Published April 2001

Business builds big,
leases extra space

By John Wolcott
Herald Business Journal Editor

Moving north recently from Canyon Park’s business center in Bothell, Dennis and Cyd Bishop have found the kind of space their business needed in the newly opened Snohomish Business Park built by Kirtley-Cole Associates of Snohomish: less traffic, more space, a building of their own and a quieter environment.

“We’re basically a mail-order and Internet business, so we don’t need a strong retail presence for our customers,” said Dennis Bishop, referring to Bishop & Associates Inc., a marketer of software and printed materials for the cellular telephone industry.

His wife, Cyd, a partner in the business, said, “A lot of the reason for the move was a lifestyle choice. We wanted acreage and to live in the country. The traffic in the (Bothell and) Mill Creek area was horrendous.”

More apartment buildings in the area made traffic even worse, she said, stretching what originally was a 10-minute drive to their office to 30 to 45 minutes.

Now, they not only have less-expensive space for their business, but they also have space to lease to other businesses. Their newest business — Dency Properties LLC — handles office leasing for their new 1924 Bickford Avenue Building in the business park.

“When we began looking in Snohomish, several people told us to talk to Kirtley-Cole Associates, a design-build firm in Snohomish with a great reputation. I thought we needed 3,000 to 4,000 square feet of space, but Gordon Cole convinced us we needed to build this 11,000-square-foot building,” Dennis Bishop said. “Nobody we talked to who knew Cole had anything bad to say about the company. It was so easy working with him in a design-build firm. Everything went smoothly on the job site because everyone was on the same team.”

He said the project was finished “on time and under budget.”

Located on Bickford Avenue in north Snohomish, close to Highway 2 and Interstate 5, the building offers 3,300 square feet of Class A office space upstairs — for professionals such as attorneys or a title company — and 5,200 square feet of space downstairs that can accommodate up to three tenants who need combination office and warehouse space with high-bay doors.

The Bishops’ main business is publishing software tools and manuals for international cellular phone markets, primarily for cellular sales, training and customer service. Their Bishop Books Software, for instance, provides customer-service operators at Verizon and other telecommunications companies with on-screen details about how different cell phones look, how they work and how they’re programmed.

Dennis Bishop’s first programming guidebook covered 100 models. Today, 12 years later, he maintains and updates a software program that covers 1,800 phones.

The Bishops’ products include books, CD-ROMs and maps of cellular coverage areas across the country, as well as a video on “The Basics” of cellular system installation. The company has markets in all 50 states and 15 other countries, including law-enforcement agencies such as the U.S. Secret Service and FBI.

“If agents recover cell phones involved in criminal activities, they often need help from our software in figuring how to access call lists on the phones, that sort of thing,” Dennis Bishop said.

Also, in a classroom at the new building, Bishop Academy provides one- to two-day classes for up to three students at a time on specialized software programs for architects and others who use Form-Z animation programs for product prototyping, graphic designs and other needs.

The Bishops can be contacted at 360-862-8900, by e-mail to bishopcd@earthlink.net or through their Web sites, www.bishopinfo.com for their cellular software programs or www.bishopacademy.com for their training programs.

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