SIRTI gets its moment in the sun – Federal officials give $3 million grant as three Cabinet secretaries look on

For 10 years, leaders of Spokane’s research institute with the odd name have waited for their big close-up.

That moment came Tuesday for the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute, where a panel of Washington, D.C. dignitaries called the center a key engine in restarting the region’s economy.

Tom Sowa
Staff writer

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=021804&ID=s1488884&cat=section.business

On hand at Tuesday’s ceremony at SIRTI were Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Treasury Secretary John Snow and Commerce Secretary Donald Evans.

Those officials were on a two-day tour of the Northwest touting a “Jobs and Growth” program focused on economic revitalization.

They also cheered as federal officials handed SIRTI officials a $3 million grant to help build a new technology center on the Riverpoint Higher Education Park campus.

Founded in 1994 with state money, SIRTI has struggled to establish its focus. Originally meant to create partnerships between companies and area university researchers, it’s now a business incubator, focusing on helping young companies build products and create jobs.

The Cabinet dignitaries also took a quick tour of SIRTI’s building, looking in on several tenants there, including Matrical, Inc., a start-up biotech equipment maker.

A bevy of national and regional media tagged along behind the Cabinet heads, snapping pictures and grabbing comments.

Evans, who had worked in the oil industry in Texas with President George W. Bush, came away impressed. “If George Bush were here today, the president would call this entrepreneurs heaven,” Snow said.

Evans, Snow and Chao all took turns saying SIRTI is the kind of center that the country needs for building a stronger economy. Evans said SIRTI is a key effort in developing companies that “rely on competitiveness and innovation.”

On hand to attend the SIRTI ceremony were about 80 people from the region, from university presidents and agency heads to elected officials and company CEOs.

“If people didn’t understand what SIRTI has accomplished before, they did today,” said Rich Hadley, president and CEO of the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce. “It was an exclamation point on the quality of its board and the quality of its facility.”

Hadley said the $3 million grant, awarded by the federal Economic Development Administration, validates the new focus and management of SIRTI’s executive director, Patrick Tam.

Under Tam’s leadership the past two years, SIRTI has sharpened its focus as a business incubator, Hadley said.

That $3 million grant will build a 35,000-square-foot SIRTI Technology Center on the south side of Trent. It will include wet-lab space for biotech companies to do advanced research, plus offer space for other tech firms to expand and to build products. SIRTI will contribute up to $3 million for the project from loans.

Wet labs are facilities that include the needed temperature, mechanical and safety features required of advanced biotechnology research.

The new, two-story technology center will be operated by SIRTI, which now has a budget of $1.4 million and a staff of 15. Groundbreaking is expected in May, with occupancy likely sometime in 2005.

After Tuesday’s meeting, Tam said that once the center is built, SIRTI will have the challenge of obtaining additional money to operate it effectively. While some of the new center’s expenses would be covered through tenant leases, SIRTI will need more staff to operate it, he said.

How much SIRTI will need from the state Legislature isn’t clear yet, Tam added. “We don’t want to approach the Legislature until we have made a deliberative analysis of our need,” he said.

After the morning session, the CEO of SIRTI tenant Matrical sounded a note of concern about how to assess the event.

“The grant is a good thing,” said Kevin Oldenburg, “but SIRTI has a long way to go.”

Oldenburg’s company has been located at SIRTI for two years. He said he’s seen SIRTI focusing on areas that might never become key sectors in the region’s economy.

“We are not a wet-lab city. That’s more likely to happen in cities like San Diego or San Francisco or Boston,” he said.

“We need to focus on what we do well here, which is manufacturing and creating medical instrumentation. We don’t have the level of advanced biological research you need for developing or finding new drugs,” he said.