What’s so great about this place?
There’s plenty that’s great about this place called the Inland Northwest, especially Spokane and its downtown core. Sure, we may be just a month and a half away from an ugly trial involving the City and one of its most prominent families—as well as allegations of fraud, malfeasance, and violations of public trust—and while waiting with baited breath to see if the local economy really will turn around, the only good thing on the horizon promises to be Spring Training. Granted! But there’s room for hope. We’re past the halfway mark of winter; the weather has been blessedly moderate; the Oscars are airing early; and, amazingly, we’re still in business. Yes, let’s celebrate what’s right for a change. Let’s engage in some shameless boosterism to put us all in a good mood.
And with that in mind, turn toward the center and take a glance just south of the Spokane River. Marvel at the beautiful, gentrified old buildings. Think about connectivity and a life without e-mail. Imagine today what the future holds for tomorrow (boosterism calls for a few clichés). Here in this modest northern metropolis, most have heard the term “Terabyte Triangle,” but few truly understand its history and significance and how it leads us, as we are, poised for greatness. (This intro by Staff)
Tour of the Triangle: Terabyte Triangle Buildings
In July 1996, several groups were taking steps to revitalize downtown Spokane. SIRTI, the Spokane Regional Chamber, and the Economic Development Council were working together on economic development for downtown Spokane and the region. Fly-ins, focus groups, and all manner of outreach were used to take advantage of the many positive attributes the region has to offer.
As a dedicated “downtown denizen” as well as being part of the education and technology community, Dr. Steve Simmons noted both the empty space in Spokane’s historic downtown buildings and the newly available high-speed broadband connectivity. Putting the two together, he believed, would boost economic development by creating high-tech business clusters. A business cluster would include electronic service providers, high tech businesses, and those businesses that support high tech businesses. Believing that every venture needs a catchy name, Simmons called it the “Terabyte Triangle.”
The name Terabyte Triangle was derived from “Silicon Valley”—terabyte to suggest information products rather than electronic products, and “Triangle” for the large triangular zone available around the downtown core.
The Terabyte Triangle has a rather fuzzy border, and the northern tip may shift a bit changing the configuration of the triangle. Basically the Terabyte Triangle runs from the James Keefe Bridge on the east to Browne’s Addition on the west. The north tip is Indiana Avenue.
The Terabyte Triangle began as a volunteer organization and the twelve member Board remains all volunteers today. The Terabyte Triangle is funded by Downtown Spokane Ventures, and its funds are used to finance the Terabyte Triangle Web site, and the Terabyte Triangle Newsletter.
Many cities have a lit fiber MAN, but Spokane is unique in having a dark fiber network available for lease, and the Terabyte Triangle has the greatest concentration of dark fiber. “Dark fiber has even more business benefits than lit fiber,” explains John Everett, of Columbia Fiber Solutions. With dark fiber, once the dark fiber has been leased, there is no increase in the monthly fee to increase bandwidth. The speed and bandwidth of dark fiber is limited only by the electronics put on each end. At this time 10 gigabit electronic switches are beginning to reach the market. The company leasing dark fiber has an absolutely private network. There is never any traffic diversion out of dark fiber due to service providers, and the company has complete control of when it performs maintenance on its equipment. When a network must cross state lines, dark fiber is not subject to interstate commerce issues, but lit fiber has various fees and taxes that must be paid.
The company with dark or lit fiber can share among multiple locations their investment in servers, storage area networks, phone and video equipment and they need hire only one set of systems people. Businesses using dark or lit fiber from Columbia Fiber Solutions get to pick and choose their service providers and the electronics that best fits their needs.
Spokane now has several excellent wireless providers --- microwave, fixed wireless, and WiFi. Because all wireless is line-of-sight, the roof tops of the Terabyte Triangles’ tall buildings are becoming very valuable property. As soon as all of the agreements can be put into order, Spokane will boast a wireless downtown --- a network that should cover the majority of the Terabyte Triangle.
