Lab could spawn high-paying jobs in Spokane- Federal grant for biomedical research wet lab looks promising.

Spring being a season of promise and renewal, now is a good time to take a break from the dreary economic news we’re accustomed to hearing. Here’s something brighter.

Our View: The Spokesman Review Editorial Board

Next month, along with May’s flowers, an exciting economic development asset may blossom in Spokane in the form of a $3 million federal grant for a biomedical research facility known as a wet lab.

If it comes through, says Patrick Tam, executive director of the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute, it will be "very big news for the entire community."

Such a facility would not abruptly generate hundreds of new high-paying jobs for Spokane’s notoriously sluggish economy.

But it would bolster the community’s ability to develop spin-off businesses that in time would create the living wages that are so sorely lacking.

Cities well-stocked with successful high-tech firms enjoy a largely self-sustaining system.

A reasonable share of corporate revenues is invested in research and development, which generate new business opportunities, which bring in more revenues, which are invested in more research and development.

Without a prosperous business base to start with, however, communities such as Spokane have to turn mostly to institutions of higher education to help them spur promising new ideas and bring them to fruition.

There’s about 2,200 square feet of wet lab space in Spokane now — space that’s environmentally secure and climate-controlled and equipped with state-of-the-art water, electrical and mechanical facilities. The kind of space that meets the exacting demands of biomedical researchers.

If SIRTI gets the U.S. Economic Development Administration grant, however, the community’s wet lab space — and the ability to incubate new businesses — would expand dramatically.

Plans are for 12,000 square feet initially, with capacity for another 8,000 square feet.

The grant isn’t a sure thing, but the outlook is good. Spokane is competing with three projects in the Puget Sound area for $4 million in EDA grant money. A regional EDA official has said Spokane is better positioned than the others.

That’s encouraging to local economic development groups, who earlier identified a wet lab as their goal.

This dream, seemingly achievable, exemplifies the potential benefits embodied in a partnership between community economic efforts and the region’s institutions of higher education.

Without a solid base of prosperous businesses to spawn growth through private research activity, the universities have a critical role to play. Not only in the wet lab enterprise but in untold other opportunities down the line.

In some cases, that will demand that the universities examine their own structures, how they encourage and reward excellent researchers on the faculty, how they balance basic science with applied science and how they manage and license the patents they hold.

Such considerations are elements of a well-coordinated, communitywide strategy. That may be what it takes to get Spokane’s economic future in full bloom.

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=042103&ID=s1339547&cat=section.business