As part of its work to expand the health and life sciences sector in the Spokane region, the Evergreen Bioscience Innovation Cluster (Evergreen Bio) submitted a proposal to the Washington State Department of Commerce for an Evergreen Manufacturing Growth Grant in February and was awarded $200,000 in April 2023. With an extremely aggressive schedule to spend the dollars by end of June 2023, a competitive bid for architecture renderings and preliminary site selection was completed and awarded to ALSC Architects in May 2023. The final report was received on August 4, 2023.
The grant provided funding for architectural renderings, a site selection study, a building requirements study, and a preliminary building design.
Evergreen Bio is a recently formed non-profit organization with the mission to make Washington state and the Mountain Northwest a magnet for bioscience. GSI is a founding partner of Evergreen Bio and provides grant administration and staff support. The goal of the future 77,000-square-foot building is to create a bioscience hub for the evolving regional bioscience ecosystem. It will support talent mentorship and communication between workforce, academia, and people in the field of bioscience and serve as a home for the continuum of invaluable support for incubating cutting-edge research and innovative businesses, thus attracting new companies to our region. Although the specific site for the building is yet to be finalized, its value is magnified if the location is within walking distance from all higher education institutions within the Spokane University District.
What’s next? The stakeholders involved with this effort, known as the Evergreen Bio Innovation Team along with ALSC, have compiled marketing materials targeting the audiences of architects, developers, and construction managers. They are also anticipating notification of a federal EDA Tech Hub Strategy award to fund the continued design work of the building. In the meantime, GSI’s Life Sciences Spokane group and Evergreen Bio will work together to develop a community strategy to utilize the renderings and create succinct speaking points for community leaders to utilize for outreach engagements with interested organizations.
Learn more about the project or contact GSI’s Health & Life Sciences Business Manager, Stacia Rasmussen.
