for building the health-sciences mission of WSU Spokane.

One of WSU Spokane’s current research projects is promoting healthy diets among low-income families. What a perfect fit with a public market! (Here’s my full disclosure: I’m on the Spokane Public Market board, and have worked closely with the Plug and Play people to develop the proposal presented to WSU.)

As Steve Salvatori, of the Spokane Entrepreneurial Center, put it: “I don’t understand why WSU isn’t all over this idea.”

The Spovangelist is thus a huge advocate of the Phoenix Project for the University District:

http://phoenix.efgn.org/

The concept of building community and social capital around a common shared core interest applies to the University District. We can do this with a focus on biomedical start-ups and creative research in health care, to build on what we’re doing at Riverpoint to create an academic health center. (Full disclosure: I work for WSU Spokane)

Not as cool-sounding to some as an artist workshop, perhaps. But just look at Signature Genomics growing from two people to nearly 80, and being named to the Forbes list of fastest-growing companies and CEO Lisa Shaffer on the top-10 women CEO list (a WSU grad, and one of our research faculty).

That’s evidence that there’s a lot of energy to be generated from recruiting and retaining bright scientists. They create, too, and will appreciate a high-energy culture, our four-season recreation, the Spokane River, and the rest of what makes Spokane a great place. This will help support artists along with the other elements of a vibrant economy that’s based on creating new knowledge and new ideas in a collaborative culture.

–barb