Published November 2005

EDC to promote expanded
Technology Corridor

By John Wolcott
SCBJ Editor

To attract more technology-centered businesses, the Snohomish County Economic Development Council is bringing back a successful marketing program from the ’80s, when private businesses were branding the high-tech business park developments between east King County and Everett as “the Technology Corridor.”

The “new” corridor promotion will be launched Nov. 2 by the EDC with a gathering of Puget Sound commercial real estate firms at the soon-to-open Future of Flight Center and Boeing Tour facility at the north end of Paine Field. The afternoon session, which will include a bus tour of development sites, will be keynoted by Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon.

Then, on Nov. 17, the EDC will spread the world nationally and globally through a Web seminar to share the information that local developers will hear on Nov. 2.

So successful was the original Technology Corridor marketing effort that Bothell’s Canyon Park filled up with computer, telecommunications and biotech firms and then expanded into adjacent properties. The Quadrant I-5 Center in Lynnwood landed Boeing as the sole tenant for the multi-building campus, and other technology clusters were built along the curving “corridor” that evolved northward from Bothell to Lynnwood, Mukilteo and Everett.

But the pace slackened in the late ’80s when the Seaway Center master-planned business park in southwest Everett proved to be too far north to attract technology firms traditionally more oriented to south Snohomish County and King County.

In 1991, the offices of the Technology Corridor in Canyon Park were closed, with marketing materials and responsibilities shifting to the EDC and merging with the development council’s general promotion of technology growth in the county.

Today, there’s an entirely new technology economy that is so hot in the county that the EDC is re-launching the Technology Corridor branding image to capitalize on growing interest by aerospace, computer and biotech enterprises.

Currently, Berlex Industries is building the state’s first biotech product manufacturing firm at the north edge of Lynnwood. In Mukilteo, CombiMatrix, Fluke Manufacturing and Immunex headline a growing list of high-tech firms. Boeing’s Everett assembly plant for the 747, 767, 777 and 787 Dreamliner in southwest Everett is attracting other aerospace firms to the north end of the corridor.

Finally, Seaway Center is filling with tenants and, farther north, the Port of Everett is developing a $400 million waterfront site that could include technology businesses, plus an industrial site on the Snohomish River in north Everett. East of Everett, along the Snohomish River, the city of Everett is preparing to develop a riverfront site that could attract retail, educational and technology businesses.

All of those areas, plus the future city center development in Lynnwood, have potential to attract technology firms and high-tech employment, said Deborah Knutson, president of the Snohomish County EDC, which occupies space in one of Quadrant’s I-5 Corporate Park buildings in the corridor adjacent to I-5.

“Rather than start something new, we thought it would be good to bring back the Technology Corridor marketing plan and expand it as far as north Everett,” said Knutson. “Reid Middleton has been donating a lot of time to help us sort out corridor maps prepared by the PUD and other utility companies to create an overview for developers of what the corridor has to offer in master-planned sites, infrastructure and a concentration of existing high-tech firms.”

Later, the EDC plans to use its Technology Corridor marketing experience to promote business and technology parks in north and east Snohomish County, said Debbie Emge, the EDC’s vice president for business development.

For more information, contact Emge through the new www.thetechcorridor.com Web site.

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