When Steve Simmons walks through downtown Spokane office buildings and hears the sound of fingers clacking on keyboards, he's happy. Very happy.
The 60-year-old Eastern Washington University professor is the founding father of Spokane's Terabyte Triangle. The sound of people at work reminds Simmons that downtown Spokane has become a technology hub based on a plentiful supply of fiber-optic connections.
Simmons coined the Terabyte Triangle term five years ago as a way to evoke the appeal of a tech-friendly downtown.
This week, Simmons and downtown business leaders will celebrate the anniversary with an open house and related events.
Simmons and others concede the Triangle really is not three-sided. Its boundaries are loose and open to debate.
He suggests the "TT" generally runs from SIRTI and Gonzaga University on the east to KHQ-TV on the west, from the Spokane Arena and Mission on the north to the hospital complex on the south.
The label was always meant to be a marketing ploy to boost downtown and attract good companies.
"I got the inspiration from Silicon Valley" where downtown San Jose, Calif., in the early 1990s became a lure for tech companies and related businesses.
In Spokane's case, Simmons searched for a term that suggested software rather than hardware tech companies, which have a tendency to locate in the Spokane Valley or on the West Plains.
He liked the alliteration of terabyte -- a measure of size for computer data -- and triangle.
Still a tech propagandist and a downtown promoter, Simmons admits the Terabyte Triangle label may soon need an upgrade because downtown itself has changed over the past five years.
In 1996, when the Fernwell Building on Riverside Avenue became the city's first all-wired downtown office complex, the lure of cheap broadband served as a powerful stimulus to growth.
Over time, six different carriers built full fiber-optic networks serving nearly all of downtown's major buildings including Steam Plant Square and the Holley Mason.
Now, in 2002, downtown Spokane's appeal is less about technology and more about quality of life and a strong urban buzz.
"We (the board of directors for the nonprofit Terabyte Triangle group) have decided connectivity is still a draw," said Simmons. "But we're going to focus more in the future on the appeal of downtown's synergy -- people hanging out and helping each other, and quality of life."
The Triangle grew out of the telecommunications industry's belief in the build-it-and-they-will-come philosophy. The growth occurred nationwide in the mid- to late-'90s and the result was a huge oversupply of fiber networks, and nowhere near enough customers.
Downtown Spokane found itself with its own overabundance of fiber-optic networks, along with strong competition that has kept prices affordable for most business customers.
Simmons said the region is lucky to have six data carriers providing service in the Triangle. The large amount of bandwidth from Time Warner Telecom, XO Communications, Qwest, One Eighty Networks, Electric Lightwave Inc. and Columbia Fiber Solutions has been attractive to young companies with huge technological needs.
"We loved the (Fernwell) building, plus our company uses huge amounts of data," said David Gay, chief operating officer of Home Debut. The net-based real estate company moved into the Fernwell two years ago.
Home Debut has grown to 14 local employees. It uses a 100-megabit Ethernet connection provided by One Eighty Networks to feed multimedia real estate listings to Realtors and home buyers across the Web.
Simmons likes to say the TT now has about 100 companies that rely in some measure on the available data networks. Some might quibble over the number, but Simmons is convinced the net gain to downtown is huge.
Tom Power, co-owner of the Fernwell, said he listened to Simmons back in 1996 and realized the bearded tech guy was actually ahead of his time for Spokane. Power made the investment and fully wired the building.
Today he's got about a dozen business clients in the Fernwell, plus about 30 small operators sharing space in one- or two-room executive spaces.
The success of the Terabyte Triangle isn't universally acclaimed, however. Chad Skidmore, president of One Eighty Networks, said the concept of plentiful downtown broadband services wasn't properly marketed to the business community.
"I'd suggest that a new group needs to take the lead in doing that," said Skidmore, so the Triangle can meet its full potential.
Simmons himself backs away from the oft-heard claim that downtown Spokane has more fiber-optic connectivity than any other city in the country.
Tacoma, for instance, has its own claim on that distinction. The Pierce County city calls itself the "most wired city in the country," based on the multiple carriers who provide data and voice networks to its residents.
No one has determined which city is really the most wired.
In fact, some Tacoma civic leaders have already moved on and no longer preach the "we've got broadband" gospel for business recruitment.
"That was last year's slogan," said Eric Cederstrand, a vice president with Colliers International, a nationwide commercial property company.
Cederstrand said Tacoma's downtown needed some kind of magnet to bring businesses into the core about five years ago. Connectivity was that lure.
"But now, the magnet for businesses is the downtown area itself. Connectivity is taken for granted," he added.
Simmons admits the shelf life of the Terabyte Triangle label may be running out.
"The board still thinks connectivity is a draw, especially when Spokane is compared with most of Eastern Washington," he said.
Downtown, he said, is still a place where good young companies are coming to work.
"I go around downtown and I see little gold nuggets, where someone has a company they started in their basement.
"It's fabulous to me to see how far the downtown has come, and that the quality of life issues resonate with technology."
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