Thanks to the hard work of Spokane’s many technology innovators, including those associated with the Terabyte Triangle, Spokane was designated one of the seven most ‘intelligent communities’ in the world, and the only city so named in the United States by the Intelligent Community Forum in New York City. The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) is a project of the World Teleport Association.
According to the Intelligent Community Forum, to be intelligent a city must have “significant deployment of broadband communications infrastructure. The infrastructure must include businesses, government facilities and residences.” Being an “intelligent community” takes a lot more than ‘being wired.” Spokane, using the Terabyte Triangle as an example, proved that Spokane is an Intelligent Community.
The 2003 top seven intelligent communities included Glasgow, Scotland; Spokane, Washington; Sunderland, United Kingdom; Taipei, Taiwan ROC; Victoria, Australia; Western Valley, Nova Scotia, Canada; and Yokosuka, Japan.
Tour of the Triangle: Terabyte Triangle Buildings
On May 8, 1997, the first major downtown participant, the Fernwell Building, became Spokane’s first “Baked Alaska Building”. Baked Alaska? This favorite dessert of cruise ships worldwide presents a piping hot, golden brown shell of baked meringue—and then a paradoxical surprise—a creamy, frozen ice cream center. In Spokane, the Baked Alaska building has a cool historic exterior wrapped around a white-hot center of advanced telecommunications and computer technology.
In the seven years since the Terabyte Triangle was launched, Spokane’s building developers, working in association with technology companies, universities, and government organizations, have created what may be the largest collection of ‘Baked Alaska Buildings’ in North America.
The ‘most wired buildings’ in the Terabyte Triangle include the Fernwell Building, Steam Plant Square, Holley Mason Building, Hutton Building, Paulsen Building, US Bank Building, Peyton Building, the Intermodal Center, Spokane Computer Building, and SIRTI. Because these building offer high-speed, broadband connectivity as a tenant amenity, these buildings host almost sixty per cent of the 133 high tech companies in the Terabyte Triangle.
Fernwell Building
The Fernwell building has become the epicenter of specialized high volume web traffic in the Terabyte Triangle. The building’s technology core is based on fiber connections from Time Warner Telecom, 180 Networks, Qwest and XO, providing both heroic throughput and massive redundancy to Fernwell’s Internet traffic flow. Fernwell is headquarters to Real Resume, which processes over five million Internet resumes per year for national employment Web sites, and of Home Debut, which imports and exports a torrential stream of multimedia data for the real estate industry. There are also very heavy bandwidth users in more traditional services, like accounting and law. All this is wrapped in a spectacular historic package, designed by architect Hermann Preusse and built in 1891. In the spirit of those wealthy years --- in which ‘leasable footage optimization’ was a phrase as alien as ‘MP3 downloading’ --- the building is wrapped around a huge sky lit central atrium which, adorned by old carved oak and elaborately wrought metalwork, descends vertically to illuminate the entire Fernwell interior.
Other Fernwell high-tech tenants include companies as diverse as Media Joe, which will integrate all of your electronic media systems, E3 Technology which does security for entities such as banks and health care institutions, and ExorVision Imports which import and enhance LCD screens for point-of-sale systems. Also in the Fernwell Bulding, you will find Ascend Healthcare Systems, CarParts Technologies, and Cooper Technology. The list goes on, with Design Spike, HeyCats! Web Solutions, Impac, NEC BNS, and Neotech Solutions. The Fernwell’s record shows how provisioning to attract high tech has created a thriving new class of downtown business activity.
Steam Plant Square
A young Japanese urban planner, after visiting Steam Plant Square, described it as “the coolest place” he had seen in his seventeen-city tour of America’s restored downtowns. Developed by Wells & Company, Steam Plant Square is a fusion, combining the 1890 Seehorn building with the 1916 Central Steam Plant by means of a newly constructed central courtyard. The Central Steam Plant delivers the greatest historical drama, with twin 225 foot patterned-brick smokestacks, massive arch-topped metal mullioned windows, boilers, pipes, steel catwalks, and titanic interior coal bunker. Today, connectivity has replaced coal to fire the engines of commerce. The Steam Plant is now home to some of Spokane’s most advanced connectivity installations. The building’s Network Operations Center is a multi-million dollar asset with elaborate provisions for backup power, security, and Internet server collocation space, all supported by multiple OC 12 fiber connections. This bandwidth bonanza is now heavily used by many technology tenants --- including Contineo Technologies, ActiveServers Inc, ILF Media, IT-Lifeline, and Thinking Cap Communications.
IT-Lifeline does outsourced data management, data backup, and data recovery services and could not exist without the dark fiber available for lease at Steam Plant Square. “We move incredible amounts of data on a daily basis,” says Steve Tabacek, President, “literally terabytes per night.” “Spokane has an excellent Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) that is key to customers and keeps the costs down,” says Tabacek.
Wells and Company has continued its development of “Baked Alaska buildings” with the Morgan Building and Freeman Center, along with a less historic structure, the Courtyard Office Center. Memories by Design, in the Courtyard Office Center, chose their Terabyte Triangle location because they needed high-speed, broadband connectivity as a basis for doing business.
Memories by Design creates software and allied services for the funeral industry. The product and service most responsible for the success of Memories By Design is the Memory Keepsake Suite of software. The Keepsake Designer software provides the content for a full video production of a custom made Memory Keepsake DVD, celebrating the life of the deceased. Their Memory Keepsake clients must have a twenty-four hour or less turn around time. “The bandwidth is available in the Terabyte Triangle,” says Dan Womach, President. “In our business, we absolutely can not be down, so we have to have redundancy.”
SIRTI
The SIRTI Building has many functions. It is a high-tech business incubator. It is a classroom building for both WSU and EWU. It houses the WSU Small Business Development Center. It is the hub for VPnet, and it is a community resource for video conferencing capability.
The business incubator tenants include several dealing in biotechnology and biotechnology manufacturing. These include Biomedex, MatriCal and Riverpoint Pharmacy.
Other incubator clients deal in information technology. Translation Technology Inc. uses high-speed, broadband connectivity as the basis for their engineering translations of large CAD files. ACW Solutions provides client companies with a Business Operating System that enables them to implement a systematic way to attract and keep customers for life,” says Damian Schwarz, ACW’s CIO. RehabLogic is a new IT tenant.
Technology engineering is yet another area for SIRTI incubator tenants. DAS Electronics is developing a high tech target to help sharp-shooters in their quest for accuracy. CSK Communications’ engineering services include “inside the physical plant” design and implementation as well as their “outside the plant” services. They are a licensed CLEC, and they work with developers to create ‘plug-and-go’ facilities.
Holley Mason Building
Downtown’s most diverse technology core is found in the Holley Mason building --- a virtual microcosm of innovation in the Inland Northwest. Technology dominates, from the basement, where fiber from 180 Networks, XO and Qwest enters the building, to the top floor, where a complete biotechnology laboratory and development center served as the launch pad for GenPrime’s nationally acclaimed product against Anthrax terrorism. In between, there are technology tenants such as INHS, and new Biotechnology Academy for the high school age group, and leading-edge developer Maplewood Software, which routinely ships code to Microsoft. The Holley Mason was built in 1905 as a hardware store and warehouse and was Spokane’s first fireproof building of reinforced concrete. Nonetheless, it is quite airy and decorative with its tawny brick veneer, multistory Italianate windows and charmingly figured terra cotta trim.
ConoverBond, Inc., owner of the Holley Mason Building, includes high speed connectivity as a tenant amenity at other buildings it owns including the Hutton Building. The Hutton Building is headquarters for the longtime Spokane engineering firm, CH2M Hill. Also in the Hutton Building is Zero dB, and its sister company Zyzox. Zero dB is the communications engineering company that is creating the municipal fiber network for Cheney, Washington. ChoiceNet and iPowerplant are also in the Hutton Building.
Other Important Buildings
One Eighty Communications took over an empty former restaurant building and turned it into a state-of-the-art switching station. Connectivity in the US Bank Building connects Spokane with the rest of the world. The Peyton Building is home to AIM Communications, Arch Communications Enterprises, DataMark Inc. and Interactive Consulting. The Spokane Computer Building, home of Spokane Computer, Inc., was a pioneer. That building also houses Lumen Software, UNISYS, Class 101, and WHY Develop.
The Paulsen Building, most noted for professional services like dentists and attorneys, recently snagged Next IT and A Perfect Web. They are also home to CAELUS, Inc. and DCI Engineers.
From the Terabyte Triangle Beginning to USA’s Top Intelligent City
In July 1996, several groups were taking steps to revitalize downtown Spokane. SIRTI, the Spokane Regional Chamber, and the Economic Development Council were working together on economic development for downtown Spokane and the region. Fly-ins, focus groups, and all manner of outreach were used to take advantage of the many positive attributes the region has to offer.
As a dedicated “downtown denizen” as well as being part of the education and technology community, Dr. Steve Simmons noted both the empty space in Spokane’s historic downtown buildings and the newly available high-speed broadband connectivity. Putting the two together, he believed, would boost economic development by creating high-tech business clusters. A business cluster would include electronic service providers, high tech businesses, and those businesses that support high tech businesses. Believing that every venture needs a catchy name, Simmons called it the “Terabyte Triangle.”
The name Terabyte Triangle was derived from “Silicon Valley”—terabyte to suggest information products rather than electronic products, and “Triangle” for the large triangular zone available around the downtown core.
The Terabyte Triangle has a rather fuzzy border, and the northern tip may shift a bit changing the configuration of the triangle. Basically the Terabyte Triangle runs from the James Keefe Bridge on the east to Browne’s Addition on the west. The north tip is Indiana Avenue.
The Terabyte Triangle began as a volunteer organization and the twelve member Board remains all volunteers today. The Terabyte Triangle is funded by Downtown Spokane Ventures, and its funds are used to finance the Terabyte Triangle Web site, and the Terabyte Triangle Newsletter.
Many cities have a lit fiber MAN, but Spokane is unique in having a dark fiber network available for lease, and the Terabyte Triangle has the greatest concentration of dark fiber. “Dark fiber has even more business benefits than lit fiber,” explains John Everett, of Columbia Fiber Solutions. With dark fiber, once the dark fiber has been leased, there is no increase in the monthly fee to increase bandwidth. The speed and bandwidth of dark fiber is limited only by the electronics put on each end. At this time 10 gigabit electronic switches are beginning to reach the market. The company leasing dark fiber has an absolutely private network. There is never any traffic diversion out of dark fiber due to service providers, and the company has complete control of when it performs maintenance on its equipment. When a network must cross state lines, dark fiber is not subject to interstate commerce issues, but lit fiber has various fees and taxes that must be paid.
The company with dark or lit fiber can share among multiple locations their investment in servers, storage area networks, phone and video equipment and they need hire only one set of systems people. Businesses using dark or lit fiber from Columbia Fiber Solutions get to pick and choose their service providers and the electronics that best fits their needs.
Spokane now has several excellent wireless providers --- microwave, fixed wireless, and WiFi. Because all wireless is line-of-sight, the roof tops of the Terabyte Triangles’ tall buildings are becoming very valuable property. As soon as all of the agreements can be put into order, Spokane will boast a wireless downtown --- a network that should cover the majority of the Terabyte Triangle.
Thanks to the hard work of Spokane’s many technology innovators, including those associated with the Terabyte Triangle, Spokane was designated one of the seven most ‘intelligent communities’ in the world, and the only city so named in the United States by the Intelligent Community Forum in New York City. The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) is a project of the World Teleport Association.
According to the Intelligent Community Forum, to be intelligent a city must have “significant deployment of broadband communications infrastructure. The infrastructure must include businesses, government facilities and residences.” Being an “intelligent community” takes a lot more than ‘being wired.” Spokane, using the Terabyte Triangle as an example, proved that Spokane is an Intelligent Community.
The 2003 top seven intelligent communities included Glasgow, Scotland; Spokane, Washington; Sunderland, United Kingdom; Taipei, Taiwan ROC; Victoria, Australia; Western Valley, Nova Scotia, Canada; and Yokosuka, Japan.
So now you know what’s so good about this place.
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